A lot of leftists I know became very disillusioned by Bernie Sanders’ two losses in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries. They felt like Sanders’ failure showed you can’t beat the establishment, that the system is rigged, and that the Democratic Party is simply captured by corporate-friendly centrists who will crush any effort to take the party in a different direction. I’ve spoken with people who think there’s no choice but to run third-party campaigns, and have essentially given up on the Democrats.
But we have some new evidence that things may be changing. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was incredibly powerful within the Democratic Party, quickly lining up “superdelegates” that helped ensure her nomination would be a coronation. Here in 2026, though, the party “establishment” may finally be ripe for being overthrown. Look at what has just happened in Maine, where insurgent left populist Graham Platner has driven incumbent governor Janet Mills from the state’s Senate primary.
Platner, an oyster farmer and populist with the backing of labor groups and Bernie Sanders, was up against a candidate hand-picked for the race by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer. But by the end, Platner’s lead in the polls and in fundraising was so great that Mills decided not to even go through with the primary, since defeat was inevitable.
The Platner victory is particularly striking given that Platner, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, unhesitatingly calls out Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and has called for cutting off U.S. aid to Israel. There was a time in recent American politics when candidates openly critical of Israel would have had virtually no chance of winning an election, due to the enormous influence of the powerful pro-Israel lobby within the party. Now, as public opinion has turned against Israel over its ongoing war crimes, the Democratic Party establishment is facing an unprecedented wave of challenges from the left.
For instance, in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed is running against the party establishment’s preferred candidate, Rep. Haley Stevens. El-Sayed is a Sanders-backed, Medicare For All-supporting doctor and public health expert (he literally wrote the book on the subject). El-Sayed, too, openly calls Israel’s actions genocide, and campaigned alongside the socialist streamer Hasan Piker. The move to campaign with Piker was incredibly controversial in the press and has effectively become a proxy battle over Israel within the Democratic Party—so much so that pro-Israel Democrat Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey even introduced a house resolution condemning Piker by name (apparently a top priority for Democratic leadership at the moment). And yet, El-Sayed’s poll numbers have only increased since then, and he is now tied for the lead with state senator Mallory McMorrow, who recently faced backlash over deleted social media posts trashing the Midwest and yearning for California. Current Affairs first discussed El-Sayed in 2018, when I suggested he might be the ideal candidate to lead the left insurgency in the Democratic Party. In his gubernatorial race that year, he was defeated. But times have changed, and it may be that Michigan Democrats are finally ready for El-Sayed’s unapologetically progressive politics. (If elected, El-Sayed would be the first former Current Affairs writer to serve in the Senate, which would really be a mark of changing times.)
The Intercept notes that the “primary map is only getting more challenging for centrist Democrats” around the country. Good, it’s about time. The New York Times observes that “Platner’s ascension quickly became a powerful signal that the Democratic base has grown impatient with the party’s establishment and is eager to embrace a new generation of leaders.” I’ve talked somewhat incessantly in this magazine about New York City’s socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who also managed to defeat the well-funded party establishment, even as all kinds of Islamophobic smears were thrown at him. Mamdani’s victory was highly improbable but demonstrated that even the scions of powerful political dynasties like Andrew Cuomo are in fact vulnerable when the left gets organized behind someone charismatic, competent, and hardworking.
Of course, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s run for Congress was an early harbinger of this trend—she managed to overthrow one of the leading Democrats in the House of Representatives. Saikat Chakrabarti’s run to replace Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco, against a pro-Israel legislator, will be another important test of which way the political winds are blowing. And there are other exciting candidates too, including Cori Bush, Claire Valdez, Darializa Chevalier, and Peggy Flanagan.
A lot is at stake here. If Platner and (should he win the primary) El-Sayed don’t win the general election, it will be treated as evidence that leftists are “unelectable.” El-Sayed’s opponents have already pointed to polling showing that he fares less well against Republican Mike Rogers than his opponents, but El-Sayed has predicted that he can beat Rogers by seven points if given a shot. Having personally seen how good El-Sayed is on the stump, I don’t think this is as outlandish as it may sound. And if he pulled it off, it would totally shatter the conventional wisdom that while Mamdani might win in New York City, a milquetoast centrist is necessary in swing states. On the other hand, if Platner and El-Sayed won primaries and then lost their general elections, the centrist argument would have new life breathed into it.
I do think that the establishment seems moribund, though. In some cases literally so. Veteran Democratic ex-congressman Barney Frank literally appeared on CNN from his deathbed to warn that the party is going too far left. Progressives, he said, have “embraced an agenda that goes beyond what’s politically acceptable.” Having the argument be made by someone clearly in the last months of his life does not do much to counteract the impression that the left wing of the party represents its future.
The 2028 election is still a looming problem. Polling still shows Kamala Harris is the Democratic favorite, even though Harris’s last campaign was a total catastrophe that ended in a shameful, avoidable defeat. The field for 2028 is currently weak, and there’s no obvious leftist candidate. But things can change fast: Mamdani’s rise, after all, was sudden and improbable. And if Platner and El-Sayed end up in the Senate, the conventional wisdom about electability will have been dealt such a shattering blow that it may make a lot more people seem like potential presidential candidates. (How about a labor leader?) It would also help, of course, if the Democratic Party released its “internal autopsy” of Kamala Harris’ campaign, which supposedly contains research into what mistakes were made. So far DNC chair Ken Martin has reneged on his promise to release the report. But I suspect he’s done so because he knows that the contents actually vindicate leftist arguments that Harris’s stance on Gaza, and her refusal to break with the unpopular Biden, helped seal her doom. Martin’s clear desperation about the report—witness him being grilled by one of the Pod Save America hosts, no leftists themselves—seems to me to be yet further evidence that the party’s centrists are on the defense.
How far can this go? Could we see the older generation of corporate Democrats thrown out of office, with a massive wave of pro-labor, pro-Palestinian, pro-Medicare For All candidates inspired by Sanders? I hope so. It’s what I’ve wanted to see personally ever since Sanders’ second crushing defeat. I do think it’s clear that something is changing. Public opinion on Israel has undergone a real shift. Platner would simply not have been a viable candidate 10 years ago; this year he quickly achieved such dominance that his opponent didn’t even finish out the race. I would encourage fellow leftists to internalize the realization that we are no longer in the world of 2016 where the “party establishment” seems like an immovable force that will inevitably mobilize and quash any uprising. Exciting new things are possible. We must seize our opportunity.
