Co-Chair of House progressive caucus lashes out at moderate Dems as ‘Child Abuse Caucus’

As Allahpundit noted earlier, Pelosi’s arm was twisted today by a group of moderates who threatened to shut down her revised border bill and basically forced her to accept the Senate bill (or have nothing). Now Politico reports on the ugly fights that broke out between House progressives and moderates:

Some lawmakers even resorted to public name-calling, with progressive leader Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) accusing moderate Democrats of favoring child abuse — an exchange on Twitter that prompted a pair of freshmen centrists to confront him directly on the floor, with other lawmakers looking on in shock…

Reps. Max Rose (D-N.Y.), and Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), both members of the Problem Solvers Caucus, confronted Pocan on the House floor over his tweet. According to sources familiar with the conversation, Rose used expletives, and Pocan said he did not apologize.

“I said, how come you can’t stay 24 hours to do your job?” Pocan said of his retort to Rose on the floor. “He said, ‘My mother thinks I’m a child abuser.’ I said, ‘I’ll tell your mother you’re not a child abuser.’”…

“Mark’s tweet just speaks to why everyone hates this place. He’s just trying to get retweets. That’s all he cares about,” Rose told POLITICO.

Here’s the tweet:

Since when did the Problem Solvers Caucus become the Child Abuse Caucus? Wouldn’t they want to at least fight against contractors who run deplorable facilities? Kids are the only ones who could lose today.

— Rep. Mark Pocan (@repmarkpocan) June 27, 2019

The argument continued on Twitter as well as on the floor of the House:

Maybe the REAL problem is someone who thinks this is about retweets and not about bad contractors, awful conditions and kids

— Rep. Mark Pocan (@repmarkpocan) June 27, 2019

And on it went:

7) Progressive Caucus Co-Chairman Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) blasted moderate Democrats after a meeting with Pelosi. Pocan decried “people who think the are players in the Problem Solvers Caucus.” That’s a swipe at moderate Democrats who try to work with Republicans

— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) June 27, 2019

The Intercept’s Ryan Grim reported that someone (Pocan again?) told him the leader of the Problem Solvers might be primaried:

Source is Problem Solver-skeptic @MarkPocan

Also hearing @RepJoshG increasingly likely to get a primary

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) June 27, 2019

AOC’s Chief of Staff also lashed out at moderates in a tweet which he quickly deleted comparing them to racist Southern Democrats of the 1940s:

Whoa. @AOC’s chief just deleted this. pic.twitter.com/xRJphPAkwb

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) June 27, 2019

So you definitely get the impression the progressives are spitting mad about this and lashing out at their moderate colleagues. Finally, here’s CNN’s Manu Raju basically making the same case for 3 minutes, i.e. this is open warfare within the Democratic Party. All I can add is ‘Oh what a day, what a lovely day!’

Democratic infighting breaks out after House easily approves Senate bill to spend $4.6B on border funding — with 95 Democrats voting against it. On the floor, Mark Pocan, co-chair of Progressive Caucus, was seen in a heated argument with Max Rose, a moderate freshman, on floor pic.twitter.com/5LYs0EBqdQ

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 27, 2019