The Democratic Tea Party Moment Has Arrived
The Democratic establishment is losing ground. How far will the shift go?
Last night in New York, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) gained four seats in the New York State Assembly in New York City, defeating two incumbents. And, of course, three Zohran Mamdani-endorsed candidates won congressional primaries in NYC, including two who knocked off incumbents. Most notably, DSA- and Mamdani-endorsed socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat in NY-13.1
After I posted the above on X, many of the responses made a similar point: the DSA and progressive left had a strong night, but wins in New York City and deep-blue districts should not necessarily be read as a national trend.
But this is not just a last night thing, not just a Mamdani thing, and not just a New York City thing. And it is not just happening in the deepest-blue parts of New York City, which admittedly is one of the youngest and most progressive cities in America. It’s been happening across the country.
The DSA won its first New York State Assembly seat outside New York City last night, with Adam Bojak winning in Buffalo in a much less blue district Harris carried by 20 points. In Syracuse, while the race is still uncalled, DSA-backed Mo Brown appears to be on track to unseat longtime incumbent Bill Magnarelli in AD-129. If anything, these seats in Buffalo and Syracuse should be less conducive to DSA success than the median Democratic city nationally.
And across the board, there were just some brutal performances by incumbent Democrats against left-wing challengers who did not receive much spending or institutional support. Grace Meng, in the Flushing-based East Asian core of Queens, outspent Chuck Park, who had no DSA or Mamdani endorsement, by 4:1 and only won 57% – 43%. In Rochester, Joe Morelle outspent his leftist challenger 40:1 and only won 63% – 30%.
But for anyone who has been closely following Democratic primaries over the last few months, last night looked less like a sudden anomaly than the acceleration of a trend already underway. That is why I think it is fair to say the Democratic Tea Party has truly arrived.
In the last four months, progressive Democrats have beaten establishment-backed Democrats in four races expected to be competitive this November: CA-22, MT-01, ME-02, and Maine Senate. That means progressive outsiders will be running in a slate of highly competitive battleground races for the first time in a while.
And DSA-endorsed candidates and progressives have also been extremely successful in other recent primaries in blue districts, including some that are not obviously ideal terrain for the left. In suburban New Jersey, progressives Analilia Mejia and Adam Hamawy won in districts Harris carried by 8 and 23 points. In Philadelphia, DSA-supported Chris Rabb will succeed moderate Dwight Evans. Just last week, DSA-backed Matthewos Samson won a runoff to flip a seat to the DSA in a majority-Black State House district in Atlanta. Palestinian socialist Ruwa Romman also won a runoff for a State Senate primary in a plurality-white Atlanta-suburban seat that Harris carried by 14.
Why Is This Happening?
Similar to Republicans in 2010 and 2016, there is deep dissatisfaction with the party establishment after major electoral losses. Democrats are still very unhappy that Trump won again in 2024, and many voters seem to be looking for a way to punish the party’s current leadership. One Chevalier voter I spoke with yesterday summed up the mood pretty clearly: “Democrats have failed us so kick them all out.”
Right now, for Democratic primary voters who want to oppose incumbents and the party establishment, the main available vehicle is the left. That does not mean every voter is necessarily ideological in the same way DSA activists are, although many are: polling has shown that Democratic voters have a positive view of socialism and a negative view of Israel, for example. But if your main impulse is anti-establishment, anti-incumbent, and frustrated with the Democratic Party’s failures, the left is currently the faction offering the clearest alternative.
Over the last decade, we have seen right-wing hostile takeovers of state legislative bodies, with brutal factional civil wars inside Republican parties in states like Idaho, Texas, Ohio, and West Virginia. I do not think it is at all out of the question that we see some version of this inside the Democratic Party over the next decade.
What Does This Mean for General Elections?
A lot of these seats will be insulated from any real general-election danger. Seats Harris won by 70 points in NYC, and even the Buffalo and Syracuse seats Harris won by around 20, are not going to become remotely competitive just because the Democratic nominee is more left-wing.
But the broader national picture is more complicated. Even before this leftward lurch, there was plenty of polling showing that Americans disliked the Democratic Party while also viewing it as too far left. I have talked before about the July 2025 Wall Street Journal poll, where only 33% of Americans approved of the Democratic Party and 60% said the party was too far left. If 60% of Americans thought Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris’ Democratic Party was too far left, progressives clearly have their work cut out for them in cobbling together decent general-election performances through the right mix of turnout and persuasion.
Progressives will argue, of course, that the Democratic establishment is dominated by corporate interests and disconnected from the party’s base. They will say that voters will recognize progressive candidates as more electable once they hear their focused messaging on affordability, corruption, health care, housing, or whatever else. And maybe they will be right in the future, but this hasn’t been the case in the recent past. In U.S. House races in 2022 and 2024, “Squad”-style candidates were, on average, about 10 points weaker than moderate Blue Dog/Welcome PAC Democrats in general elections. That is a massive gap, and if it does not change, it is going to cost Democrats a couple of U.S. House seats in November.
I do think progressives have a reasonable counterargument: many of these candidates were not running in competitive seats in 2022 or 2024, so they were not really being tested in the same way. Of course, a lot of Blue Dog and Welcome PAC-type candidates were running in highly competitive races and performed extremely well, so it is a high bar. But now progressives will be tested in 2026.
We will see how Democrats do in MT-01, CA-22, and ME-02, where more progressive candidates beat DCCC-backed picks. We will also see what happens in the Maine Senate race and potentially the Michigan Senate race, if Abdul El-Sayed wins the primary, where progressive candidates beat or could beat DSCC-backed candidates.
If either Platner or El-Sayed loses a must-win Senate race, notwithstanding some weird scenario where 2026 is much less blue than expected and the losses are defensible, it would be a massive step back for DSA and progressive Democrats. The blowback from losing a Senate seat that Democrats should be winning would be absolutely brutal inside the party. That is probably the one thing that could stop the Democratic Tea Party in its tracks before the 2028 presidential primary.
I do not think the general public cares much about random House seats like MT-01, CA-22, and ME-02. But if progressive candidates lose winnable races there, and Platner or El-Sayed win statewide but clearly underperform, the election-nerd community and the more dialed-in political establishment will see the warning signs blaring.
Either way, I am genuinely excited for the political science experiment we are about to get.2 For the first time in a while, progressives will have real candidates running in competitive races, and we will be able to compare them against more moderate, Welcome PAC-backed candidates in places like NC-11, IA-01, PA-08, WI-03, and elsewhere. 2026 should give us a much clearer answer to the Moderation Wars and the general-election viability of Democratic Tea Party candidates.3
DAC is really left-wing. Bernie Sanders did not endorse her and she is well to the left of both AOC and Sanders. Sanders did endorse both Brad Lander and Claire Valdez, both of whom are to the right of DAC.
I do think Platner is a less useful test case for the electoral viability of progressive or Tea Party-style Democratic candidates because of all his scandals. If he runs badly, loses, or nearly loses, progressives can plausibly argue that the problem was Platner himself, not the ideology or faction he represents. And it would be very hard to know whether they were right or wrong. That is why I would much rather focus on MT-01, CA-22, ME-02, and Michigan Senate if El-Sayed wins the primary for our “political science experiment.” I also think El-Sayed may be a relatively strong candidate by progressive standards. At least so far, he is running a strong and disciplined campaign, and I think he’s the type of guy who could pivot pretty well to a general election. In some ways, I think he may be closer to the upper end of what a truly progressive statewide candidate can look like, so it will be very interesting to see how he performs.
One final thing I will always say is that even if one type of candidate, moderate, progressive, or otherwise, is stronger on average, there is still a lot of candidate-to-candidate variance. For example, for the last four years moderates (Blue Dog/Welcome PAC candidates) have run much better than progressives (The Squad) in U.S. House races. But moderate Jim Costa performed much worse than AOC. One general type of candidate being stronger on average does not mean every candidate of that type is stronger than every candidate from the other faction.
The cycle of entryism: Put all your energy into demonizing the establishment candidate on your side of the aisle so they fail. Allow the Fascist to win and destroy the country. Prime your low IQ/highly politically engaged electorate on the idea that the establishment does nothing to stop Fascism. Replace the establishment at the next election.
My hot take as a non-leftist is that when most people criticize the Democratic Party as being "too left-wing", they're thinking of stuff like that "she's not for us, she's for they/them." The most politically salient issues where people feel extremism are essentially non-economic like "Democrats are dissolving the border/gender/police."
While it's true that a lot of these DSA candidates are also quite extreme-left on social policies, I could see a possibility where they're seen as less radical by virtue of increasing the salience of economic policy. Or at the very least not that different. I was struck in 2016 at polling (in a now-deleted by ABC Nate Silver article) about how voters really didn't view Bernie Sanders as more left-wing than Hillary Clinton.
This might blow the minds of Dem activists, but I don't think swing/median voters perceive Zohran Mamdani as more left-wing than Kamala Harris lol