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The Progressive Democrats are the progressive faction of the United States Democratic Party. The Progressive movement within the Democratic Party traced its roots back to the New Left movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which was supportive of the African-American civil rights movement, gay rights, feminism, the anti-Vietnam War movement, drug liberalization, and other social liberal policies. The Congressional Progressive Caucus was first organized in 1991 in response to the deepening economic recession and the rightward shift of the Democratic Party under the leadership of the centrist New Democrats, who had taken over the party in response to the popularity of President Ronald Reagan's free-market reforms of the 1980s. The Progressive Democrats of the 1990s and 21st century generally supported a Keynesian mixed economy, reforming the tax code, reforming Wall Street, reforming campaign finance, closing loopholes, keeping domestic work, single-payer (universal) healthcare, an increased minimum wage, environmental justice, and social justice. The movement consisted disproportionately of college-educated professionals, with 41% residing in mass affluent households and 49% being college graduates. Since the Great Recession, support for social democracy and democratic socialism in the Democratic Party increased. Progressive Democratic candidates won support in metropolitan areas outside the American South, most notably in coastal states such as California, New York, and Massachusetts, but also in Midwestern states such as Wisconsin and Michigan. The Progressive wing of the Democratic Party was energized by the socialist politician Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, utilizing populist anti-elitist rhetoric to win the support of anti-establishment Democrats. The Progressives emphasized issues such as dismantling white supremacy, the patriarchy, and American capitalism, as well as ending the War on Drugs, mass incarceration, and the War on Terror. For these reasons, the Progressive movement became massively popular among college-age voters, young African-Americans and Hispanics, Native Americans, young and urban whites, working-class communities of color, and gender and sexual minorities. Progressivism reached its peak in 2020 due to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement amid the George Floyd protests, a nationwide cultural reckoning brought about by "woke" political activism and economic and social pressure on corporations, and the election of several progressives to the US Congress. In January 2021, the US Senate had one democratic socialist Senator (Bernie Sanders), while the US House of Representatives had five self-described socialist representatives (Danny K. Davis, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Rashida Tlaib, and Cori Bush); other major Progressive leaders in Congress included Elizabeth Warren, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Mondaire Jones. In 2019, former Speaker of the House John Boehner warned of the destructive consequences of the rise of a progressive equivalent of the "Tea Party" movement within the Democratic Party. The rise of the Progressive movement occurred simultaneously with the rise of Trumpism and the alt-right during and after the 2016 presidential election, and the 2020 presidential election saw fears about the Democratic Party's leftward shift led to increased "anti-socialist" rhetoric from Trump and the GOP and the Democrats' loss of popularity in heavily-Cuban and Venezuelan Miami and South Florida, the white working-class Midwest, and in moderate swing districts in states such as California and New York. The Progressive movement was lauded by many in American society as a force for social justice, progress, and anti-racism in America, while its critics on the right accused it of elitism (claiming that the progressivism was engineered by "New York elites and Hollywood moguls"), cultural brainwashing through popular culture, media bias, "over-racializing" American politics and society, politicizing popular culture, and eroding America's traditional Christian values, while moderately liberal critics accused the Progressive movement of refusing to be political team-players (especially within the Democratic Party), engaging in overly aggressive and exclusionary rhetoric (which they feared would alienate moderate and suburban voters), pushing for unpopular policies and social views (such as the "woke" movement and the "Defund the Police" and police abolition movements), providing the Republicans with "anti-socialist" rhetorical ammunition due to many Progressives' outspoken socialist views or sympathies, and committing large-scale entryism (the Social Democrats, USA and Democratic Socialists of America had been founded with the objective of infiltrating the Democratic Party and shifting it to the left).

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