Progressive Democratic party candidates, including members of Democratic Socialists of America, have won an impressive string of primary election victories across the U.S. this year. These include Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and gubernatorial candidate Cindy Holscher of Kansas. Winning House candidates are Melat Kiros of Colorado, Chris Rabb of Pennsylvania, Analilia Mejia of New Jersey, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier of New York, as well as mayoral candidates Janeese Lewis George of Washington, D.C. and Nithya Raman of Los Angeles.
In response to the success of the progressive left this year, prominent Democratic party leaders like President Bill Clinton adviser James Carville and former DNC Chair Jamie Harrison have angrily denounced the democratic socialist wing of the party. The Israeli lobby group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) has spent more than $60 million on primary campaigns to defeat progressive candidates, while the corporate-funded group Third Way announced it will spend $15 million to discredit progressive and democratic socialist candidates ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Branko Marcetic, a Jacobin staff writer whose recent article, “Centrist Dems Really Do Hate the Left More Than Trump,” examines the Democrat’s intra-party conflict. Here, he assesses the significance of progressive candidate primary victories and efforts to unify the party before the November midterm election.
BRANKO MARCETIC: The Democratic base has—in a way, I don’t want to say they moved left, because actually if you look at polling for a long time, the Democratic electorate has been pretty much in line on policy with what a lot of progressive or socialist candidates are putting forward. But I think what you’re seeing now is that the Democratic voter base now feels emboldened and feels like previously they were worried about certain things like electability and that you had to have a more centrist kind of candidate to win elections. And I think that idea has now come out of favor.
And so you’re seeing the electorate, the Democratic voters actually starting to pick candidates that align with them in terms of what they actually really believe and not just thinking about trying to psychoanalyze some imaginary centrist voters. So I think that is playing a big role. I think another thing is that the Democratic establishment, which has previously been able to pretty successfully dictate the way an election is going to happen, has pretty successfully been able to, for lack of a better term, discipline its own voters and sort of tell them which candidates they should really be voting for.
The Democratic establishment has really been delegitimized in the eyes of its own voters, not just because of the loss to Trump in 2024—that was major—but then also the decision after that to basically take this approach to Trump that was widely perceived by the voters as kind of just them doing nothing, “rolling over and playing dead,” to use the term that Democratic strategist James Carville described what Democrats should do in the age of Trump.
And so without that kind of disciplining factor, voters I think are a lot more inclined to choose candidates that might not otherwise have gone with and to sort of disregard the wishes of the establishment, which we did see in Michigan. The last thing I would say that we’re seeing is the way that the centrality of not just Israel and Gaza as a major political issue, a central political issue in people’s minds, but also the way that pro-Israel money and the pro-Israel lobby, the way that it’s kind of intervention in races has become its own issue. It’s meddling in internal politics of the United States.
Previously, a couple of years ago, you had pro-Israel groups spending lots of money and they defeated candidates and it was remarked upon on the left, but it got very little coverage otherwise. And I think what’s happened now is that voters understand when UDP, United Democracy Project is spending money, they know that that’s AIPAC and they know that that is money that they don’t want to be influencing their elections. This has become sort of an issue and outrage on the sort of broad left of the spectrum. And I think all of that has kind of contributed to seeing the surge of insurgent candidates winning elections all over the place.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, now that Dr. El-Sayed won the nomination, he’s being viciously attacked in a blatant, hateful, Islamophobic campaign conducted by the Trump administration, Republicans in general, invoking fear and bigotry against Arab and Muslim Americans. Yeah, what do you make of this campaign? It’s over the top, just attacking people for their religion and the color of their skin. Of course, not surprising, given Donald Trump’s—in the way he’s conducted his presidency in a very uncompromisingly white supremacist agenda. But what do you think’s going to happen with this line of attack, both on Dr. El-Sayed? And they certainly were going to repeat that all across the country wherever they can.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Branko Marcetic (17:35) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. To subscribe to our podcasts, email newsletters, our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack or social media, subscribe here.
