[[link removed]]

IS THIS REALLY THE LEFT’S BIG MOMENT? WE’LL KNOW IN TWO MONTHS  
[[link removed]]


 

Alex Shephard
September 8, 2026
The New Republic
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Progressives and socialists made historic gains in Democratic
primaries. What happens in November is what really matters. A win in
Michigan opens up a lane for progressives in other competitive races
across the country — perhaps even.... _

(From left) Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El-Sayed, Chuck
Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Ken Martin, Illustration by Klawe Rzeczy
/ The New Republic

 

It didn’t take long after the primary polls closed on August 18 for
Jared Mosko­witz, a moderate Democrat who has represented a South
Florida congressional district since 2023, to declare victory—not
just over his opponent, union organizer Oliver Larkin, but also the
Democratic Socialists of America, which had backed Larkin’s
campaign. “Florida is known for hurricanes,” Moskowitz told
[[link removed]]
_Politico._ “And so the DSA is a disaster area in Florida—and
there’s no federal reimbursement coming to help these people.” On
X, around the same time, he sent
[[link removed]] a message
to the leftist streamer Hasan Piker, who had campaigned for Larkin:
“My condolences.” The following morning, almost as an
afterthought, Moskowitz returned
[[link removed]] to X to
thank his family and his voters for their support. “My dad died of
cancer 4 years ago,” he wrote. “He would have enjoyed all of this.
I miss him.”

Moskowitz is both pugnacious and extremely online, which also means
he’s a bit of a troll. And Moskowitz had reason to gloat. The
biggest source of the campaign’s bitterness had been perhaps the one
issue the two candidates agreed on: Moskowitz himself, a staunchly
pro-Israel centrist who at times resembles a Republican. Indeed,
Moskowitz has described
[[link removed]]
himself as a “[Ron] DeSantis Democrat”—a nod to his stint as
director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management under the
state’s term-limited, MAGA-lite governor. (It’s not clear if there
are other DeSantis Democrats, or if Moskowitz is a caucus of one.)

Moskowitz and his allies argued that running anyone but a pro-Israel
moderate would amount to political suicide in the recently redrawn
25th congressional district, which voted for Donald Trump by nearly 10
points in 2024. Meanwhile, Larkin was campaigning on the idea that
someone with Moskowitz’s politics no longer had a place in the
Democratic Party. He ultimately lost
[[link removed]]
by nearly 30 points. Cue the Moskowitz gloating.

There was just one problem. The very same night, Angie Nixon, a young,
progressive state representative from Jacksonville, won a shocking
upset victory over Alex Vindman, a hero of the resistance during
Trump’s first term, in the state’s Democratic Senate primary.
Vindman had the backing of a number of national Democrats and spent
more than $9 million
[[link removed]]—almost
13 times [[link removed]]
what his opponent put into the race. Oh, and Nixon had just joined the
Democratic Socialists of America months earlier. Florida is known for
hurricanes, after all.

Welcome to the wild, chaotic world of Democratic politics in 2026,
where every competitive primary result was contradicted by the next.

Primary season can seem endless, but things got really interesting in
August, which began with Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive doctor
campaigning on a platform of Medicare for All, becoming Michigan’s
first Muslim Senate nominee. He narrowly defeated
[[link removed]]
Haley Stevens, the suburban Detroit House member who was backed by
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and who had outspent El-Sayed by
roughly
[[link removed]]
the same margin by which Vindman outspent Nixon.

A week later, Francesca Hong, a former chef and progressive member of
Wisconsin’s state Assembly, lost
[[link removed]]
to moderate, establishment-backed challenger David Crowley after her
commanding polling lead crumbled in the final weeks of the race,
thanks in part to a poor defense of past “woke” comments and
positions. A week after _that_ race, Florida primary voters headed to
the polls—and in Moskowitz and Nixon, moderates and progressives
both found reasons to claim victory.

Preelection polling suggests that the party could see its biggest
midterm gains in 20 years. If, that is, this uneasy coalition can hang
together.

What are we to make of all this? If you’re looking for something
analogous to the Tea Party that upended Republican politics in 2010 or
to the rise of Trump, who co-opted it six years later, you’ll end up
with whiplash. For better or worse, the slow civil war between
Democratic moderates and progressives that began 10 years ago is still
very much ongoing.

Preelection polling suggests
[[link removed]]
that the party could see its biggest midterm gains in 20 years. If,
that is, this uneasy coalition can hang together.

 
Speaking to a packed Detroit Opera House in mid-July, Bernie Sanders
made the case [[link removed]] that
voting for Abdul El-Sayed in the upcoming Senate primary carried
existential importance. The battle between El-Sayed and Stevens—who
outspent El-Sayed by about 12 to 1, including roughly
[[link removed]]
$30 million from the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, or AIPAC—had become “an election of historical
significance.” Its outcome, Sanders said, would “show the nation
whether AIPAC and other billionaire-funded super PACs can spend tens
and tens and tens of millions of dollars to buy a U.S. Senate seat.”

Two weeks later, El-Sayed, who had been favored by double digits in
several preprimary polls, squeaked out a victory. The polling miss
undercut the significance of El-Sayed’s triumph. Stevens had once
said
[[link removed]],
“Israel comes to me in my dreams”; El-Sayed, meanwhile, ran on
ending military aid for the country.

Something is clearly happening within the Democratic electorate, the
outlines of which you can see in El-Sayed’s rise. The party’s base
has, broadly speaking, grown more progressive, less supportive of
Israel, and more suspicious of its leaders, particularly after
Trump’s reelection in 2024. Even the Democratic Socialists of
America will almost certainly see their ranks in Congress grow from
two—Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—to seven. Indeed, a
postelection fixation on El-Sayed’s and Hong’s underperformance
compared to polls distracts from the fact that both results represent
unprecedented performances for Midwest progressives.

Of course, the real significance of El-Sayed’s victory won’t be
clear until November, when voters choose between him and Mike Rogers,
the Trump-backed Republican currently leading in many polls
[[link removed]].
But if a candidate like El-Sayed, a son of Egyptian immigrants, can
win in Michigan, it will be vindication for those who have spent the
past decade insisting that “Bernie would have won” ever since
Hillary Clinton lost Michigan (and most of the Upper Midwest, and the
presidency) to Trump in 2016.

El-Sayed is particularly notable, but he is hardly alone. Other
primary results gave the party’s progressives much to feel hopeful
about. Sam Forstag, a labor union leader and former smoke jumper, won
[[link removed]] a
crowded House primary in Montana with the support of Sanders and
Ocasio-Cortez. With the same two endorsements, Randy Villegas, a
school board trustee in California’s Central Valley, ran a health
care–focused campaign in a district that includes the third-highest
[[link removed]]
percentage of Medicaid beneficiaries in the nation. Melat Kiros, the
DSA member who will likely represent Denver in Congress next year, ran
on Medicare for All, federal rent control, abolishing ICE, and a
moratorium on data centers. She knocked out Diana DeGette, a 30-year
incumbent, in a race that may have had more to do with anti-incumbent
fervor than policy distinctions: DeGette is also a progressive.

 

The party’s left wing is performing particularly well with what New
York political writer Michael Lange has termed
[[link removed]]
the “Mamdani Coalition,” after the group of voters who propelled
New York City’s youthful and proudly socialist mayor to victory last
fall: “young people of all races, socialists, progressives,
pacifists, tenants, millennials, South Asians, Arabs, Muslims,
college-graduates, ‘No Kings’ boomers, the children of immigrants,
[and] the cost-burdened (working families, fixed-income seniors,
mortgaged homeowners).” It’s a coalition very similar to the one
that (broadly) propelled El-Sayed to his primary victory, though
it’s also clearly one that has its limits, particularly in rural
areas.

Not everything has gone the insurgents’ way in 2026, of course.
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a centrist foe of the party’s left flank,
easily fended
[[link removed]]
off a progressive challenger for her seat in southwest Washington.
Cori Bush’s attempt to win back her Missouri House seat from the
AIPAC-backed Wesley Bell fizzled
[[link removed]].
And then there’s the case of Graham Platner, the oyster farmer and
Maine Senate primary winner, who bowed out
[[link removed]]
not long after months of negative reporting culminated in accusations
of sexual assault. If Platner’s spectacular litany of
scandals—racist and sexist Reddit comments, a Nazi tattoo,
allegations of sexual impropriety—can be written off as a fluke,
they do nevertheless reflect a broader challenge: selection and
vetting of insurgent or relatively inexperienced candidates.

Apart from Platner, the Democratic race that best illustrates this
came in Wisconsin, where Hong had built a huge lead in early polls,
based in large part
[[link removed]]
on her pledge to institute a moratorium on data center construction in
the state if elected. But concerns about her campaign persisted, based
partly on Hong’s social media history. She had backed calls to
abolish both the police
[[link removed]]
and the Senate
[[link removed]]
in the past, and when asked to explain
[[link removed]] a 2020 tweet stating
that Thanksgiving should be canceled because of its colonialist
associations, Hong did not initially disavow it. “Bringing folks
around the table to share conversation and build community is always a
good thing,” she said in August. “But,” she added,
“Thanksgiving is also a time that’s incredibly painful for many
people in our communities.” It wasn’t until a follow-up interview
that she said [[link removed]],
“I don’t want to cancel it. I actually love it.” The damage was
done.

It was a silly episode for pretty much everyone involved. But it
crystallized concerns about Hong that had been bubbling up for some
time among members of the state Democratic establishment. In July,
Wisconsin’s incumbent governor, Tony Evers, pushed
[[link removed]]
David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, to reenter the race 10
days after suspending his campaign—he was polling fourth at the
time—largely to counter Hong. It was a bet that ultimately paid off,
thanks in part to all the turkey talk: When the state’s primary
voters went to the polls, Crowley narrowly beat Hong, thanks in part
to concerns about her electability. But the “safe pick” carries
risks of his own, most notably his support for data centers—an issue
that had likely hurt him in the primary before he emerged as the
establishment’s choice. That issue has mattered a great deal in
Wisconsin; right now, Republican nominee Tom Tiffany is arguably
running
[[link removed]]
to Crowley’s left on it.

Unsurprisingly, El-Sayed’s narrower-than-expected victory and
Hong’s loss were treated as a reckoning by some: “THE FAR LEFT
HITS A WALL,” read
[[link removed]]
a _Politico_ headline after the Wisconsin result. It’s true that
some primary voters simply panicked and worried that running a
progressive (or a socialist, in Hong’s case) was too risky, but
should El-Sayed be elected to a Senate seat in a state Trump has won
twice, it may signal to voters that such a choice is not so risky,
after all. Of course, if El-Sayed loses, party moderates will cite the
loss as a reason to avoid taking unnecessary risks and pushing
policies like Medicare for All, or defending trans rights, or
advocating for a wealth tax on billionaires—all of which are part of
the El-Sayed platform.

None of this is to say that “electability”—that amorphous,
hard-to-define quality that moderates love to invoke as a reason to
back establishment candidates—isn’t still an issue for voters.
They may want change, but they also want candidates who are skilled
enough at threading the needle between popular _positions_ and popular
appeal. Hence, perhaps, El-Sayed’s relative underperformance, and
Hong’s surprise defeat.

So, what _does_ a winning candidate look like in 2026? The race in
Michigan is particularly important for progressives, who have shown in
recent election cycles that they can both win
[[link removed]]
power [[link removed]] and wield it effectively in
solidly blue cities, suburbs, and college towns
[[link removed]].
But can they begin to replicate that success in more competitive or
purple states—states that will likely decide the next presidential
election? A win in Michigan opens up a lane for progressives in other
competitive races across the country—including, perhaps, one in a
presidential primary.

Of course, an El-Sayed win would also mark arguably the biggest single
advance in progressive power since Sanders first launched his quixotic
presidential campaign in 2015. It would signal that the party’s left
flank was not just gaining momentum but possibly on the verge of
attaining real control over the party. The durability of the
Democratic coalition has thus far largely been belied by a kind of
unspoken arrangement in which progressives slowly accrue power without
gaining _quite_ enough to unseat the current establishment. Moskowitz
compared his victory in South Florida to a “hurricane.” What would
he say if El-Sayed wins in Michigan?

_[__ALEX SHEPHARD_ [[link removed]]_ is
senior editor of The New Republic, where he has covered politics and
culture since 2015. His work has also appeared in New York, GQ, The
Atlantic, The Nation, and other publications.] _

* Elections 2026
[[link removed]]
* 2026 Midterms
[[link removed]]
* Democratic Party
[[link removed]]
* Donald Trump
[[link removed]]
* MAGA
[[link removed]]
* DSA
[[link removed]]
* Democratic Socialists of America
[[link removed]]
* WFP
[[link removed]]
* Working Families Party
[[link removed]]
* The Squad
[[link removed]]
* Progressive Caucus
[[link removed]]
* Grassroots Organizing
[[link removed]]
* Abdul El-Sayed
[[link removed]]
* Angie Nixon
[[link removed]]
* David Crowley
[[link removed]]
* Zohran Mamdani
[[link removed]]
* Michigan
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Bluesky [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]