Anti-Progressive Democrat Jeanne Shaheen Is Retiring From The Senate Next Year

Remember When She Helped The GOP Kill Raising The Minimum Wage?

Jeanne Shaheen, always eager to muddy the Democratic brand

Yesterday, New Hampshire conservaDem Jeanne Shaheen announced that she won’t be running for reelection next year. According to ProgressivePunch, she has, among Democrats, the 3rd worst voting record so far this cycle, right after John Fetterman (PA) and Elissa Slotkin (MI). Felice Belman reported that Shaheen’s “decision not to seek a fourth term will immediately set off a high-stakes race in a state whose voters are famously fickle. Last fall, New Hampshire voters supported former Vice President Kamala Harris for president and elected Democrats to Congress, but they also voted for a Republican governor and expanded Republican majorities in the state legislature. ‘It was a difficult decision, made more difficult by the current environment in the country— by President Trump and what he’s doing right now,’ Shaheen, 78, said in an interview with the New York Times.”

One good thing I'm happy to say about her: unlike most politicians, who consider themselves indispensable, she said “It’s important for New Hampshire and the country to have a new generation of leadership.” Erica Payne, co-chair of Patriotic Millionaires, also admires Shaheen for retiring. “A standing ovation to Sen Jeanne Shaheen. She did what lawmakers from Sen Grassley to President Biden to Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused to do. Step aside when the time was right. Fingers crossed that some of her collegues follow her powerful example.” 

Shaheen has been one of the most doggedly conservative among Senate Democrats, very much like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin but with a lower profile... but always holding back any real leftward momentum in the Senate. She has long been committed to the failed bipartisan fetishism that has kept progressivism in check for decades, having spent her career as a pro-corporate, war-friendly, status quo Democrat. She has consistently positioned herself as a centrist, meaning she has reliably undercut major progressive priorities whenever they gained traction. Medicare for All? Too extreme for Shaheen. A Green New Deal? Not a chance. In March 2021, she was among eight Democrats who voted against Bernie’s amendment to include a $15 per hour minimum wage in the American Rescue Plan Act. This decision was a significant setback for efforts to elevate the federal minimum wage, a core objective for progressives aiming to reduce income inequality. A serious crackdown on corporate power? Don’t make me laugh. The media will repeat Democratic Party establishment framing about how hard it will be to keep the seat in Democratic hands but try to remember that she’s spent years enabling lobbyists and Wall Street interests while pretending to be a champion of the middle class.

She’s been a fixture of the Democratic establishment’s deep commitment to “centrism” at all costs, including throwing working-class voters under the bus in the name of bipartisan deal-making with people who have no interest in actual compromise. Her presence in the Senate has been a predictable barrier to transformative change— an enabler of incrementalism at a time when incrementalism is a death sentence for meaningful progress.

On foreign policy, Shaheen has been a reliable voice for the military-industrial complex. She’s never met a defense budget she wasn’t happy to rubber-stamp, and she’s played a major role in ensuring that the Democratic Party remains captive to war hawks who treat the Pentagon as an unquestionable priority while crying about the costs of social programs.

With her out of the way, progressives in New Hampshire now have an opportunity to back a real left-wing candidate—someone who won’t constantly water down policy, undermine economic justice, and pander to conservative talking points. Of course, the Democratic establishment will scramble to find another centrist in her mold, but that doesn’t mean progressives shouldn’t fight to make this an opening for real change. So far, all 3 of the potential candidates to replace her— Annie Kuster, Chris Pappas and Maggie Goodlander— are as terrible as she is and all could be beaten by either of the two most likely GOP candidates Chris Sununu or Scott Brown.