Democrats may be looking at a different kind of red wave this year based on Tuesday night’s primary results, a throwback to when the color red signified not the Republican Party, but socialism.
A trio of socialist primary victories in New York City, when left-wing candidates backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani defeated establishment Democrats, is part of a broader national trend that could see socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) end his political career on a high note
Republicans hope, and establishment Democrats fear, that socialist candidates will not be able to win in swing states. So far, Democrats haven’t nominated many in such places. Graham Platner could blow a winnable race against Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), but Mamdani’s progeny will definitely win in November.
As frustrated centrists are quick to point out, primary victories in deep-blue urban districts won’t flip the seats necessary for Democrats to win congressional majorities. But the blueness of these districts does mean that the socialists will get elected and likely survive when the pendulum swings back to the Republicans.
If the voters decide to punish Democrats for going too far left, it will be centrists rather than socialists who disproportionately pay the consequences. The socialists will hold safe seats while the centrists represent swing states and districts.
It was the most conservative remaining Democrats who suffered the biggest losses in the major Republican wave years of 1994 and 2010.
The socialists will still be calling the shots, such as deciding whether Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) keep their posts.
The Tea Party on the Right more than a decade ago worked much the same way. Conservative activists cost Republicans some competitive Senate seats — the GOP didn’t win control of the upper chamber until nearly halfway through Barack Obama’s second term — but helped win the House and stayed embedded in their deep-red districts. Several Republican House speakers saw their careers end early.
But the Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini notes that the socialist uprising isn’t just at the expense of centrists or the establishment. It brings down the curtain on an era of liberal politics that ran from the Obama administration to the Resistance. “The Resistance was fundamentally united by a belief that the system worked — and in the Obama era it in fact did for liberals,” Ruffini writes.
With the rise of President Donald Trump a decade ago, Resistance liberals “tried to create common cause with the old Republican elite overthrown by Trump,” elevating and celebrating “Trump’s foes in law enforcement, the national security establishment, and the military — figures like [Robert] Mueller, James Comey, George Conway, Sally Yates, the Vindman brothers, or Mark Milley.”
That’s why former Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned with stalwart former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney down the stretch in 2024 and touted the endorsement of her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. It’s also why Obama eulogized John McCain in 2018 and gave George W. Bush a place of honor at the opening of his presidential center earlier this month. Former President Joe Biden was elected in 2020 as a defender of the old, pre-Trump order.
“In 2026, it’s a different story,” Ruffini writes. “The energy has shifted to the progressive left, which is building an anti-system opposition to Trump antithetical to the politics of the old resistance.”
The GOP operative observes that Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) was a former prosecutor tapped by Democrats to be lead counsel in the first Trump impeachment effort before he ran for Congress. Goldman just lost his primary to a Mamdani-backed challenger by more than 30 points. Mallory McMorrow, elected to the Michigan state Senate in the 2018 Resistance wave, is currently running third behind a Sanders-style progressive in the race for retiring Sen. Gary Peters’s (D-MI) seat. Resistance hero George Conway finished a distant fifth in his Democratic congressional primary.
“This shift represents a fundamental reorientation of the Democratic base’s psychological appetite,” Ruffini adds. “Where the 2018-era Resistance found comfort in institutional stability and the defense of norms, the 2026 version looks with admiration to Trump’s two victories and aims to create a left-wing version of them. The goal is to overthrow an economic order they were blocked from changing both by Clinton-era moderation or Obama-era liberalism.”
Democrats are responding to Trump’s relatively narrow victories much differently than they ultimately reacted to three landslide victories by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the 1980s.
While it took losing at least 40 states in three straight presidential elections, including their 49-state drubbing at the hands of Reagan in 1984, Democrats eventually pivoted to the center and nominated Bill Clinton in 1992. (Even he didn’t entirely get the message at first, raising taxes, banning guns, and pushing controversial social issues before Democrats lost their big congressional majorities in 1994 and Clinton turned his attention to welfare reform and balanced budgets.)
But this time, the establishment’s electability arguments are falling on deaf ears because Harris and Hillary Clinton lost to Trump. Obama was succeeded by Trump. Biden’s win over Trump proved temporary and was, in their view, squandered. As progressive attitudes toward Israel radicalized, the Gaza war unfolded under Biden and Harris.
Before Democrats turned to Bill Clinton, liberals George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis had each lost 40-plus states in presidential elections dating back to 1972. Jimmy Carter won in 1976 as a different kind of Democrat, but had been rebranded as a standard-issue, ineffectual liberal by 1980, when he carried just six states and the District of Columbia.
Socialists and progressives have a theory that Democrats lose because they have abandoned the working class. Sanders supporters felt they were robbed of opportunities to beat Trump in 2016 and 2020, and then watched the coronation first of Biden and then Harris in 2024, when Democrats couldn’t even win the popular vote.
The socialists’ analysis misses how much the Biden border crisis, inflation, and wokeness hurt the Democrats in 2024. But they don’t care about immigration, don’t understand that high spending causes inflation, and have shown some willingness to downplay cultural issues when necessary to win. It is also by no means clear that the socialists’ actual electoral base is really the working class.
While Democrats outside of big cities and college towns remain reluctant to nominate socialists, polling shows socialism is increasingly mainstream within the party.
THE DEMOCRATIC DEBATE IS OVER. THE LEFT WON
Harris still leads in the early polls for the 2028 Democratic nomination. While that is likely based on name recognition, her lead has only grown during the socialist wave. She has proven adept at following trends in her party. But, according to the RealClearPolitics average, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — who, unlike Mamdani, is American-born and eligible to run, and unlike Sanders is under 40 — is already running fourth, not far behind Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Obama proved Democrats could run to the left of the Clintons and win. Socialists believe Democrats can run to the left of Obama and win.