Unless Democratic Leaders Buck Their Corporate Masters, Nothing Will Fundamentally Change

As the November 3 euphoria fades, the grim reality remains: Trump and his lawless regime, along with Corporatist Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, still hold the reins of power. Granted, the Democrats now have a comfortable majority in the House and Senate and will hold many investigative hearings into the Trump rein of corruption, cruelty, violence, mass lawbreaking and Elon Musk’s DOGE crimes. However, the grim prospect is that they will mostly produce few results.

Why? First, they have to clear the corporatist Democratic Committee Chairs (more about that later) and then clear Speaker Hakeem Jeffries and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Jeffries and Schumer take large amounts of Wall Street campaign money. They take money from the big weapons manufacturers, and they are first in line for AIPAC-related campaign bucks.

Second, they show few signs of heeding the anger of their Democratic voters—90% of whom want Trump impeached. Voters also want Congress to give big corporations a heavy dose of “law and order,” restore taxes on them, and take these corporate giants and the super-rich owners off welfare.

In short, the New York-based Democratic leadership in Congress remains very supportive of the Wall Streeters, the bloated military budget, corporate welfare, and the Netanyahu-AIPAC lobby, backing Netanyahu’s genocide in Palestine.

There are exceptions in Congress—Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will become the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is expected to chair the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. But then what? Their legislation is up against both the Democratic and Republican leadership. Schumer will let these two progressive Democrats provide red meat to the masses, but progressives will likely be marginalized, as has happened so often under party leaders who are cowards and corporatists.

Recall the Obama-led Democratic landslide in 2008. Obama who had an even larger Democratic majority in the House and Senate, mostly punted, enacting a watered-down Obamacare, without a public option. (Obama pushed legislation including the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Credit CARD Act, that established a “bill of rights” for credit cardholders, placing new restrictions on arbitrary interest rate hikes, hidden fees, and marketing to young consumers—but he should have done much more.) A historic loss of major opportunities for a just society.

Two years later, the Democrats had their heads handed to them by voters rejecting their do-nothing-ism. It can happen again.

In August of 2026, Jeffries placed hard-line pro-Netanyahu Democrats in critical positions on the Foreign Relations Committee. He will likely install corporatist Democrats as chairs of powerful committees or loyalists who, if not beholden to corporate lobbies, will do his bidding.

Exhibit One is the longtime, corporate cash register Congressman Richard Neal from a “safe seat” in Massachusetts. Trump must love him. When he became chair of the House Ways and Means Committee in January 2019, he said he would NOT revisit the horrendous tax escapes Trump enacted in 2017 for his super-rich buddies and giant corporations. What?!

Just last September 15, Neal joined a minority of House Democrats headed by Hakeem Jeffries and, with 46 other Democrats, voted “Present,” effectively—along with the Republicans obviously—refusing to vote for Rep. Al Green’s Impeachment Resolution, which received 146 votes, a majority of House Democrats. During his campaign for re-election, Neal declined to say he would vote for Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, the violent, cruel, self-enriching, corrupt, warmongering, bigoted Outlaw. Dictator Donald must be delighted that Richard Neal supports so many Trump positions.

Neal has long opposed full Medicare for All or single-payer, everybody in, nobody out, preferring to go with a very limited, high-priced Obamacare. He takes abundant campaign money from the corporate health insurance and healthcare PACs.

Delivering for his paymasters, Neal goes along with the bloated military budget, vast corporate welfare giveaways, and blocked “surprise medical billing” legislation in 2019 that made private equity firms and other corporate beneficiaries happy to contribute to his campaign war chest.

The big drug companies are also happy with Neal—and are filling his campaign coffers—because he has worked to limit drug-pricing legislation, restrict Medicare’s authority to negotiate prices, and keep lower prices from being extended to uninsured individuals.

Neal had the support of his dittoheads on the Committee and the backing of the “bought and sold” Republican Committee members to deliver these favors for the few at the expense of the many defenseless consumers and people opposed to Trump. He went all the way, running Committee markups dictatorially, and obstructing votes on amendments by progressive Committee members such as Representatives Lloyd Doggett and Gwen Moore designed to hold corporations accountable.

In 2022, despite the support of 200 House Democrats for Subcommittee Chair John Larson’s bill to increase Social Security benefits, frozen since 1971, and pay for it by taxing wages above $400,000, Neal supported Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s keeping the bill from a vote on the House floor.

Blocking it helped the Republicans take the House from Speaker Pelosi. And, Democrats forfeited an opportunity to campaign on expanding Social Security (See The American Prospect: House Leadership Delays Social Security Expansion While Crafting Tax Breaks for Rich Retirees.)

This bill would have helped 60 million retirees.

Neal is a clever politician who talks a good game on slam-dunk reversals of Trump’s restrictions of Medicaid and food stamps. But, when it comes to delivering the big honeypots and immunities big business wants, he is pretty much a corporate toady. Right after taking the Chair of the Ways and Means Committee in 2019, he convened high-dollar fundraisers, spending some of these donations on what Politico reporter Danny Nguyen called, “upscale restaurants, hotels and entertainment to court elite donors and lobbyists with businesses before his committees.”

There is still time to make Richard Neal persona non grata with the tens of millions of voters who want a Peoples’ Congress and fighters for them in Washington. Neal is unpopular with most members of the Progressive Caucus led by the refreshing young Congressman Greg Casar from Texas. Other groups like RootsAction led by Norman Solomon and Progressive Democrats of America led by Alan Minsky, as well as major anti-poverty, tax reform and many anti-Trump organizations, could combine to challenge his selection by Jeffries as the Ways and Means committee chair. There are any number of qualified and willing House candidates for this powerful position.

Earlier this year, Neal, with his 38 years of absentee incumbency in the House, had a paltry 25% approval rating from his District. Loaded with corporate dollars and not being challenged by the Republicans or seriously challenged in the Democratic primaries until this year, he cruises to re-election from his nice mansion on Cape Cod, rejecting in-person town meetings and a presence in his District beyond ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

This year, he fought off an Independent candidate challenge from Nadia Milleron (my niece) by pumping over four million dollars in corporate donations into a Trump-like “Big Lie” smear campaign. This will not be lost on his expanding detractors. (See The Berkshire Eagle article “Ralph Nader blasts Rep. Richard Neal in letter backing niece’s challenge”).