The Party Is Winning — And Still Fighting Itself

Here’s something the Democratic establishment doesn’t want to talk about at their weekly closed-door meetings: they’re losing to their own voters.

Last Tuesday, three candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — all aligned with the democratic socialist wing of the party — swept their primaries. Claire Valdez won NY-7 in a landslide. Brad Lander crushed Rep. Dan Goldman in NY-10. Darializa Avila Chevalier took out five-term incumbent Adriano Espaillat in NY-13. Goldman and Espaillat were both personally endorsed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Both lost badly enough that at Valdez’s victory party, when Jeffries appeared on screen, the crowd booed — then chanted “You’re next.”

But don’t worry. Jeffries has it all under control.

“A handful of primaries that go in one direction or the other,” he told reporters, “aren’t going to reshape who we are as House Democrats.”

Right. Except this wasn’t a handful. And it wasn’t New York.

The Map Keeps Expanding

The establishment wants to write all of this off as a New York City story. That talking point evaporated months ago.

Progressive wins in 2026 include Graham Platner in the Maine Senate primary, Randy Villegas in a California swing district, Adam Hamawy and Analilia Mejia in New Jersey, Chris Rabb in Philadelphia, and a wave of strong finishes in Ohio, Montana, and Pennsylvania districts that the left wasn’t supposed to be competitive in. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed — who lost his 2018 governor’s race by 20 points — is now in a dead heat in the Senate primary. In California’s Central Valley, a progressive is pushing a well-funded establishment candidate in a race for a seat held by a vulnerable Republican.

This is what a movement looks like when it matures. It stops being a New York thing. It becomes a Democratic Party thing.

And yet the response from leadership has been to shrug, deflect, and wait for it to go away. Rep. Marc Veasey of Texas, on his way out the door in retirement, told reporters to “pipe it down.” Rep. Susie Lee of Nevada, a frontliner who sits in Democratic leadership, assured everyone that competitive districts have their own formula and the progressive surge changes nothing.

Here’s the thing about that formula: it lost the House, the Senate, and the White House in 2024.

The Work Is Already Happening

The establishment’s core argument has always been that progressives can’t build a winning coalition. But who is actually out there doing the work?

The Progressive Turnout Project is spending $44 million this cycle — $35 million on door knocking alone — in key battleground states, training organizers to have real conversations with voters who haven’t heard from anyone. Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, the Working Families Party, the DSA, and Leaders We Deserve have spent months building infrastructure across the country, backing candidates in races the establishment had written off.

This is not radical theater. This is organizing. This is the unglamorous, block-by-block work that wins elections. And progressives have been doing it while the party apparatus was busy cutting checks to consultants and running focus groups about how to make Democrats seem more moderate.

The voters already told us what they want. They want someone who fights. One Democratic strategist — not a progressive — put it plainly: what voters are rewarding isn’t ideology, it’s the “intensity of conviction.” Progressive candidates are demonstrating to people that they are willing to go to the mat. That is exactly what a party in opposition needs to project.

You Can’t Win If You Won’t Embrace the Energy

Let’s be direct about what is actually happening here.

The Democratic establishment spent years telling us that progressives couldn’t win elections. They said it after 2016. They said it after 2020. They said it every time a socialist-aligned candidate announced a primary challenge. The conventional wisdom was iron-clad: go moderate, play it safe, let the consultants run the numbers, and trust the machine.

The machine gave us 2024.

Now progressives are winning — in New York, in New England, in the midwest, in California — and the establishment’s response isn’t to embrace the energy. It’s to downplay it, dismiss it, and quietly pray it stays contained to safe blue districts. As if winning safe blue districts in a commanding fashion is a problem to be managed rather than a signal to be amplified.

The path to the House majority runs through fired-up voters. Fired-up voters need candidates they believe in. Candidates they believe in are, right now, running on Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, taxing the wealthy, and ending unconditional military support for Israel. Those are not fringe positions. Among Democratic primary voters in 2026, they are the mainstream.

Justice Democrats communications director Usamah Andrabi said it plainly after Tuesday’s results: “Democratic leadership needs to wake up to the fact that they are clearly out of step with their most active, vocal, and energized base of voters.”

That is not a warning shot. That is the election results talking.

What Leaning In Actually Looks Like

Leaning into the progressive boom doesn’t mean every candidate runs as a democratic socialist. It means the party stops actively undermining the candidates its own voters are choosing. It means Hakeem Jeffries doesn’t endorse against a slate that goes on to win in a landslide. It means Chuck Schumer doesn’t spend $10 million helping a moderate crush a progressive in Iowa who then loses to the Republican anyway.

It means the party uses the energy that is clearly there instead of spending resources trying to contain it.

Zohran Mamdani went three for three on Tuesday by doing exactly this — running candidates who talk about working people, who reject corporate money, who speak plainly about what is happening in Gaza and what is happening on the streets of New York. Voters responded. They always respond when someone is actually talking to them instead of at them.

The Democratic Party doesn’t have a messaging problem. It has a courage problem. And right now, the progressives are the ones showing what courage looks like.

They’re doing the work. They’re winning the races. The question is whether the party will get out of their way — or keep standing in front of the wave and calling it a ripple.

Sean Bartley is a Seattle barista, political writer, and the founder of Cup of Culture. He contributes to The Progressive and publishes daily at SeanBartley.substack.com. If this piece made you think, share it — and if you want the deeper analysis every week, become a paid subscriber at SeanBartley.substack.com/subscribe.