In today’s episode of The Depolarizers, I’m in conversation with Rep. Brad Schneider, who represents the northern Chicago suburbs in Illinois’ 10th congressional district.
First elected in a competitive race in 2012, Rep. Schneider lost his re-election bid in a competitive rematch against his Republican challenger 2014. He was then re-elected in 2016 and has since won re-election in his district with significant margins of victory.
Rep. Schneider was recently elected by many of his Democratic peers in Congress to serve as Chair of the New Democrat Coalition, commonly known as the New Dems caucus.
Founded in 1997, the center-left New Democrat Coalition is made up of 115 pragmatic House Democrats who work across the aisle and across the Capitol to advance innovative, inclusive, and forward-looking policies. Representing over half the Democratic Caucus, New Dems are united behind a mission to build an economy that works for every American.
New Dems work to bridge the partisan divide with a solutions-oriented approach to politics.
New Dems were a co-sponsor of last year’s inaugural WelcomeFest. You can join us at WelcomeFest 2025 on June 4 in Washington, DC!
In our conversation, I asked Rep. Schneider how he and his fellow New Dems wield their power as the largest coalition of Democrats in the U.S. House.
115 is a big number. You can start with that number, but if I break it down into the individuals who make up that total, we have 115 members who bring a wealth of knowledge and know-how. They've got incredible experience. Some are long-term members of Congress, and 25 new members are serving in their first term.
What we're trying to do is make sure we empower and unleash the talent we have within the New Dems. We've established nine different working groups that reflect pillars like growing the economy, healthy and safe neighborhoods, and strong national defense and national security. We've got an economic working group that's looking at bringing manufacturing back, and responding to and addressing Trump's whiplash approach to tariffs. We have a housing and infrastructure working group. We have a rural revitalization working group.
It's those working groups that really empower the Members to make a difference. We're also supporting our members in their various work within the committee structure. Several committee ranking leaders are New Dems.
We make sure we're giving everyone the platform to communicate. We're providing resources to help them be better at what they do. We share information together, and then we stay engaged with leadership.
Because our podcast is called The Depolarizers, I asked Rep. Schneider how he and the New Dems lead political depolarization efforts among fellow Members and with voters.
I think one of the reasons Members are attracted to the New Dems is because the way we approach our job in the coalition is the way they approach their job [as Members of Congress]. They're not the flamethrowers. People often talk about workhorses and showhorses — New Dem members are the workhorses. We roll up our sleeves, we get it done.
We all got here to this position as members of Congress because we have succeeded in our prior careers — whether that was in business or law or medicine or agriculture — working with others, understanding that many the old African proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We know we go further when we work together. So just naturally, we have people who come in and bring that approach with them. These are people who work together within the coalition.
But if you look at our members, you're going to see they're the ones who are wandering on the floor talking to Republican colleagues, looking for those opportunities where we may disagree on a lot of issues, but if we can find common ground to move forward for the benefit of our constituents and for our country, we can do that as well.
I'm on the Ways and Means Committee. One of the bills that was passed on suspension, meaning it had an overwhelming majority in the House, was a bill I worked on with Rep. Randy Feenstra that makes it easier for people — when there's a simple math error on their tax return — to get the information, correct it, and set things right — common sense stuff. It’s not going to change the world, it's not going to save the planet, but it's going to make live people's lives a little bit easier. Those are the things we work at doing together.
If you look at our members and how they talk at home, they're having town halls. They're talking to our neighbors and our folks at home. We're hearing the anger. Hopefully it's not personally directed at us individually, but it's directed at Washington. We hear that anger. We talk about it.
I say when I'm home that I run as a Democrat, but I represent everybody — Democrats, Republicans, whether you voted for me, you didn't vote for me, or you didn't vote at all. We represent everybody.
I think that's the style of the New Dems, and that's why, 85 of 87 New Dem incumbents who ran last year in a difficult year for Democrats came back to Congress.
Rep. Schneider and I also discussed how to address weaknesses the Democratic Party and brand are experiencing among voters, even from voters within our own party:
I think there's a great frustration with government in general. There was a lot of frustration in the last election… A lot of reasons for people to be frustrated. And we hear that. At the same time, I'll point to the election last night in Florida — even though Democrats lost, they closed the gap. There were two special elections in Florida. In one, Democrats did 22% better than in November, and in the other, 16% better. That's a moral victory or a pyrrhic victory. It's not something you hang your hat on but look at more as a vector, as an arrow pointing in the direction that, yes, we're hearing people are mad at the Democrats. But they're not happy with the Republicans either.
And then you point to Wisconsin, where you had a big victory that was a nonpartisan race, but it clearly was Democrats versus Republicans.
You look in Pennsylvania and the special Senate state house election, where a Democrat won in a region for the first time since the 19th century, more than a hundred years. That's a big deal.
And so we need to look at that.
We can't say everything's hunky-dory — Democrats lost last November. We lost the House, we lost in the Senate, and we lost the White House. There was a rebuke. Don't take it as a rejection.
The Republicans, I think, are taking their hand too far. [2024] wasn't an embrace of everything Republicans were talking about — I think it was people wanting something different. They want to know that the future is going to get better, that life's going to get easier, that we can expect our standard of living to rise, that we can expect our kids to get educated safely and have a future that allows them to pursue and achieve their aspirations and not take on a mountain of debt just to get there.
They want to know that the government's putting their interests, their concerns, their priorities front and center — putting their interests first.
But we can't ignore America's responsibility in the world either. And the more we talk about that and demonstrate that we know how to govern — I think New Dems have always done that. We're doing it. We're growing. I think the New Dems are in a great position to lead the charge for the Democrats to take the House back in 2026.
The New York Times editorial board recently published an op-ed titled, “The Democrats are in Denial About 2024,” where they noted: “In the aftermath of this comprehensive defeat, many party leaders have decided that they do not need to make significant changes to their policies or their message. They have instead settled on a convenient explanation for their plight,” including excuses for post-pandemic inflation, international trends of incumbent losses, and voters not turning out (when in reality, nonvoters favor Trump).
I asked Rep. Schneider about his response to this charge for Democrats to change, and how the New Dems intend to implement changes.
I saw the editorial, and I share the concern. I look at folks in my party who say, ‘No, we just didn't do enough. We should not do anything different; we should just do it more.’
If you do more of the same, you're going to get more of the same results. We have to do things different. We have to have a cold eye review of where we succeeded last time, but also where we failed. And we failed to take a majority in the House. We failed to hold a majority in the Senate. We failed to keep Donald Trump and Project 2025 out of the White House. And we're suffering the consequences of that now.
We can point that we only lost by the presidential elections by a percent or two. We lost.
We started this conversation talking about how I won by one, and then I lost by two.
People say, ‘well, why did you lose?’ And I could point to a whole bunch of things. My answer is always the same: I lost because I got fewer votes.
So what did I learn? Go out and get more votes. Get more votes by connecting with the people who were going to go to the polls and casting their ballots and make sure they cast their ballots for me. That means listening to them. That means understanding what matters to them. That means trying to help them appreciate what we're working on is going to make their lives better, their children's future better, their communities stronger, the country as a whole stronger. We need to focus on that.
And there are principles that we can lay out that are core to who we are and according to who we are as a country… We have to meet people where they are. We have to hear what they're saying to us. And we have to speak to them in the language that they're speaking to us in. And if we can restore that type of leadership, which is what New Dems have been doing, you're going to see a coalition that grows from 42 a decade ago to 100 a year ago to 115 today, with more people wanting to join us. We flipped 9 seats last cycle from Republican to New Dem Democrat. We showed how to do it.
Learn from those lessons, but we have to take it all together and come up with a new strategy, not more of the same. Build on what worked, look at what didn't work, fix what has to be fixed. And if it's not fixable, we're going to try new things.
Lastly, I asked Rep. Schneider what pitfalls the left should avoid in potential wins in 2026 that could hurt the Party in a presidential election in 2028.
I would say the first thing is we've got to make sure that the pendulum, which has gone way too far — I think that's the backlash against Elon Musk, who thinks he's a self-appointed king, oligarch, whatever term you want to use — that we don't swing it back too far the other way.
We recognize that, again, what I said before, I run as a Democrat, but I'm elected to represent everyone in the 10th District of Illinois. We may win the majority, but we have a responsibility to hear and represent the entire country and that it’s not run forward to the exclusion…
We need to focus on the business of the American people, and recognize that we can't do everything all at once.
We should lay out that this is our plan, these are our priorities, one, two, three, four, five.
We'll start with the first one. We'll methodically move forward and emphasize that there is a place for everyone in our caucus and that we are not excluding the Republicans — We're welcoming them to join us as we move the country forward.
Like what you’re hearing? Listen to the full episode on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts, and subscribe to hear new episodes of The Depolarizers. You can also support our work to depolarize American politics via our 501(c)3, The Welcome Democracy Institute.
Be sure to join us at WelcomeFest on June 4 in DC!
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