Great article.

I wonder how the other Democratic beginners will respond once bill making gets underway.

Not to diminish either Republican Bob Follette's record, (or OC), Ira Katznelson's book on the progressive era, Fear Itself, 2014, makes an excellent case that the entrenched, long serving and powerful southern bloc of racists in the Congress were the primary force supporting not only Democrat Woodrow Wilson's progressive achievements, also FDR's New Deal. The southern bloc, were, of course, Democrats.

From the book:

Southern representatives pushed the Wilson administration in interventionist directions, driving it to move beyond an original and more moderate emphasis on lowering tariffs and opening markets. Southern members, Arthur Link has stressed, led a crusade advocating “government's duty to intervene directly in economic affairs in order to benefit submerged or politically impotent economic interests." In so doing, "they helped make Wilson an advanced progressive and helped to commit his administration to a broad program of welfare legislation." .....southern preferences and votes clearly played a central role in crafting and passing President Wilson’s legislative program.  In all, “the imprint of the triumphant South on the domestic agenda of Wilson’s New Freedom,” the historian Michael Perman has rightly noted, was “indisputable.” Key legislation concerned with tariffs, economic monopolies, the currency, banking, farm relief, railroad regulation, and child labor “was brought forward and steered to passage by southern congressmen, while receiving overwhelming support from the southern delegations.”

.....During the 1920's, with no realistic threat to segregation on the horizon, southern members often allies successfully with western Republican progressives led by Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin and George Norris of Nebraska....

The years immediately preceding the New Deal represented a high point for white southern security about the still-fresh arrangements of Jim Crow. Forty years had elapsed since the last major legislative effort to guarantee African-Americans political rights.....Refusing to acknowledge any incompatibility between the system of segregation and wider American values and visions, southern politicians sought to legislate without having to choose among their valued objectives. Most had brought an activist agenda to Washington well before the New Deal.....

Remarkable in his reelection of 1936 was the degree of support he (FDR) secured across the Deep South.  Roosevelt's reelection was endorsed by 87% of voters in Alabama, Georgia and Texas, 89% in Louisiana, and an astonishing 97% in Mississippi and 99% in South Carolina, where some counties reported not one Republican vote.

Republicans and Trump are using racism and the "southern bloc" of white votes to push against OC and a new progressive agenda. We are once again being divided along racial lines, with voters exploited by lies and fear.

It should not be forgotten, that the early 20th century progressive era in American history was to a large extent achieved with the strong support of racist southern voters and politicians, who worked to ensure it would not threaten the economic and social dominance of southern white supremacy.

Evidently Nancy Pelosi follows Genghis on the twitter...AOC is on the House Oversight Committee.  Laissez rouler les bons temps....