June 23, 2026 may be remembered as the beginning of the end of the Democratic Party establishment.
In New York’s 2026 Democratic primary, Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed three congressional candidates: Darializa Chevalier, Brad Lander, and Claire Valdez. Chevalier toppled five-term Congressman Adriano Espaillat (D-New York), while Lander handily defeated two-term Congressman Dan Goldman (D-New York). Valdez defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who was the hand-picked successor of former Rep. Nydia Velasquez (D-New York).
Mamdani also endorsed two New York state senate candidates and four New York state assembly candidates, each of whom also won their respective primaries despite an onslaught of millions of dollars in spending for their establishment opponents. Mamdani-backed Eon Huntley defeated incumbent state assembly member Stefani Zinerman by a 22-point margin.
Democratic socialists aren’t just winning in New York. Janeese Lewis-George also won Washington DC’s Democratic mayoral primary in June, virtually assuring her victory in November in the deep-blue city. Seattle, Washington also has a Democratic socialist mayor in Katie Wilson, who won her 2025 election with a platform focused on building more affordable housing and raising taxes on the city’s wealthiest corporations, like Amazon, Expedia Group, and Starbucks.
In Los Angeles, Democratic socialist Nithya Raman has advanced to the mayoral runoff this November against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. Raman beat out reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who had President Donald Trump’s endorsement and millions of dollars in out-of-state spending on his behalf. And while Michigan US Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed identifies as a progressive Democrat rather than a Democratic socialist, he nonetheless shares policy goals with democratic socialists and is currently leading in polls.
If Democrats succeed in flipping control of the House of Representatives in November, the new Democratic majority will be significantly more to the left than perhaps ever before. That’s not only causing consternation among Trump and the White House, but among a significant number of moderate Democrats.
Both Trump and Establishment Democrats Use Red Scare Politics
Trump has tried to scare his followers by calling Democratic socialists “godless Communists” on his social media platform. And Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) took to Fox News to slam members of his own party, saying Democrats were “drifting firmly into communism” in response to the New York primary results. Fetterman — who suffered a 108-point downward swing in popularity from +68 among Pennsylvania Democrats 2023 to -40 in 2026 — complained that Democratic socialists like Darializa Chevalier were too “anti-Israel” and “anti-American.”
However, the Democratic socialists of 2026 have more in common with the Republican Party of 1956 than with Vladimir Lenin or Mao Zedong. 70 years ago, Eisenhower successfully ran for a second term on a Republican platform that included calls to expand minimum wage protections to workers in all sectors, a promise to guarantee “the protection of the right of workers to organize into unions and to bargain collectively,” working to “provide asylum for thousands of refugees,” ensure the “expansion of Social Security,” and providing “equal pay for all work regardless of sex.”
Today’s Democratic socialists proudly embrace all of those ideals, as do most Democrats. And the word “socialism” is no longer scary for rank-and-file Democrats. A September 2025 Gallup poll found that only 42 percent of Democratic voters had a positive view of capitalism, while 66 percent held favorable views of socialism. Individual policies that both Republicans and establishment Democrats would describe as “socialism” are also increasingly popular among the electorate:
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In December of last year, Gallup found that 66 percent of Americans believe the federal government should be responsible for making sure everyone has healthcare.
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Last August, Gallup also found that 68 percent of Americans approve of labor unions, which is the highest approval rating unions have held since May of 1965.
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That same month, the Bipartisan Policy Center found that 64 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of Republicans both agree on expanding Social Security’s revenues and making sure those most in need get guaranteed benefits.
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In October of last year, a poll by the Refugee Advocacy Lab, Refugees International, and Data for Progress found that 68 percent of respondents approved of the US having a “refugee resettlement program that helps bring people seeking safety to the United States.” 79 percent of Democrats polled supported asylum for refugees, along with 68 percent of independents, and even 59 percent of Republicans.
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A 2023 survey by the University of Maryland found that two-thirds of Americans supported raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. 62 percent of Americans also supported a $15 hour minimum wage in 2021, according to Pew Research.
Democratic socialist candidates are winning both primaries and general elections, and Democratic socialist policies have broad bipartisan appeal. So why, despite all of this success and popularity, has the Democratic establishment’s response to Democratic socialists’ nationwide success in primary elections been so overwhelmingly hostile?
Why the Democratic Establishment Is Panicking
Two incumbent Democratic members of Congress from New York losing their seats in one fell swoop prompted a genuine panic among the Democratic establishment. 13 moderate Democratic lawmakers and candidates have since launched a new coalition aimed at bolstering support for “capitalism, fiscal discipline, strong borders, and pride in the United States,” per the Washington Post.
Other national Democratic Party figures are also taking great pains to separate themselves from the party’s left flank. On the night of the New York primary, former Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison (who lost his 2020 US Senate race against Republican Lindsey Graham by 12 points) wrote on Bluesky: “I say this with no ill will or animosity: if you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination. Don’t use our resources. Don’t rely on our volunteers. Don’t use our infrastructure. Don’t ask Democrats to invest their time, money, and energy in your campaign.” One user responded to Harrison’s post by simply writing: “the voters are the party, buddy.”
Former Obama administration official Van Jones argued the New York primary signaled “the roof is collapsing” on the Democratic Party establishment. He then posted to his X account that Democrats who “don’t hate rich people, cops, free enterprise, the West, Israel, and the United States of America” should get busy organizing. It’s important to note that in 2021, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos gave Jones $100 million to fund people and causes he likes.
Establishment Democrats’ arguments against Democratic socialists vary: some are arguing that Democratic socialists running on cutting off the flow of money from the US to Israel are antisemitic. However, that argument doesn’t hold water when considering that one of the most vocal opponents of sending more money to Israel is New York City Comptroller (and now 10th Congressional District Democratic nominee) Brad Lander, who himself is Jewish and won large numbers of votes from Jewish residents.
Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville — who masterminded Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign — has also distanced himself from the new crop of Democrats like those who won in New York’s primaries. He acknowledged on his podcast that while some Democrats have advocated for a “big tent” approach to expanding the party, he countered: “there’s just some shit that I can’t be in the same tent with.” His co-host, Al Hunt, said recent Democratic primary winners could “complicate the politically existential question of winning in November.” Hunt added that Democratic socialists were “a great gift to Donald Trump.”
If electability is a concern for old-school Democrats like Carville, they would do well to learn from recent history. A major reason far-left candidates are knocking off established incumbent members of Congress is precisely because establishment politics led to Democrats losing to Donald Trump in two separate elections. Democratic Party leaders had the opportunity in 2021 — when Democrats had control of the White House and both chambers of Congress — to protect America from MAGA. And they failed in almost every aspect.
While Joe Biden’s Department of Justice prosecuted over a thousand people who attacked the Capitol on January 6, they failed to stop the man behind the attack from being held accountable in any meaningful way. Even though the Insurrection Clause in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment specifically prohibits anyone from holding office who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States or gave “aid or comfort” to anyone who did so, Trump still won a second term. And none of the 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 elections were ever held accountable for their act of giving aid and comfort to insurrectionists.
Democrats have also failed to even uphold basic federal laws on the books against basic crimes like bribery and corruption. Democrats failed to stop Trump from accepting a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar and is adding it to the Air Force One fleet — which he will be keeping for his presidential library foundation after leaving office — despite this appearing to constitute a bribe under federal law. This arrangement also blatantly violates the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution, which prohibits federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign governments.
This compounding of failure upon failure is the cause that led to the effect of leftist candidates toppling Democratic elected officials in primaries. When voters have the choice between impotent, hapless leaders who have consistently failed to stop fascism at every turn, and new leaders who might actually fix what’s wrong in government, they’ll opt for the latter choice every time.
Socialists’ Best Argument: They Can Govern
The numbers prove time and again that despite both Republicans’ and establishment Democrats’ best efforts to malign policies that help the less fortunate live with a modicum of dignity as “socialism,” the electorate is increasingly tuning out their mudslinging. Voters on both sides of the aisle want their elected officials to pass policies that make their lives better. The new crop of Democrats having success in primaries and in office across the country realize that, and it’s arguably the biggest reason for their success.
Zohran Mamdani is a great example of this: After a blizzard rocked the NYC metro area in early 2026, Mamdani saw the storm as an opportunity to prove that he was able to complete the transformation from brilliant campaigner to competent public servant. He deployed armies of trucks to brine and salt roads in advance of the storm, and announced that every single street in the city had been plowed just after more than a foot of snow covered the five boroughs. Other East Coast cities like Philadelphia and Washington DC were caught flat-footed and still had impassable streets days after the snow hit. City and State New York ran an article with the headline: “OK Zohran, so you aced the storm.”
Mamdani also made headlines for filling 100,000 potholes in his first 100 days as mayor. When he heard from drivers that roads were riddled with potholes that wreaked havoc on their vehicles, he got to work. After filling the 100,000th pothole himself, Mamdani extolled “pothole politics” as necessary to prove that being a good mayor wasn’t about choosing between pie-in-the-sky policy visions like universal healthcare and doing the everyday nuts-and-bolts business of city government, but about doing both simultaneously.
This is perhaps best illustrated by Mamdani fulfilling one of his core campaign promises in June of imposing a rent freeze on approximately one million rent-stabilized apartments across the city. The freeze applies to both one-year and two-year leases, and covers roughly two million tenants. Rent is consistently one of the highest expenses for New Yorkers, and ensuring rents won’t increase on lease renewals is objectively a massive win for cost-burdened renters.
Mamdani isn’t doing anything novel, but simply following in the footsteps of his socialist predecessors whose administrations led to the advent of the term “Sewer Socialism.” That phrase came about after Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s string of socialist mayors made a name for themselves by improving the city’s basic infrastructure and providing high-quality public services to residents. By simply working to make New Yorkers’ lives better, Mamdani could not only win a second term for himself, but provide a blueprint for other Democrats hoping to unseat entrenched incumbents.
It’s worth remembering that after the Tea Party movement of 2009-2010, the Republican establishment was forced to cozy up to their right-wing base after the 2010 midterms, which proved to be a historic wave election for Republicans in both Congress and in various states across the country. The GOP’s base dragged it further to the right, and while some Republicans lost general elections in 2012 — like Richard Mourdock in Indiana and Todd Akin in Missouri — the Democrats who won those elections were later defeated by far-right Republicans, and the Tea Party has transitioned into the proto-fascist MAGA movement, which controls all three branches of the federal government.
The GOP itself is now more right-wing than at any point in history, with various political analysts around the world observing that the modern Republican Party is far to the right of most conservative parties in European parliamentary democracies, and has more in common with far-right authoritarian parties like Hungary’s Fidesz and Turkey’s AKP parties. For Republicans, embracing the most rabidly partisan factions of their base means disenfranchising minorities, consolidating all power among a small handful of oligarchs, and upwardly redistributing wealth from the working class to the billionaire class.
But for Democrats, embracing the base would mean the opposite. Leftist candidates are simply running on materially improving the lives of millions of people, giving them more rights, putting more money in their pockets, and making them and their families more prosperous and secure. That’s not just good for winning elections, but also a net positive for society.
Carl Gibson is a journalist whose work has been published in CNN, USA Today, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle, the Louisville Courier-Journal, Barron’s, Business Insider, the Independent, and NPR, among others. Follow him on Bluesky @crgibs.bsky.social.
