Mr. Price also did not personally see a threat, since the Republican legislature redrawing North Carolina’s map will likely dump more Democratic voters into his district straddling the Research Triangle of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill to make surrounding districts more Republican.
But as those maps become more partisan, the prospect of polarization grows, Mr. Price said. Mr. Doyle’s retirement opened the door for a considerably more liberal Democrat, Summer Lee, to jump into the race on Tuesday, with the backing of Justice Democrats, which has pushed the Democratic Party to the left. An even more Democratic district in the Research Triangle could elect a Democrat to the left of Mr. Price.
As for the right, Mr. Price said, the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 “has scarred the House and raised serious questions that I never thought would be raised, about the future of the rule of law, the acceptance of election results, the peaceful transfer of power and the very future of democracy.”
With far-right Republicans such as Representatives Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia already calling for Mr. Biden’s impeachment, Mr. Yarmuth said, “the prospect of serving in the minority is horrifying.”
Still, Mr. Yarmuth reserved some of his harshest words for newcomers in his own party. Older members who helped draft the Affordable Care Act; the Dodd-Frank banking regulations in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis; and even President Barack Obama’s climate change bill, although it ultimately failed in the Senate, knew how to compromise, he said.
“The people in the House who have been drawing all the lines are people who have not served in a governing majority,” he said. “They all have come since 2010.”
And all of the newly announced retirees warned their colleagues that failure to pass the infrastructure bill and social policy “reconciliation” measure would be politically disastrous for the Democrats.