A Great Night for the Left

On things that did and did not happen at the end of a summer of insurgency.

On Tuesday night, a remarkable season of left-wing insurgency within the Democratic Party came to an unofficial end. Although about one more month and seven states worth of primaries remain on the docket, they collectively include only one major race that the organized left is contesting with any degree of seriousness. Absent that contest in Florida’s 23rd district, we have already learned all that we will learn about the state of the so-called Democratic Tea Party in advance of the start of the 2028 primaries.

So, what’s the scorecard? First and still above all else still is Zohran Mamdani’s shock victory in the New York City mayoral primary, which revealed a new kind of left-wing coalition that has served as the foundation for the left’s victories ever since. But for all of the races that the faction’s candidates won in the year after Mamdani’s primary victory, the wing still faced a familiar asterisk: almost all of their wins had come in safely blue territory. The sole exception to this rule was Graham Platner, an unvetted gimmick politician whose scandal-plagued candidacy was on track for disaster even before it ended in complete disgrace. When he left politics in July, the left was left bereft of the one thing it desperately needed: a flagship candidate in a swing state who could prove that their model could defeat Republicans just as well as Democrats.

Come early August, the left had two politicians in positions to be such candidates: one in Michigan (Abdul El-Sayed) and the other in Wisconsin (Francesca Hong). Shockingly, late polling indicated that they would both win their races in walks, possibly indicating that the concerns about electability that had long defined the faction were no longer as relevant to voters as they had been in the past. But instead of doing that, both candidates massively underperformed, with El-Sayed only narrowly winning and Hong narrowly losing. To say that this has done a number on the left’s morale would be an understatement. The dream that the wing had already achieved dominance in purple America before really winning anything disappeared as quickly as it came, and the comedown has been harsh. But as we adjust to the new political reality that has been revealed by the results, it is important to recognize that it is very far from a bad one for the left. The political portrait that was painted across the upper Midwest in early August was one of a movement right on the verge of triumph, only one validating win in purple America away from surpassing all of its prior limits and reaching escape velocity.

In this light, what happened on Tuesday the 11th wasn’t merely not as bad as it might have seemed. It was far more than that. Knowing what we know now, the results were the absolute best case scenario for the left on offer, simultaneously showing what the left can look like when operating at peak performance while putting it in the best position to reach such a level nationwide as soon as possible. And just so it’s clear, I’m not saying that because I consider Hong’s result to be an encouraging moral victory in the face of impossible odds that provides a blueprint for the rest of the faction, as many have cast it as.

I believe that the faction saw its ideal result on Tuesday specifically because she lost, and I am hoping that you will hear me out as to why.

Peggy Flanagan Absolutely Crushed It

As far as I am concerned, nobody can or should be able to talk about what happened in Wisconsin on the 11th without also talking about what happened in the other left-vs-center contest that occurred in Minnesota. Taking place in a state far bluer than both Wisconsin and Michigan, the Senate race in the Gopher state presented an important question: how a left-flank candidate could perform in a statewide race in Middle America where electability wasn’t the defining issue. For the longest time, the verdict appeared set to be quite depressing. Despite facing an ICE-thanking, AIPAC-supported, capital-C Centrist opponent in Rep. Angie Craig, polling showed Flanagan consistently failing to convince Minnesota Democrats to get behind her, to the point that she entered election night with the final high-quality independent polls showing her behind. In at least this one major race, it seemed that the left unencumbered by electoral concerns just wasn’t any different than the left as it had always been: factional, controversial, and only capable of eking out bare victories at best.

Or perhaps not. Thanks to a massive polling error even larger than the one that bedeviled El-Sayed and only slightly less than the one that felled Hong, Flanagan, despite being outspent four to one, won her race in a crushing landslide that provided us with a completely different vision as to what left-vs.-center electoral politics could look like in a world where the electability question is at least somewhat moot. It isn’t just one where the left would be able to reach entirely new heights, although it would be.

It is one where the center isn’t able to even contend at all.