“Who are we? Who do we want to be?” asked Abdul El-Sayed, the candidate in the Democratic Senate primaries at a campaign event. “Do we want a state defined by the amount of money corporations have contributed to dictate what we cannot have? Or do we want to be a state where we show the rest of the country what is possible when a movement of the people, by the people, and for the people is built?” he added.
On Tuesday, El-Sayed’s words had an effect on the electorate and he won the primaries against moderate Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who had the backing of the party leadership and tens of millions of dollars in outside spending.
Thus, from New York to Michigan, recent electoral victories by progressive candidates have shaken the Democratic Party, which is striving to regain control of Congress in November, as a preliminary step to the eventual fight for the White House in 2028. Victories set against the backdrop of Republican Donald Trump’s presidency.
They began gaining confidence after Zohran Mamdani’s resounding victory in last year’s New York mayoral election and also prevailed in the primaries for the House of Representatives this year in New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado. And on Tuesday they also won in a district in the Detroit area, where democratic socialist Donavan McKinney defeated Representative Shri Thanedar, who was seeking his second term.
In several other primaries this year, including those in California and Maine, progressives have defeated more centrist candidates backed by the party’s main campaign arm for the House of Representatives. Added to this is that Abdul El-Sayed’s victory marked another important step for the party’s dissident left wing and a sign that the battle with centrists over the party’s direction is far from resolved.
If things continue as they have so far, Francesca Hong, a declared socialist, is expected to prevail in the Democratic gubernatorial primaries in Wisconsin this Tuesday. This momentum fuels speculation that a candidate aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) could secure the party’s presidential nomination in 2028.
These progressives face off against moderates, who usually have the backing of the party leadership. “This is just the beginning,” Hasan Piker, an influential left-wing figure who campaigned for El-Sayed, told Politico. “We hope to continue this movement across the United States of America.”
Todd Belt, a political management professor at George Washington University, explained that left-wing candidates are making progress because “they are giving some people something to vote for and not just something against.”
“Many progressives talk about real solutions to the affordability crisis…, while many moderates rely on the fear” that Republican President Donald Trump’s government will continue, he told the France Presse agency.
Additionally, the expert referred to the frustration many Democrats feel about the current direction of their party. “The party is not standing up to Donald Trump as much as Democrats would like, so they want a change in leadership,” he said.
“The contest in Michigan consolidated a growing anti-establishment feeling on the party’s left, where activists and supporters seek a proactive vision that is not based on the pre-Trump status quo, as demonstrated by the succession of victories by dissident candidates. There is a sense that the systems were already broken before Trump’s rise, and a return to those norms will not benefit everyday Americans. They are looking for politicians who can denounce the orthodoxies of their own party and challenge the power of money lurking in American politics,” wrote The Guardian columnists Joseph Gedeon and Rachel Leingang.
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More influence
The Wall Street Journal indicated that “it is evident that the progressive movement driven since 2016 by the liberal icon, independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, now has greater influence. But the reasons for the movement’s success this year are not so clear. Some voters may be seeking significant political changes from the party, while others are simply looking for a new group of leaders.”
Ed Bruley, who led the Democratic Party in Macomb County, north of Detroit, for two decades, told the newspaper that El-Sayed’s victory reflected not so much left-wing political ideas as deep dissatisfaction with Congress, as well as a desire for firmer Democratic representation. He cited a recent CNN poll that revealed half of voters view it positively that the November elections would replace most members of Congress.
Smith, the pollster and consultant, said the main goal of Democrats now is to find a message that can unite the party’s centrists and liberals, which represents a challenge. Stevens’ relatively good result, which was not anticipated by most public opinion polls, showed that centrists still have an influential voice within the party.
“Whoever manages to decipher what a post-factional Democratic Party might look like, where an Abdul El-Sayed and a Senator Chuck Schumer can feel comfortable and motivate the bases, whoever figures it out will have solved the most important problem the Democratic Party has,” he told The Wall Street Journal.
But while progressives celebrate, some moderates are uneasy. “It is deeply concerning to see radical far-left candidates win in places that are potentially key states in the presidential elections,” Jonathan Cowan, leader of the centrist group Third Way, told the New York Times.
Moderates fear that if Democrats present polarizing candidates, undecided voters will abandon the party at a crucial moment, with Congress and the presidency at stake. In this regard, some experts have pointed out that the Republican Party has already begun portraying left-wing candidates as dangerous extremists who could harm the United States in the long term.
In this context, there are already figures within the Democratic Party preparing for the big leagues. This is the case of New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is positioning herself to try to reach a national level beyond the more conservative sectors of the Democratic Party, and – according to CNN – has made it clear in private that, whatever her decision, she has no interest in being simply a protest candidate.
In any case, her figure carries weight in the primaries. In fact, she has been building a solid record of support in the primaries, with three people she backed winning or advancing in New Jersey, California, and Montana in June.
Ocasio-Cortez’s advisors are preparing an agenda for the fall with the aim of testing her appeal beyond her base of followers, and mainly outside Senator Bernie Sanders’ political circle, after making several stops on her “Fight the Oligarchy” campaign. The tour will also serve to assess her own interest in what a presidential campaign would entail.
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