WASHINGTON — As Democrats continue their victory lap after their big wins on election night, outside groups and incoming freshmen are already turning up the pressure — and laying out competing visions of what the next two years should look like.

For Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer, it bears repeating that “the Democrats aren’t all exactly the same.”

“The most important lesson of this whole election, and one we all need to internalize if we’re going to truly build a durable majority, is populism and moderation are not mutually exclusive,” he said at a Center for American Progress Action Fund event on Thursday.

Voters are expecting results as Democrats claim a mandate to address costs and corruption. “Our majority will be measured against one test and one test only: Have we made your life better?” Schumer said.

He acknowledged, however, that their plans could run into a President Donald Trump-sized wall: the presidential veto.

“Will everything pass? Will Trump sign all of it into law? Knowing Trump’s and Republicans’ intransigence, of course not. But I will promise the American people: The Democratic Party will fight to make your life more affordable, your government more competent, your capital less corrupt, bill by bill, brick by brick, for as long as it takes for you to feel the difference,” Schumer said, hinting the road could be a long one.

But several progressive lawmakers and groups say the next Congress cannot be business as usual.

Indivisible, a progressive political organization that has described the Trump administration as a “fascistic clown show,” sent a memo to Senate Democratic offices Thursday morning urging them not to “squander” their momentum and to “fight at a level that matches the public’s demand for action.”

“Who leads the party in this era must be an open question, not a coronation. It’s time to define what the next era of the Democratic Party will be,” the memo reads.

The group has been encouraging voters to speak up and demand their senators hold “a contested leadership election, not a cleared field for Schumer.”

Meanwhile, Schumer has projected confidence he will keep his spot atop the caucus, especially after he helped pave the way for Tuesday’s blue wave. “I’ll be reelected as majority leader,” he said Wednesday. But the pressure campaign points to some tough math and harsh realities for the top Democrat — including some that mirror the woes of the outgoing Republican Majority Leader John Thune.

Filibuster fight

Among the demands outlined by Indivisible is one with a troubled recent history: “Breaking the filibuster on the first day of the new session.”

Democrats need to leverage “every procedural tool” if they “want the public to believe their campaign promises weren’t just more talk from politicians who are just like the old politicians they hated,” the memo reads.

The group isn’t alone in floating a new approach to the chamber’s 60-vote threshold for invoking cloture and ending debate. Some current and incoming lawmakers have signaled they would be open to going “nuclear” and abolishing the legislative filibuster, following in the footsteps of past majorities in both parties who have similarly changed how other Senate business is handled, like judicial nominees.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., argued in an op-ed in Time this week that Democrats could in some cases use existing tools, like a party-line process known as budget reconciliation, to pass their priorities. For non-budget items, like “bills to ban stock trading by federal officials or crack down on Trump’s corruption in plain sight,” Democrats should start by putting them up for a vote on the floor and letting “Republicans decide if they want to stay tied to such corruption.”

“And, if they do, then let’s clear away Senate filibuster rules and pass the laws anyway,” she wrote.

Sen.-elect James Talarico of Texas told NBC News on Monday ahead of his victory, “I believe the majority has the right to govern in this country, and the filibuster, which is not in the Constitution and is a Jim Crow relic, is leading to gridlock in our nation’s capital.”

Schumer ignored a question about nuking the filibuster at Wednesday’s event, saying instead, “The first thing we’ll do is reduce costs and work the legislative process.”

It would take 51 votes in the Senate for Democrats to go “nuclear” and establish a new precedent, a math problem that Thune knows all too well. The Republican from South Dakota faced loud criticism from conservatives online and hard-liners in his own party who said he wasn’t doing enough to try to pass a sprawling voter ID bill known as the SAVE America Act. But Thune repeatedly insisted he didn’t have the votes to change the chamber’s filibuster rules.

Many senators fear that blowing up the 60-vote threshold would fundamentally change the role of the Senate and its ability to tap the brakes on legislation that doesn’t have durable bipartisan support. Democrats went through a similar debate over the filibuster in 2022, during Schumer’s first stint as majority leader. Even as others in their party pushed to pass sweeping voting rights legislation by any means necessary, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, then moderate Democratic senators, held firm against filibuster changes.

And Schumer will have at least one Democrat on his hands who has already spoken up in defense of the filibuster, reversing his previous position. “I now recognize how important the filibuster is and the state our country would be in without it,” Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania wrote in a Washington Post op-ed earlier this summer, praising Sinema and Manchin as “courageous” holdouts who were wrongly “vilified” for holding the line.

Impeachment intensifies

None of that points to an easy ride for the incoming Democratic majority leader. And if fights over the filibuster weren’t enough, the caucus is also bracing for a different kind of intraparty angst, this time over impeachment.

The next likely House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told reporters on Thursday: “I have not had a single member of Congress or even a candidate say we’ve got to start out by impeaching Donald Trump.”

“For us, impeachment is not a fetish. It’s certainly not a taboo. We’ve impeached the guy twice,” he said, referring to Democrats’ efforts during the first Trump administration. “The problem has been over on the Senate side, and for us, it is a tool in the constitutional toolkit.”

Even if the House were to impeach Trump, a conviction would require a two-thirds supermajority vote in the Senate. And some Democrats are eager not to waste their hard-earned political capital on an impeachment quest that could alienate moderate voters and do nothing to bring down costs for everyday Americans.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who boosted candidates in battleground races and recently released a roadmap for the new Congress, said at the CAP event on Thursday that lawmakers should “hold oversight hearings and expose the corruption of this administration. I’m not suggesting that that necessarily leads to impeachment. Maybe it does.”

Sounding more certain for Democrats in both chambers is their desire to impeach Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over the war in Iran.

But that could be dealt with in the lame duck if Rep. Thomas Massie’s, R-Ky., resolution prevails next week. His proposal includes eight articles of impeachment, including allegations that Hegseth violated the 1973 War Powers Resolution in his prosecution of the Iran war and acted illegally in military campaigns in Venezuela, Yemen, the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Hegseth said in a video on Thursday of impeaching: “Didn’t work against President Trump. Won’t work with me. You can rest assured of that.”

Indivisible’s memo names impeaching Hegseth as a priority, as well as blocking a “business-as-usual” National Defense Authorization Act in the lame duck and refusing to fund the Department of Defense if “it doesn’t cut off money for the war.”

But it’s not clear that Democrats in Congress are ready to play that kind of hardball. As they weigh their approach to the next era, they’re still half-stunned themselves by their larger than expected wins — and trying to put themselves in the best position ahead of the next elections in 2028.

GOP Rep. Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey told reporters on Thursday at the Capitol he hopes Democrats don’t hold up the NDAA “for the good of the country.”

“The NDAA is such an important bill for our national security, and it’s usually very bipartisan. I hope it is,” he said.

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(John Donnelly and Jacob Fulton contributed to this report.)

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