Abdul El-Sayed has defeated Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary — albeit by a significantly smaller margin than preelection polling suggested. He’s beaten back $30 million in AIPAC spending and endorsements from top Democrats, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who backed Stevens. Now he’s moving on to face the GOP nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers, in a contest crucial to determining Senate control.

So the next question is: Can El-Sayed beat a Republican?

That will be a cinch, some in his camp claim. “For progressives, getting out of the primary is a far more difficult battle than winning in the general,” left-wing streamer Hasan Piker told CNN last week.

But the reality is that we’ve had very few true tests of how candidates associated with the left flank of the party — and specifically with the Bernie Sanders-backed revolt against the establishment — would fare in competitive swing-state general elections. 

Which means that this would be one of the first such tests, and that its outcome will have enormous stakes for the party’s future.

El-Sayed’s views on Israel and his prospective history-making turn as the first-ever Muslim senator have gotten much coverage. But El-Sayed is also a dyed-in-the-wool member of the Sanders faction, having been closely aligned with Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez since his first political campaign in 2018. Both have campaigned for him this cycle.

If El-Sayed defeats Rogers convincingly (he’s personally predicting a 7-point victory as his baseline), he’ll become a megastar and even possibly a presidential contender. He’ll arguably be the first to prove that the Sanders formula — attacking billionaires, corporate influence, and the party establishment, while backing sweeping social welfare spending like Medicare-for-all — can win over voters who once backed President Donald Trump.

“If Abdul El-Sayed beats Stevens I actually think he’s very likely to be the next president,” Nathan J. Robinson, editor-in-chief of the socialist publication Current Affairs, posted on X last month. “If he wins the general, it’s over for centrist Dems.”

Conversely, if El-Sayed — who has trailed Rogers in recent polls — loses, skeptics may conclude that the left can’t appeal to the country’s true swing voters, and that nominating a leftist for president in 2028, or in downballot races, is too big of a risk. 

The core disagreement: Will the left’s approach succeed in the general election?

Over the past decade, it has become an article of faith across much of the left that their particular populist approach to economics and foreign policy would be potent in a general election.

They argue that typical Democrats have a more compromised platform and timid style, lacking the populist fire that can win over disaffected Americans. “Bernie would’ve won” in 2016, the saying goes, by using his outsider credibility and ambitious plans to appeal to the working-class voters and independents that went for Trump. Kamala Harris’s defeat, amid intense criticism on the left over her and Joe Biden’s support for Israel, further bolstered their sense that the party establishment just can’t get it done. 

Now, left factionalists are pointing to their several high-profile primary victories this year and arguing that energy and enthusiasm are on their side — and would translate to the general election too.

Many mainstream Democrats see this as naive. They believe that while talk of “socialism” and other far-left positions might work fine in deep blue cities and districts, it could well prove toxic in swing states that have voted for Trump. While public opinion on certain issues has moved in the left’s direction, especially Israel, candidates could have a tougher time on issues like crime, where El-Sayed has offered nuanced explanations of his “defund the police” rhetoric from 2020.

“Winning a Democratic primary means close to nothing when it comes to the general election, because these are functionally different voter pools,” Lakshya Jain of the center-left publication The Argument recently wrote.

Some analysts pointed to the primary results as a potential harbinger of general election struggles, with El-Sayed performing poorly against Stevens in the kinds of rural areas that have swung toward Republicans in the Trump era.

Are there past examples of Bernie-aligned candidates making it to tough general elections?

But even though the “Bernie vs. the establishment” battle has been raging on and off for the past decade, there have been very few clean tests about how Bernie-backed candidates would do in swing states.

Sanders never won the presidential nomination, and candidates aligned with him have generally preferred to run in strongly Democratic areas where, if they win the primary, the general election is a fait accompli. The now-expanding “squad” of left-wing House members that began with Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley all fit this model.

There have, however, been a few past examples where Sanders-aligned candidates have made it to the general election in tough territory.

One is Andrew Gillum, whose 2018 bid for governor of Florida was backed by Sanders and other progressive groups, including billionaire Tom Steyer’s network. He won the nomination over establishment favorite Gwen Graham — but then went on to lose the general election to Ron DeSantis by a mere four-tenths of a percentage point, ushering in what became the era of Deep Red Florida.

In nominating Gillum, did the left blow a winnable race amid a national Democratic wave? Maybe — but one counterargument is that longtime Sen. Bill Nelson, a thoroughly mainstream Democrat, lost his seat by a similarly tight margin in that same election. Florida may have just been trending redder generally. Gillum’s post-election personal struggles also color views of his candidacy today.

That same cycle, in Nebraska, Kara Eastman upset the establishment favorite to win the nomination for a swing House district. (Sanders hadn’t endorsed her in the primary, but she ran on a platform of Medicare-for-all and free college.) She lost in 2018 — and again in 2020, even though Joe Biden won her district — and has been viewed inside the party as a cautionary tale about blowing a winnable race ever since.

The outcome was happier for Keith Ellison, a close Sanders ally who won his race to be Minnesota’s attorney general in 2018. Yet his margin of victory — about 4 percentage points — wasn’t particularly impressive in a lean blue state in a strongly Democratic year when Tim Walz won the governor’s race by 11. Later, when Ellison ran for reelection in 2022, he eked out a win by less than 1 point while Walz won by 8.

John Fetterman was generally understood to be a “Bernie faction” candidate when he ran for an open US Senate seat in Pennsylvania in 2022. (Sanders stayed neutral in the primary that year, but had backed Fetterman’s earlier lieutenant governor campaign and championed him in the general election.) But he wasn’t exactly running on a bold left platform — he backed off his past Medicare-for-all support and was pro-fracking.

Fetterman ended up winning by 5 points even though it was a favorable cycle for Republicans — but simultaneously, the more centrist Josh Shapiro won the governor’s race by 15. However, Shapiro’s opponent was believed to be weaker and more extreme, and the stroke Fetterman suffered that year complicates efforts to read too much into his performance. 

Separate from his electoral performance, Fetterman’s association with the Sanders left ended years ago as his politics moved to the right; lately, there has been talk he might switch parties. This has also fueled arguments from moderates that populist outsider candidates are less reliable than more conventional ones even if they do manage to win.

El-Sayed is running on a bold left platform in a true swing state

Taking this grab bag of outcomes together, one can see why mainstream Democrats might be skeptical that the left has the secret sauce to win swing voters. But each race has had its own unique circumstances and complications.

Furthermore, in this cycle, the electorate could be in a different place — more disenchanted by the establishment and more willing to take a chance on further-left candidates.

Graham Platner was set to be the great hope for the Sanders faction until his Senate campaign was derailed by scandal and he was replaced on the ballot by Troy Jackson — another Sanders-aligned candidate, albeit one with his own long history in state politics. But though Jackson is facing a formidable Republican incumbent, Maine is a blue state that hasn’t backed a GOP presidential candidate since 1988.

Michigan is tougher turf, having voted for Trump in two of the past three presidential elections. The conventional wisdom for how a Democrat can win a race there is to run a cautious campaign, being careful not to alienate potentially winnable Republican and independent voters. A good example is Gary Peters, the departing two-term senator El-Sayed is running to replace, who’s a traditional pro-union Democrat known for keeping a low profile in general.

El-Sayed is not doing that. He supports Medicare-for-all, a billionaire wealth tax, abolishing ICE, and a full arms embargo on Israel. While El-Sayed is not a democratic socialist, he’s very closely tied to Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez — the trio held hands and raised their arms together at a recent rally, in an image Michigan voters may well see in GOP-funded attack ads. 

And back in 2020, El-Sayed expressed sympathy with activists calling to “defund the police” and said most major cities spend far too much on police departments, though he’s tried to downplay those views this cycle.

“I’m worried that he’s more passionate about attacking other Dems than Republicans and may not be ready for what’s coming,” Adam Jentleson, president of the center-left Searchlight Institute, posted on X recently.

Now that he’s won the primary, El-Sayed will get the chance to try and show he’s ready — and to test whether his bold left platform will be his greatest asset, or a millstone.

Welcome to The Midterms, Actually. Every week I’ll be writing about two things: one big idea or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries, and one thing I’m hearing from a voice on the ground. Let’s get into it.

One big idea: The Uncommitted movement has already won

During the 2024 presidential election, on the third night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, we recorded an episode of my election podcast The Run-Up that I still think about all the time. The premise was simple: I wanted to know whether Democrats were making a material change at the top of the ticket or just a cosmetic one. So we asked convention-goers a plain question — how would Kamala Harris’s Democratic Party be any different from Joe Biden’s?

The tone of the piece reflected the optimism of the room. The activists, down to a person, thought Harris was showing a newfound openness to the administration’s critics. But underneath the hopium was a specific policy desire: that Harris would break from Biden’s unconditional support of Israel’s violent campaign in Gaza. That afternoon, I spent time with members of the Uncommitted movement, born in Michigan, who were trying to pressure the DNC into putting a single Palestinian speaker on the stage. They held press conferences with grieving families, and warned the party that the Democrats’ Muslim and Arab base in particular would not forget being sidelined. 

United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain made clear the confidence surrounding Harris at the time was tied to the belief her posture around Gaza would be different from Biden’s: “She’s made, obviously, a couple different comments on Gaza,” he said. “We called for a ceasefire in UAW back in November. And obviously, she understands the humanity issue of this. And I mean, my conversations I’ve had with Kamala Harris have been very good, very fruitful.” 

They didn’t get one. Not the speaker, not the policy shift, not the break from Biden. Harris famously refused to distance herself from her boss, whether it was Israel or anything else — and likely lost because of it. 

And while many of the most prominent voices of the Uncommitted movement (including current Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed) ended up publicly backing Harris in the end, some of Harris’s most ardent supporters have repeatedly blamed left-wing activists for undermining her campaign. Haley Stevens, the Michigan representative who’s running for the Senate as the party’s establishment choice, has sought to make El-Sayed’s support for Uncommitted an issue in that race, suggesting that the movement planted seeds of discontent ahead of a must-win presidential election. 

I want to argue the opposite. Two years after the Uncommitted movement shook up the Democratic Party, its impact has never been more clear. Public opinion of Israel has plummeted across the American electorate, to the point where the movement’s position is now a majority opinion. Per Quinnipiac, 77 percent of Democrats say they believe Israel is committing a genocide — an unthinkable number just two years ago. The Uncommitted movement also led to the growth and maturation of the Democrats’ Muslim left, which has already molded prominent elected officials like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. 

Even more, I think Uncommitted challenged the blame-the-voters framework that allows the establishment to avoid self-reflection. The movement was never only about a DNC speaking slot, but about the idea that every vote must be earned, not owed. It was a retort to “vote blue no matter who” — an argument that conditional support for the party is not only valid, but of moral importance. 

In 2024, that posture got you branded a spoiler. Today it’s just how Democrats talk. When I sat down with Hasan Piker — the most popular voice on the Democratic left — he told me he voted for Kamala Harris but pointedly refused to endorse her, and named exactly why:

“The only reason for my refusal to openly endorse was because of…a continuation of the genocide in Gaza.”

“I understand the harm reduction arguments…but it’s not a practical approach to winning elections, and demonstrably it’s been a failure with Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris.”

Piker put the mechanism plainly. October 7, 2023, and its aftermath, he told me, were “a seismic shift that gave a lot of confidence to the left, that as long as they stood by their positions…people would actually see the truth.” The movement didn’t move Biden. It moved the electorate Biden’s successors now have to answer to.

And you can trace that shifted ground straight into this year’s wins. In New York, Zohran Mamdani rode exactly this coalition into City Hall — a victory Piker described as the proof of concept he’d been waiting for: “that’s why I was so grateful for Zohran’s victory…I can just point to him.” In Congress, progressives like Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York City and Melat Kiros in Colorado add to the growing evidence that acknowledging Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide is now a litmus test for Democratic voters gauging the trust and credibility of their candidates.

Which brings us to Michigan, where the whole thing started. It’s easy to forget now, but the Uncommitted movement was born in the Michigan primary — and the general-election bill came due there, too. Kamala Harris got 36 percent of the vote in Dearborn, a city Joe Biden had carried with nearly 69 percent in 2020. She lost the state by about 80,000 votes. The voters the party told to fall in line didn’t, and Michigan is where that refusal was most legible.

Now look at who’s competitive in this week’s Senate primary. Abdul El-Sayed is running on the precise argument Uncommitted was making in the streets of Chicago — except now it’s a statewide campaign with real money behind it, against a candidate backed by tens of millions in pro-Israel spending. He turns the foreign-policy question into a pocketbook one and refuses to soften the language. As he said on America, Actually:

“There is an electoral cost to backstopping genocide and apartheid.”

“If you can’t call a genocide perpetrated by our tax dollars the moral abomination that it is, then at some point it’s hard for me to believe that you’re gonna fight for anything,” he told me.

Whether or not El-Sayed wins today, the fact that a candidate running explicitly against AIPAC and unconditional aid is fighting for a Senate seat in a swing state is the clearest possible measure of how far the ground has moved since that convention floor.

In the coming months, it may be that the Democrats’ moderate wing — think tanks like Third Way, party leadership, and those offended by the electorate’s rising leftist tide — will adopt some of the same tactics they criticized. Already, Rep. Hillary Scholten, who is supporting Stevens in Michigan, has signaled she may refuse to support El-Sayed in a general election, due to his association with Piker. 

It seems “vote blue no matter who” has its limits. For progressives. For centrists. For everyone. 

What I’m hearing

With Michigan’s primary set to conclude today, that leaves the Wisconsin governor’s race as the next big election on the Democratic calendar. This week, I reached out to Dan Shafer, a reporter in Milwaukee who has been covering the race for months. Schafer writes for the Recombobulation Area, where he’s political editor and writes a weekly opinion column. 

It looks like Francesca Hong, the DSA-aligned state assemblywoman, has a commanding lead in the Wisconsin governor’s primary. This would’ve been a shock a year ago. How did this happen?

The short answer is that Francesca Hong has simply run the best campaign. She has run circles around the consultant-brained conventional approaches of her opponents, and has found success by doing things decidedly differently.

From the very beginning, I characterized her as the “wild card” in the race. And while I certainly did not envision her having a commanding lead in the polls in the final stretch in the primary, I knew that, given her background in the restaurant and hospitality industry, she wouldn’t let anyone out-work or out-hustle her on the campaign trail. Her relentless ground game and digital organizing energy essentially issued a challenge to every other campaign to step up. The rest of the field failed that test. 

She’s also absolutely dominating this primary with younger voters. In the Marquette University Law School Poll from last week, the data showed her with the support of 66% of likely primary voters in the 18-29 age group, and 51% in the 30-44 age group. No other candidate was even in double digits. I write a breakdown of every new Marquette poll, and these are just preposterous numbers. For Gen Z and millennials, she is the candidate.

Hong has made data centers and AI backlash a centerpiece of this race. How important is this issue specifically in this race?

I think it’s been the No. 1 issue [since] she’s taken off in this primary. 

She backed a data center moratorium in January, and began running on this issue early. It’s been a very animating issue in Wisconsin, first for all the reasons the anti-data center backlash is coming to so many Great Lakes states, but also because of the failed Foxconn project in Racine County that happened during the first Trump administration under then-Gov. Scott Walker. It came with the promise of thousands and thousands of jobs, Trump called it the “eighth wonder of the world,” and it’s just been a miserable failure on so many levels. Hong just filmed her most recent ad at the Foxconn site — a project the Republican nominee Tom Tiffany voted for while in the state Senate at the time.

Politically, though, what really helped Hong on this issue is that no other candidate running backed a data center moratorium. One of the most significant moments of the primary happened in a June 3 candidate forum focused on working-class issues, where moderator JT Cestkowski asked a yes-or-no question on whether the candidates back a data center moratorium. Only Hong said yes. If any other candidate had said yes, that would have given the anti-data center voter options in the primary. Instead, they all went to Hong.

There is an assertion that Hong is a weak general election candidate. Is there evidence for this? 

This is Wisconsin. Anyone pretending a statewide election in this of all states should be considered anything other than a toss-up is kidding themselves. Many have argued that her likely Republican opponent, Tom Tiffany, is a uniquely weak general election candidate in his own right. But it can’t be denied that there would be a whole lot of risk involved with her as a general election candidate: The “socialism” of it all will undoubtedly be a challenge. But Francesca Hong continues to be a wild card, and she might have what it takes to play a winning hand.

Editor’s note, Aug. 5, 6:20 am ET: Kansas voters rejected a proposed amendment to change how state supreme court justices are selected. This piece below was originally published on August 4.

Four years after the Dobbs decision, abortion battles have largely taken a backseat in national news to other policy fights this cycle. Leaders in the anti-abortion movement say they’re disillusioned with President Donald Trump’s unwillingness to push for further restrictions. The federal battle over access to abortion medication seems to be settled — for now. Public awareness of that fight is limited, and even at the state level, a couple years have passed since the high-pitched but successful state-level efforts to protect abortion access in red states.

Yet a little-known battle has been playing out in Kansas, where a ballot measure to change the way state supreme court justices are selected serves as a reminder that these fights over abortion are still active, even if they take the form of creative procedural and administrative efforts. 

If it succeeds, opponents say, it would open the floodgates for similar efforts in other states to politicize the remaining independent state courts (13 other states use a method similar to Kansas) and provide a road map to undoing abortion protections in other states that have safeguarded them.

On Tuesday, Kansans are deciding whether to change the way judges on the state’s highest court are selected. Up until now, judges were selected through a nonpartisan merit-based system: When a spot opens on the bench, a nine-member commission submits a list to the governor, who then selects a replacement.

The referendum would replace this system with direct, partisan elections of judges, like any other politician. Proponents say it’s a democratic move, a way to better express the will of voters over “unelected” bureaucrats. Yet critics say it’s first and foremost about restricting abortion rights — which both the court and voters have rejected.

How Kansas became an abortion rights flashpoint

In 2019, the state supreme court recognized the right to abortion in the state constitution; three years later, after Dobbs, voters rejected a Republican-championed proposal to overturn that ruling, choosing to preserve abortion rights by a 59-41 margin in a deeply red state.

It was after that failed vote in 2022 that then-state attorney general Republican candidate Kris Kobach outlined a new strategy for undoing these protections: changing the way the supreme court is selected, electing anti-abortion candidates, and “slowly and quietly” overturning the 2019 decision and 2022 vote.

“If you look at the various proposals, one of the proposals that is crystal clear is allowing people to popularly elect justices to the supreme court, which is the most common system among all of the states in the country,” Kobach said in 2022.

He’s a bit more careful talking about this in 2026: “There is a real desire to bring back some accountability to the judiciary,” he told the New York Times this week. “It’s not just about abortion.”

Tuesday’s results would have huge ramifications, critics said, given that nonelected state courts have been a final bulwark against Republican supermajorities and governors in red states. Kansas has been an island for abortion access for women in the South and central US since the Dobbs decision.

The victory in 2022 also inspired abortion rights advocates to try to use ballot measures to enshrine these protections in about a dozen other states, which successfully overturned abortion bans in Missouri and Ohio. State courts in Utah and Wyoming, meanwhile, blocked bans.

The next frontier in the abortion wars

These independent checks on power have been under attack for years, Michael Milov-Cordoba, a court expert and counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice’s judiciary program, told me. 

“State legislators across the country are increasingly trying to undermine those courts. … That retaliation takes a few different forms, but changing how judges are selected is top of the list,” Milov-Cordoba said. “And what we’ve seen is that in many states where courts stand up for abortion rights and strike down abortion restrictions, efforts to change state judiciaries have followed.”

He noted the complete reworking of the Utah supreme court in the last year, including by expanding and packing it. Similar retooling of the state supreme court happened in Iowa in 2022. Montana is likely the next battleground, where Republican legislators are exploring various avenues to strip or limit the state supreme court’s powers. That in turn has led the ACLU to get involved to boost a constitutional amendment this year that would preserve the nonpartisan status of judicial elections.

And in recent years, state supreme court elections have been inundated with spending and attention from both in- and out-of-state backers. Last year’s Wisconsin judicial election, for example, became the most expensive race of its kind in US history, with more than $100 million spent — just two years after a contest for a different seat on the state supreme court had set its own record at more than $50 million spent.

“If these courts become partisan, then they will be just like any other election fight — subject to being bought and sold by billionaire political funders,” Deirdre Schifeling, the chief political and advocacy officer at the ACLU, told me. “They become a race to the bottom … and [Republicans] are finding backdoor ways to seize power to push their ideological agenda.”

Already, Kansas has seen heavy spending: More than $12 million have been spent from both sides, including about $5 million from the ACLU, Schifeling told me.

”Everyone’s focused on the Michigan Senate race, other kind of big-ticket, sexy elections,” Schifeling said. “Well, this is just as important and much more under the radar. Without a balanced court, we are going to lose rights and liberties across the board in a state like Kansas.”

It’s been quite a year for the Democratic Socialists of America.

They got one of their own, Zohran Mamdani, elected mayor of New York City. They’ve taken down congressional incumbents in New York and Colorado. Their membership has soared to 120,000 dues-paying members, the group said.

But with success has come more media interest — and scrutiny.

National coverage has focused on controversial elements in the DSA’s platform, which calls for, among other things, defunding the Pentagon, taking steps toward abolishing the “carceral forces of the capitalist state,” making Jerusalem the capital of a free Palestine, and making the president of the United States chosen by Congress rather than elected. 

Internal controversies and splits within the group — such as debates over whether, and when, it should endorse a 2028 presidential candidate (such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) — have also risen to national attention. Some in the movement have also argued that candidates embracing ideas like prison abolition could limit their political upside. 

As the midterm elections near, Republicans are eager to link Democrats to the DSA as part of a broader messaging strategy. President Donald Trump derided the group as communists — a term many in DSA would reject, but that some happily embrace as a self-descriptor.

So what is the DSA all about, anyway? And what do they really want?

To answer those questions, I spoke to Peter Sterne, an editor at City & State New York who has covered the ins and outs of DSA closely in such articles as “DSA for Dummies,” “Understanding DSA’s structure,” and “Get to know DSA’s internal caucuses.” 

Sterne knows the group’s inner workings well, in part, because he was a dues-paying member himself. He joined DSA in 2017 but quit it in 2023 after taking his current role covering New York politics, viewing his membership as a conflict of interest. But, he told me, he has many sources inside the group that still keep him in the loop.

Our interview, which has been condensed and edited, is below.

Why socialists aren’t just progressive Democrats

What are the core principles of DSA? What really unites the group and its members — and sets them apart from just progressive Democrats?

I would say that everyone who is in DSA identifies as a socialist, and many of them would also identify as Marxist. So they are very critical of capitalism and a society and economy that is built on capital accumulation. 

DSA members go farther than progressives like Senator [Elizabeth] Warren in that they are not just looking to rectify the excesses of capital, or create a nicer capitalism, or a mixed economy where you still have capitalism along with a generous social welfare state.

I think that, within DSA, people are critical of capitalism itself and believe in moving toward a society in which workers have more control over their workplaces and society. In terms of what that actually looks like in the short term, there are lots of different ideas. 

Now, certainly in terms of what democratic socialist candidates are running on, it is very similar to what non-socialist progressives are running on. It is largely an expansion of the social welfare state. 

But I do think there is an important philosophical difference. The Warrenites and progressive capitalists believe in the necessity of a free market economy. Whereas socialists — even if they don’t necessarily want to abolish it overnight — don’t believe that private ownership of corporations, private ownership of utilities is necessary. And that makes them much more willing to push for policies that others would see as being beyond the pale. 

The DSA’s ideological spectrum — from Bernie Sanders fans to full Communists

So then, walk me through some of the main things people within DSA disagree over — whether tactically or philosophically.

DSA identifies as a multi-tendency organization. In other words, it is a big tent of the left. 

So you have some people who are basically where Bernie is, in terms of identifying as democratic socialists — wanting to kind of bring back an FDR-style expansion of the social safety net but not necessarily wanting to go that much further. 

And then, on the other side, you would have people who identify as Communists and as Marxist-Leninists or Maoists who believe that, ultimately, the solution is a kind of Communist revolution — that, eventually, the workers are going to rise up and institute a new form of the state and society. 

They see their role as helping to radicalize the workers and prepare for that revolutionary moment, more so than trying to get elected and pass policies that will eventually move you into more of a social-welfare-type state.

So that’s the central tension. You have, on the one hand, people who would consider themselves socialists and often Marxists but believe in a democratic road to socialism, and those who identify as more revolutionary socialists, following the model of Lenin or Mao, who believe that it is impossible to reform the system.

How does that tension play out in debates inside DSA about electoral strategy?

There’s a lot of debate over red lines for elected officials and whether DSA elected officials should work within the Democratic Party or not. 

DSA generally does not just endorse people who are running for office in the way that a lot of organizations do. They believe in strategically choosing specific races to get involved in — and ideally having their own members, people who have been involved in the organization and are accountable to the organization and loyal to DSA running as candidates. 

DSA’s official strategy is that, for now, they will run candidates on the Democratic Party line. But they want to build up the infrastructure to be their own party in everything but name. So DSA wants to have its own donor networks, its own data on who is voting, its own electoral strategy — as opposed to relying on the Democratic Party for any of that.

Ideally, then, you can imagine DSA breaking from the Democratic Party. That would be the “dirty break” strategy, as opposed to the “clean break” strategy, which is, “we just stop running anyone as a Democrat right now.” The clean break strategy has been largely discredited within DSA, and they’re largely focused on the dirty break.

But as DSA wins more power running as Democrats, it becomes harder for people to imagine them ever breaking with the party. So people say they’re now doing a “dirty stay” strategy, where they’re just going to try and do realignment, which means basically taking over the Democratic Party.

The internal DSA tensions around electoral pragmatism 

There’s been some attention around how the national DSA leadership and the New York City DSA — which is seemingly the most successful of the DSA chapters around the country — have different views on these electoral strategy questions. Can you break that down?

NYC’s DSA’s political leadership is dominated by two caucuses in particular: Socialist Majority Caucus and Groundwork. Both of those are sometimes described as being on the “DSA right” —  although, they do not like that term. 

They would say that they are focused on “mass politics,” on trying to bring in the largest number of people into DSA, on trying to get DSA members elected into positions of power who can then support legislation that will materially improve the lives of the working class, can win people over to socialism and bring in more members, and build a large influential powerful socialist organization. That is essentially the Zohran theory.

Most of the people in DSA who were involved in the Mamdani campaign, and a number of them who are now involved in NYC government — such as the head of the Office of Mass Engagement, or the head of the mayor’s office to protect tenants — those are DSA members, and specifically, they are members of the Socialist Majority Caucus. SMC and Groundwork are very focused on that kind of electoral approach and, generally, are more pragmatic. They are very averse to disciplining electeds or trying to force electeds to publicly defend positions that are politically unpopular — like, say, police abolition.

Their counterparts would be the “DSA left.” Within New York City, the main left caucus is Emerge. You also have Marxist Unity Group, Red Star, and Springs of Revolution, which is primarily an anti-Zionist faction. They have less influence within New York City overall. But they have more influence within DSA nationally. A lot of chapters outside of New York City and California are more ideologically focused — and less focused on just having the most electoral success running as Democrats. 

Recently, there’s been some discussion about the national DSA platform. Francesca Hong, who’s running for governor of Wisconsin and is a democratic socialist, distanced herself from the platform this week. How should we understand the tensions around this question about appealing to voters versus being ideologically pure?

Generally speaking, I’d say most people in DSA agree on the overall ideology. The issue is more: Are you holding candidates to support that platform publicly? Do you allow your electeds to distance themselves from DSA’s positions when that seems to be the politically pragmatic choice to make? Or does that undermine the organization or even mislead the working class?

You see this a lot around anti-Zionism. There is a faction of DSA members who have been very critical of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, because they feel that she has been insufficiently public in terms of criticizing Israel. Initially, she voted “present” on the Iron Dome. She said she was not opposed to defensive military aid to Israel. She infamously said during the DNC in 2024 that she believed that Biden and Harris were tirelessly working for a ceasefire. 

And a lot of people within DSA have been critical of AOC for what they see as compromising with Democratic leadership when it comes to Israel and Palestine and not taking a very strong kind of unconditional stance against Israel. And there have also been a lot of people, particularly within NYC DSA, who have defended AOC. Their argument is that AOC needs to be pragmatic about these things. 

You see it with Zohran in terms of his relationship with the NYPD and with NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch. A lot of people in DSA are very critical of Tisch, who worked for [Eric] Adams. She is a billionaire and a Zionist — definitely not in keeping with DSA’s politics. And she is someone who helped to create the surveillance dragnet under the Adams administration and the De Blasio administration. 

So there have been people in NYC DSA who have called for Zohran to fire Jessica Tisch. And there are other people who say that they do not like Tisch, but they feel Zohran needs to make the pragmatic decision of working with her and not confront entrenched police power.

The DSA’s complicated relationship with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Can you talk to me about the complicated relationship, the ups and downs between DSA and AOC over the years?

That relates to the tension between national and NYC. NYC DSA is really, really pro-AOC. They have a close relationship with her and work closely with her, and she really likes a lot of the leaders in NYC DSA. National DSA is much more skeptical of her, seeing her as willing to compromise and be opportunistic in ways they don’t like. 

AOC was first elected in 2018. In 2024, she was easily reendorsed for election by the NYC DSA, which then applied for the national DSA to endorse her as well. 

The national leadership dragged their feet because they were divided, particularly around her rhetoric around Israel and Palestine. 

Ultimately, they issued a conditional endorsement, saying, “we will endorse AOC if she agrees to support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement and oppose all aid — defensive and offensive military aid — to Israel.”

NYC DSA was concerned that AOC would not agree to that and that requiring her to agree to those conditions would alienate her from the organization. So they told national DSA, it’s fine, if you’re only going to offer a conditional endorsement we don’t need it. 

Generally, I think it’s safe to say that NYC DSA believes DSA needs AOC more than AOC needs DSA. So they’re very wary of alienating her; they want to maintain a positive working relationship. 

And all this leads into the question of what will happen in the 2028 presidential race, right? If she runs, it doesn’t seem like there’s another plausible socialist candidate in the mix.

If you talk to people who are skeptical of AOC, they would say that they would love [Rep.] Rashida Tlaib to run, because she is obviously the most committed to Palestinian solidarity. All indications are that she is not interested in running for president, so that’s kind of a dead letter. You’ll also see people say they would like Shawn Fain to run, the head of the United Auto Workers, as a real left-labor candidate harkening back to the days when union leaders were major political figures. Again, he’s very unlikely to run.

And you have some people who say that they would support Ro Khanna, even though Ro Khanna is not a socialist and is probably worse on Palestine than AOC. 

So it really does seem like it’s going to be AOC or no one. And that’s why I think that even the people who are skeptical of AOC have largely resigned themselves to the idea that if she runs, DSA will endorse. 

I think the tension now is around how supportive DSA would be. DSA could spend 2028 being an AOC surrogate, deeply involved in the campaign, making their primary goal getting her elected president in 2028. 

I think there are also people in DSA who believe that, even if AOC is the best candidate and DSA should support her, they don’t want to fully kind of liquidate themselves into the AOC campaign. They want to maintain an independent organization where DSA could set up an independent expenditure and come out with messaging that says: we support AOC but we don’t agree with her on everything. 

The prototypical Democrat vulnerable to a primary this year has been old, in Washington a long time, and vulnerable from the left.

But in Massachusetts, there’s a race that’s scrambling that formula. Sen. Ed Markey is 80, and he’s been in Congress for 50 years. But he’s been a stalwart ally of progressives; he was, for instance, the main Senate champion of the “Green New Deal.” And the leaders of the Democrats’ left flank, like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, are swinging into action to try and defend him. “It’s not your age, it’s the age of your ideas. And in this race, I’m the youngest guy,” Markey has said.

His opponent, Seth Moulton, a 47-year-old Marine Corps veteran, also goes against type. While “moderate” and “establishment” often are treated as synonyms, Moulton has a history of pushing back against both progressive activists and older Democratic leaders. In his current run, he’s made generational change his main issue, including some blunt warnings about Markey’s age. 

“If Democrats win the Senate, it will almost certainly be by one vote, and we can’t afford to lose that vote due to a medical absence or emergency,” Moulton told me in an interview. “That’s not ageism, that’s just actuarial tables.”

But his Senate campaign isn’t the first time he’s taken on Democratic leaders. In 2018, he led a (failed) effort to stop Nancy Pelosi from becoming speaker again, arguing again that the aging House leadership needed to clear a path for younger members. In 2024, he became one of the first prominent Democrats to bail on President Joe Biden after his disastrous debate, saying the president needed to “let new leaders rise up.”

The party establishment, Moulton told me, has “failed to be honest with the American people about the challenges we face.” He cited Democrats denying there was “an immigration problem at the southern border under Biden,” their insistence that Biden-era inflation was “transitory,” and their initial defense of Biden after the debate exposed his frailty.

Some of his criticisms of the party have rankled progressives. After President Donald Trump’s victory in 2024, he publicly criticized Democrats’ stance on trans athletes in stark terms, telling the New York Times he didn’t want his “two little girls” getting “run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete” — a statement that earned him intense backlash in Massachusetts. 

Now facing a Democratic primary electorate in a very liberal state, Moulton has tried to avoid being pigeonholed as a centrist. For instance, he said he supports abolishing ICE and prosecuting many of its officials, and he said he supports legislation like the Transgender Bill of Rights. Asked about his comments on transgender youth, he told me his intention “was not to hurt or offend anybody, but to say that we need to be willing to have these tough conversations as Democrats — and not simply cede this territory to Republicans.”

Instead, his principal argument has been that Markey should pass the torch — and that frustrations with what congressional Democrats’ ineffectiveness should in part be aimed at Markey. 

“One of the first votes I’ll take in the Senate will be against Chuck Schumer for leader,” Moulton said.

Markey, for his part, has accused Moulton of throwing trans kids “under the bus” and argued his own long record and support for causes from climate to Medicare-for-all shows him to be a reliable progressive ally. 

“Congressman Moulton is trying to walk a political tightrope,” Markey campaign manager Cam Charbonnier told Vox. “He’s working to appeal to moderate voters, but that coalition alone isn’t enough to win a Massachusetts Democratic primary. So, he’s also trying to appeal to progressives, but he doesn’t have the track record to back that up. The result is a campaign that’s trying to be everything to everyone, leaving voters questioning what he actually stands for.”

Polling in the race has been sparse, but the last two public surveys both showed a surprisingly close race ; Markey led by just 5 points in one and 6 in the other. However, there were many undecided voters, and we’ll soon see whether ad campaigns — like Markey’s new one featuring Sanders, Warren, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley — shift the numbers.

If Moulton wins the September 1 primary, or even comes close, it would suggest that the Democratic base’s frustrations with gerontocracy and Washington are more than stand-ins for a debate over ideology and reflect broader concerns about older politicians losing touch, being ineffective, aging, and even dying in office.

But if Markey ends up sailing to victory, it would send a message that it can be perilous for upstart Democratic challengers like Moulton to break with the progressive base — and that validation from the Sanders wing of the party can be a very valuable thing.

Sen. Ed Markey beat back a previous primary challenge by mobilizing progressives

Though Markey entered the House of Representatives 50 years ago, his team argued that his record shows he was frequently on the right side of history — that, for instance, he started focusing on climate change as far back as the 1980s and that he supported same-sex marriage in the 1990s. (Moulton bristled at this a bit, telling me, “He was elected as a pro-life Democrat who was opposed to the racial integration of Boston schools.”)

In 2009, he and Rep. Henry Waxman co-authored Democrats’ sweeping “cap-and-trade” climate bill, which was one of President Barack Obama’s top priorities. The bill, which became colloquially known as Waxman-Markey, died in the Senate.

When Sen. John Kerry joined Obama’s Cabinet as secretary of state, Markey ran for his open Senate seat. He was the more progressive candidate in a primary against Rep. Stephen Lynch, which he won by 15 percentage points.

But toward the end of Markey’s first full Senate term, an ambitious Democrat with a famous name — then-Rep. Joe Kennedy III, grandson of RFK (and nephew of RFK Jr.) — launched a primary bid against him, also with a message of generational change.

Markey’s initial polling was quite weak, he still wasn’t very well-known in the state, and he appeared to be in serious danger. But, unexpectedly, he became an online phenomenon of sorts, as young progressives, impressed by his Senate push for the Green New Deal and early endorsement from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who has not weighed in this time), rallied to his side. His campaign’s message that he was a movement champion proved successful, and he ended up winning the primary by 11 points.

When Democrats had a trifecta in Washington again under President Joe Biden, they passed their climate bill. The new law, the Inflation Reduction Act, established the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a “green bank” of sorts. The concept, in various iterations, had been one of Markey’s main causes over the years, and its enactment was a major achievement. Yet, that success was short-lived, as the Trump administration is now attempting to dismantle the program.

Rep. Seth Moulton has been a thorn in the Democratic establishment’s side

Moulton, for his part, believes he can take down Markey, because he took down a long-time Democratic incumbent once before; that’s how he got his start in politics.

Rep. John Tierney had represented his northeastern Massachusetts district for nearly two decades, when Moulton challenged him in a 2014 primary. A longtime ally of Nancy Pelosi, Tierney became vulnerable due to a gambling scandal involving his family. (His wife’s brother was accused of racketeering for operating an illegal offshore casino, and Tierney’s wife was accused of preparing false tax returns. Both were convicted and sent to prison.)

In contrast, the 35-year-old Moulton was a fresh face — a Harvard grad and a decorated combat veteran who had served four Marine Corps tours in Iraq. He proved an effective fundraiser and campaigner, upsetting Tierney by 10 percentage points.

Yet, Moulton quickly grew frustrated with Washington. After Democrats’ 2016 defeat, he became one of the party’s most outspoken critics of Pelosi. Already, by 2017, there was talk he might run for president — and ample anonymous quotes from other Democrats disparaging him as opportunistic, grasping, and disloyal.

Moulton insisted throughout that he was making a case that went beyond personal ambition. Before the 2018 midterms, he started the Serve America PAC to try and elect more members with military or national service backgrounds who were skeptical of Democratic leaders — more people like him — to Congress. But when Democrats retook the House majority, Moulton’s high-profile effort to supplant Pelosi flamed out. 

So did his subsequent presidential bid. He was in the race for four months in 2019 but dropped out when he failed to qualify for debates, warning Democrats on his way out against “veering too far left” in their choice of candidate. 

But the latest round of Democratic failures — Biden’s debate face-plant and Kamala Harris’ defeat — spurred Moulton to make another attempt at higher office. 

“Someone who has been in Congress for half a century and will be 86 years old at the end of his next term is, in fact, too old,” Moulton told the Washington Post after launching his campaign last October. “If we haven’t learned the lessons of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Dianne Feinstein and Joe Biden…then where are we going as a party?”

Is this a race about who’s the best progressive, or about who wants to shake up the way things are done?

In addition to the close polling in recent months, Moulton’s fundraising has been impressive — aided, Markey’s allies argued, by donors associated with private equity and crypto. (A pro-Markey Super PAC has fundraised heavily from unions, as well as some investors and corporate executives.)

But when Markey and Moulton faced off on the debate stage earlier this month, nothing even close to the Joe Biden catastrophe ensued. Markey insisted he’d never been more energized, and both candidates hit their preferred messaging points. For Markey, that meant portraying himself as a dependable progressive and Moulton as an unreliable ally.

“After the 2024 election, Congressman Moulton decided that he was gonna throw trans kids under the bus — the political bus — and blame them for the loss of the 2024 election.” Markey said. “Those kids are vulnerable. Those kids need love. Those kids don’t need to be scapegoated and blamed for what was wrong with the Democratic Party.”

But in Moulton’s interview with me, he said that “it’s very hard to find any fundamental differences in the issues” between him and Markey. 

“I’m an ally for all the people and causes on all these issues that Senator Markey and I agree on, and I’m very proud of how much my voting record aligns with Senator Markey’s on the major issues,” Moulton said. “But I’m not gonna just sit back and do what the establishment tells me to do, especially when the establishment is failing.”

Welcome to the first edition of The Midterms, Actually. Every week I’ll be writing about two things: one thing I’m thinking about — a big idea or trend I see forming across the 2026 primaries — and one thing I’m hearing, from a voice on the ground. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every week. Let’s get into it.

One big idea

There are two ways of looking at the current divides within the Democratic Party. The first — and more dominant — narrative is that the party’s left wing is on an upward march, one that began with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s election in 2025 and has continued through this year’s Democratic primary season.

The second, and I believe more accurate, explanation is that the party is rudderless — an ideological fight to be settled in the next presidential election — and that the left’s success in New York City, Colorado, and even Maine (before Graham Platner’s campaign collapsed) grows out of a void left by a bigger, less-talked-about story: an establishment in free fall, on the wrong side of fundamental shifts across its own rank-and-file base.

The difference between those interpretations is fine, but important. I don’t think the Democratic base agrees with every position articulated by successful left-wing candidates — like “all deportations are wrong” (as NYC’s Darializa Avila Chevalier told me) — or have suddenly become committed democratic socialists. But I do think the left is on the right side of the gateway issues the base is currently prioritizing: a working-class-led affordability agenda, a skepticism of artificial intelligence, and a moral opposition to President Donald Trump’s war against Iran and to Israel’s campaigns of violence in Lebanon and Gaza. Those issues, more than any others, have defined the Democratic Party’s internal battles since 2024.

Progressives have also benefited from a moderate wing that, in many cases, has yet to lay out an affirmative vision. After the signature policies of the Biden administration flopped as political motivators, the center has seemed frozen in time, unable to offer its own blueprint for the electorate’s concerns (“abundance” aside). When I sat down with Third Way president Jon Cowan, he had no trouble assailing Hasan Piker, Abdul El-Sayed, or any number of the party’s most prominent progressive figures. But when I asked whether Third Way was actually responding to the clear shifts among the electorate — on Medicare-for-all, on abolishing ICE, on foreign aid to Israel — his answer was far less sure.

Cowan on America, Actually:

We’ve never said that there’s a problem with Hasan Piker because he advocates for Medicare-for-all. … I think Medicare-for-all is still very problematic as a political issue, and if someone were nominated for president on the Democratic ticket and they were for Medicare-for-all, I think it would be a major barrier to getting elected. But that’s not our beef with Hasan Piker at all.

It was the same evasion whenever the conversation turned from the messengers to the message. In a recent interview with US Rep. Jim Clyburn — the powerful South Carolina Democrat who has endorsed US Rep. Haley Stevens’s Senate run in Michigan — he bluntly defended insider politics, insisting party leadership was not at fault for the 2024 result. The blame, he told me, belonged to the Black voters who hadn’t turned out for Kamala Harris.

Clyburn on America, Actually:

When the white vote turned out 71 percent two years ago, and the Black vote turned out 59 percent, you tell me whose fault that is. … If that 59 percent had been 69 percent, she would’ve won.

When I asked him directly whether the argument was that Black voters had let Harris down, he didn’t hesitate: “In many instances, absolutely.” It is a remarkable thing to hear from a member of leadership — the base failed us, not the other way around — and it is exactly the instinct that has the establishment on its back foot.

This is why I think it matters to read the Democratic Party’s post-2024 convulsion as a story of establishment collapse rather than left-wing ascension. Stevens, Clyburn, and the party’s leadership would prefer to make this a referendum on the left — on the acceptability of its candidates and its media figures. But the base is communicating something else: a lack of confidence in the center, and in a version of establishment politics that prizes seniority and loyalty over voters’ values. Establishment collapse also explains the Democratic results that don’t fit neatly on the moderate vs. progressive binary: like Attorney General Phil Weiser’s victory in Colorado or whatever is happening in the Wisconsin governor’s race.

The center’s other problem is that its core general-election pitch — we may not thrill you, but we’re not Trump — is losing relevance the weaker that Trump looks politically. I spent a night at Trump’s UFC event on the White House lawn in June, an evening engineered to speak to the young men who broke his way in 2024, and found plenty of them cooling. “He was promising lower prices on everything,” one told me. “We didn’t know wars were gonna start.” Even the MAGA operative Jack Posobiec conceded that “the numbers are softer today, there’s no question about that.”

When the opposition’s own coalition is cracking, branding yourself as an inoffensive vessel who can gather up the most anti-Trump voters looks less compelling. The establishment needs an affirmative reason to be chosen — and it hasn’t found one.

So here’s my amendment to the narrative of the moment: The story isn’t a left-wing party discovering its confidence. It’s an establishment losing its own — and a base voting, in New York, in Colorado, and soon in Michigan and Wisconsin, on how much faith it still has that the center will name what it actually wants and fight for it. 

What I’m hearing: A Michigan reporter’s take on the Democratic Senate race

I reached out to Samuel Robinson, a reporter for the state’s oldest Black newspaper, the Michigan Chronicle; he also has a Substack, Detroit One Million. Robinson is based on Detroit’s east side, and he’s someone I’ve known for a while, as we’re both members of the National Association of Black Journalists. 

Both the Democrats’ moderate and progressive wings have invested so much in the state — it’s become the proxy war in the party’s fight over its future. What is it about Michigan that you think has made the stakes so high? 

Stakes are high because of the control of Congress. But also, Michigan is like a microcosm of America. It swings back and forth every four, eight years. But our US Senate seats have been held by Democrats since 1992. Republicans say they’re going to spend a ton of money to flip the seat being opened by Gary Peters retiring. Women moderates (Dana Nessel, Gretchen Whitmer, Jocelyn Benson) won big in 2018, and eight years later, all three to some degree have disappointed their own voters. Dems had a legislative trifecta from 2022 to 2024, and many people feel like Dems let down Black residents who got them elected in the first place. 

That’s one thing that unites the Black progressives and the Black establishment: Members in both camps feel the Democratic Party hasn’t done enough. 

How would you describe the difference between a Haley Stevens supporter and an Abdul El-Sayed supporter? 

Haley supporter — usually older; the young people I’ve met who support her typically come from wealthier backgrounds. Haley supporters are usually not involved in politics or people who keep up with national discourse. Haley supporters are worried about the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. They are worried about Trump nationalizing elections or not leaving the White House after ’28.

Abdul supporter — usually younger; the older people I’ve met who support him often acknowledge they are in the minority of their peers. The younger people who support him are all over the place in terms of their backgrounds — rich, poor, highly educated, no college. He has the support of most young people under 35. They are mostly worried about sending American taxpayer dollars to Israel, and the influence of AIPAC. I hear more about that than I do Medicare-for-all. 

Stevens has sought to capitalize on El-Sayed’s perceived weakness with the Black vote. How real do you think that vulnerability is? 

Abdul struggles with certain Black voters mostly because they don’t know who he is. I’ve heard from countless people who have said something to the degree of, “I don’t know enough about him.” He received media attention as the Detroit and Wayne County health director, but not enough for people to feel it. Most people know that he ran for governor in 2018 with no experience. People see Haley Stevens ads and mailers. Most Black voters aren’t on Twitter.

I saw this post on X where you were talking to a Stevens supporter who expressed some pretty bigoted claims about El-Sayed’s candidacy. How widespread is that sentiment? When I was reporting on Mamdani’s election in New York City, it was clear that there was anxiety among the Black political class that the rise of Asian, Latino, Muslim communities could displace them. Is that fear at play here? 

The race is definitely a tension point between Wayne County’s Black and Muslim population. Many who have shared with me similar sentiments will point to the anti-Black racism and exploitation of our community at the hands of Arab gas station and liquor store owners. That resentment builds up and then bubbles over in a race like this. We certainly live amongst each other, like off Seven Mile on the east side, where Bengali families and Black families live side by side as next-door neighbors. But there’s a resentment that goes both ways.

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