Democrats are hoping to make big gains in this year’s midterm elections by building on the momentum gathered last November as they seek control of Congress.
But before Democrats can wipe away Republican congressional majorities and deal a blow to what remains of President Donald Trump’s legislative majority, they need to resolve a series of contentious primaries pitting progressive challengers against the Democratic Party establishment.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in both 2016 and 2020, is spearheading many of these progressive insurgencies. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who may be the top progressive candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, has also been actively involved.
The pair of democratic socialists have embarked on a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, holding rallies together across the country to build their movement and to channel progressive anger at President Donald Trump’s second nonconsecutive term in the White House.
Left-wingers in blue cities also protested Trump’s deportation agenda after two American citizens were killed in Minneapolis shootings involving federal immigration authorities. While these demonstrations are gaining traction among mainstream Democrats, progressive activists have led the charge.
As soon as March, progressives are going to begin to test centrists and liberals aligned with the party’s governing class. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), a member of the Democratic leadership team, paved the way for a 10-way primary on March 17 by announcing his retirement from Congress.
Early voting has started in Texas, where Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) and Democratic state Rep. James Talarico are squaring off for their party’s nomination to contest the seat currently held by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who also faces a pair of primary opponents.
For Republicans, this is more familiar. Conservatives began to challenge centrist incumbents in contested primaries as early as 1980, when Ronald Reagan was swept into office in a landslide. The fiscally conservative Club for Growth began more systematically challenging less conservative incumbents, especially in safe red districts.
During President Barack Obama’s first term, the Tea Party movement sought to pull the GOP further to the right by frequently running on size-of-government issues and against the Democrats’ healthcare reform law, which was deeply unpopular initially.
The Freedom Caucus was a group of House conservatives who mainly represented heavily Republican districts and tried to impose stronger fiscal discipline on the Republican majority that won in Tea Party wave elections during both of Obama’s midterm campaigns.
Democrats have, until recently, been hesitant to try either of these tactics. Progressives are believers in activist government, so they have historically wanted big spending bills to pass, even if they fell short of what they ideally desired. This meant that they overwhelmingly voted for Obamacare despite preferring Medicare for All or even a government-run “public option” that would have competed with private health plans.
The same was true of former President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. It was supposed to reflect a compromise between the sweeping Green New Deal and centrist Democratic senators like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema. When this was further watered down to the Inflation Reduction Act, progressives ended up supplying Biden and Democratic leadership the votes they needed to pass it.
Progressives have always been more reluctant to mount primary challenges against insufficiently zealous incumbents. One Democratic strategist told the Washington Examiner that if Manchin were replaced by a nominee to his left, Democrats would probably not hold a West Virginia Senate seat for a generation. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) was able to replace Sinema. The late Sen. Dianne Feinstein beat her last progressive primary challenger by nearly 10 points in 2018, despite the California Democratic Party endorsing the challenger.
After Trump returned to office, Senate Democrats triggered two government shutdowns. One, which was a full shutdown and the longest on record, was an attempt to force Republicans to extend Obamacare premium subsidies. The second shutdown is partial and has concerned funding for the Department of Homeland Security, as Democrats hope to mandate reforms of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Democrats caused the second-longest shutdown in American history during Trump’s first term to block border wall funds.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are both exceptions to the general rule. Sanders never ran for anything on the Democratic line until he sought the presidency for the first time in 2016. He was first elected to Congress as an independent in a three-way race that included both a Democrat and a Republican. He previously ran for several offices with varying degrees of success on a string of third-party tickets before winning as an independent socialist. Sanders has always caucused with the Democrats in both the House and the Senate, and the party has stopped running general-election candidates against him.
In 2018, Ocasio-Cortez toppled then-New York Rep. Joe Crowley, a 10-term incumbent who chaired the House Democratic Caucus. Then only 28 years old, she beat Crowley, then age 56, in the Democratic primary by winning 57% of the vote. She subsequently became a leader of “the Squad,” a smaller, left-wing equivalent to the House Freedom Caucus. Her allies include Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
Now, Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are looking for some company. They backed progressive activist Analilia Mejia, who defeated former New Jersey Rep. Tom Malinowski in a crowded Democratic primary for a special election to fill Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s (D-NJ) former House seat.
“I am not the candidate with the political machine,” Mejia said in a digital ad. “I am an organizer. We have an opportunity to send a message: We resist machine politics that tell us to settle.”
Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders also helped fellow socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani beat former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in both the Democratic primary and the general election. They played key roles at Mamdani’s inauguration at the beginning of this year.
In Michigan this year, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, and former local health director Abdul el Sayed are running in a three-way Democratic primary to succeed retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI). El Sayed has the support of Sanders, Tlaib, and Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) — all influential progressives. Ocasio-Cortez endorsed el Sayed in his previous run in 2018.
Maine oyster farmer Graham Platner is the socialist-sanctioned progressive primary opponent to Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) in a contest to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), one of the more vulnerable incumbents in the upper chamber. Collins trailed her Democratic opponent in most polls six years ago, but still won comfortably even though Biden carried the state in 2020.
Like the Tea Party, insurgent progressives aren’t just angry at the president or the opposition party. They have little confidence in their own party’s leadership. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is 22 points underwater in a RealClearPolitics average of his favorability ratings. Schumer has become an issue in competitive Democratic primaries, with some candidates declining to support him continuing as party leader.
A CBS News poll found that 64% of registered voters believe the Democrats are “weak” compared to only 43% who said the same about the GOP. But the fact that more respondents believed Republicans were “extreme” and picked Democrats as “reasonable” by a narrow margin suggests at least some of this is due to disaffected progressives, much like when Biden posted his lowest poll numbers during his single term in office.
At the same time, 58% consider Democrats to be too liberal, the biggest percentage since the 1990s. That could mean Democrats could go too far for the voters, as was the case in 2024.
Democrats have fought back against Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting efforts, trying to erase red districts in blue states after Trump urged GOP-led states to do the same with blue districts. Virginia could wind up with a 10-1 congressional map in Democrats’ favor, even though the southern parts of the state remain heavily Republican.
During the Tea Party wave in 2010, Republicans gained 63 House seats and the majority. But it took until 2014 for Republicans to win control of the Senate because of low-quality candidates making it out of the primaries. This also happened to Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections, when the GOP captured a narrow House majority but actually lost a Senate seat.
Democrats had a similar situation in Trump’s first midterm election in 2018, arguably the last blue wave. Democrats won more than 40 House seats and reclaimed the speaker’s gavel, but lost Senate seats in reddish states. This prevented Trump from being convicted in either of his impeachment trials.
The White House recently noted to Trump Cabinet members and allies that Senate Democrats would have to win 51 seats, a net-four addition, more than they did eight years ago. But Democrats think they have some good candidates in must-win states like Ohio, Georgia, and Maine, while Trump’s tariffs are hitting Iowa farmers hard.
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Even ostensibly centrist Democrats, such as Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), haven’t focused on affordability since taking office and have governed more like Mamdani, who progressives see as the future of the party.
Democrats are outraged by Republican-run government, but this time, progressives are seeking to learn from their example.
W. James Antle III (@jimantle) is executive editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.
