Tuesday saw primary races in many states. Most primary races (unlike the few ‘jungle’ primaries in states like California) are within parties to see who gets to be the party’s nominee in the general election and hence they are better seen as indicators of the relative strengths of the competing factions within the parties.
And yesterday’s results showed promising results for progressives in the Democratic party.
Bernie Sanders and his progressive allies are on a hot streak.
The Vermont senator’s endorsed candidates cleaned house on Tuesday, a coast-to-coast show of force headlined by a resounding win for his embattled Senate pick in Maine, Graham Platner, in spite of days of turmoil that had thrown his candidacy into question.
It wasn’t just Platner. Hours before his victory was called, Sanders-backed Randy Villegas advanced to a runoff ahead of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s endorsed candidate, as he fights to face Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) in a swingy Central Valley seat. Other Sanders-backed victors for House seats in recent weeks include Adam Hamawy and Analilia Mejia in New Jersey, Sam Forstag in Montana, Brian Poindexter in Ohio and Bob Brooks in a key Pennsylvania swing district.
…“Progressives are on the march,” Sanders declared last week in a statement lauding his slate of “candidates willing to stand up for working people [who] are taking on the establishment and WINNING.” On Tuesday, he commended Platner’s “landslide victory.”
The senator’s support has been instrumental in powering unknown candidates to major wins this cycle, a demonstration of just how much political influence the 84-year-old progressive leader still commands.
There have been other signs of progressive advances.
Sanders’ picks aren’t the only progressives riding the wave. Tuesday’s results built on momentum that had been growing this cycle, as progressive candidates have notched wins across several states. In Philadelphia, staunch progressive Chris Rabb won a hotly contested primary in what was the nation’s bluest House district in 2024. And in Los Angeles, progressive darling Nithya Raman secured a mayoral runoff spot against incumbent Karen Bass, defeating Republican Spencer Pratt to give the left another high-profile boost.
Mai Vang, a Justice Democrats-backed Sacramento city council member, also pulled ahead Tuesday in California’s House nonpartisan primary, setting up a November matchup against 81-year-old Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui.
There are more races to come.
Sanders-backed Abdul El-Sayed secured the coveted endorsement from the United Auto Workers last week as he battles Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary. And Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who has Sanders’ support in that state’s Senate primary, is pushing out polling showing her with a lead over the establishment-backed Democratic Rep. Angie Craig.
The wins by progressives in the primaries will pose a problem for the party establishment. On the one hand, they would like Democratic candidates to win in the general election so that the party can secure majorities in both houses of congress and thus gain control of key committees that can push forward their agenda and thwart the worst excesses of the Trump regime. But on the other hand, they are fearful of the increasing strength of the progressive movement that threatens their grip on the party. Losses by progressives in the general election would give them ammunition to argue that the party needs to nominate ‘centrist’ candidates (i.e., those who are largely satisfied with the status quo) in order to win elections.
We will have to see whether the party leaderships throws its wholehearted support behind the progressives to help them win or whether they are lukewarm and sit on their hands, even if that leads to defeats. The very fact that I am not sure which way they will go shows how compromised the party is.
In the UK, the hard right populist party is Reform, who have a Trump-like groundswell of support.
And the (supposedly left) Labour party has responded by shifting markedly to the right.
This has been disastrous as right-wingers want the “full strength” right party, not the “lite” right party, while left-wingers want an actual left party.
So popularity of Labour has tanked.
But the Green party, running on a genuinely “left” progessive platform has had a huge surge in popularity.
The US is a different environment, but I think the Democrats are making the same mistake of clinging to the “center-right” and if they were to adopt an actual progressive platform (AOC for pres?) may have a huge surge in popularity. I suspect US voters are desperate for a true alternative to Trump.
A good definition! The people who have largely not being paying any attention at all to the status quo; who are largely unaffected by the status quo and quite happy that it is only happening to largely someone else.
The status quo /pro-corporate neoliberal Dem establishment are to blame for the low confidence the public has for the Democrats.
This is a legacy of William Clinton and his “triangulation” that has become Dem orthodoxy. Like Nancy Pelosi they consider the counter-culture to be the problem, and cheerfully accept corporate mone for opposing “radical” ideas (i. e. things that ling has been standard policies in European countries).
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30 years ago Sweden had a *conservative* PM who rode out a bank chrisis by prioritising the bank customers, not the banks Afterwards, the banks had to return most of the bailout money to the state.
Compare this with how Obama et al cuddled the US banks.
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Your definitions of “conservstive” and left-wing are shot to hell. You have a reactionary fascist-adjacent party and a conservative party, both very sensitive to campaign donations.
Without the small sprinkling of progressives anomg the Dems I would have said both parties should be dumped in the Mariana Trench.
@ silent bob #1
AOC for president. Yes.
Birgerjohannson is mostly right.
Most of the trillion loaned to the banks from the 2008 crisis has been paid back, although the language of the bills means that cheap loans guaranteed by Uncle Sugar are still ongoing nearly twenty years later. What did not happen was the help for the folks who were buying those houses. They were not helped by our government in the same way and now private equity holds a huge quantity of real estate and are becoming brutal rentiers.
More telling was the the trillion dollar coin minted to dump some fiat cash into the stock market, which it immediately swallowed and then still proceeded to almost crash and burn.
seachange @ 5
Thanks for the clarification.
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But I still think the Dems have not been appropriately pugnacious in the face of aggressive Republican rollback, going back to the Reagan days.