An article from today’s Journal. You can argue it leans more toward the centrists’ concerns about electability, but it lays out the internal divisions within the party right now between the more centrist wing and the progressives.
Election Wins Tuesday Won’t Ease a Divided Democratic Party’s Troubles
Victories by NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and centrists in Virginia and New Jersey would be unlikely to settle the path forward
Democrats are favored Tuesday to win back the Virginia governor’s mansion, hold on to the New Jersey governorship and persuade California voters to back a ballot initiative that could give their party a fighting chance in the congressional redistricting arms race.
But even if Democrats secure wins, they will still wake Wednesday morning with serious political headaches.
That is because the balloting, which also includes a
New York City mayoral election, will likely deliver a muddled verdict on a central debate in the party: Do Democrats need to be more moderate or more progressive if they want to win in next year’s midterm elections and beyond?
Each side is likely to find evidence to bolster its case as Democrats head into a 2026 primary season that will highlight generational and ideological division and potentially drain party resources when some
fundraising metrics are lagging behind Republicans.
The first major test of the electorate since President Trump’s 2024 win prominently features a democratic socialist who has fascinated both progressives and conservatives—for different reasons. The GOP has eagerly branded Zohran Mamdani, likely the next mayor of the nation’s most populated city and the economic capital of the world, as the personification of a party
taken over by the far left.
The 34-year-old assemblyman has shown Democrats the power of campaigning in an authentic way, while focusing on affordability at a time of rising prices. But a win for Mamdani, who has called for freezing rent costs, free city bus rides, public child care for young children, city-owned grocery stores and raising the minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030, would also help the GOP hammer home a message that Democrats are headed toward socialism.
Jonathan Cowan, president of a group called Third Way that is trying to push Democrats more to the center, said that if Mamdani wins, “the party is going to have to carry the baggage of a highly radical left-wing socialist mayor in New York.”
He added: “If you went into a laboratory and tried to create a candidate whose positions were so extreme and radical and unpopular outside of deeply blue places that Republicans could weaponize it, that’s what it would look like.”
Former Rep. Cheri Bustos, a centrist Democrat who represented a western Illinois district, compared the Mamdani-related attacks from Republicans to those that followed the “Defund the Police” movement that were
effectively used by the GOP to suggest Democrats were weak on crime in the 2020 and 2022 elections.
The progressive rallying cry
gained prominence after the 2020 killing by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“I had to remind people that I was married to the sheriff and I am pro-police because it was sticking,” said Bustos, who led the party’s House campaign committee when it lost seats in 2020, but still managed herself to win in a district that backed Trump.
Progressives, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), argue the party didn’t campaign in 2024 enough on issues such as income inequality and climate change that excite younger voters, traditionally part of the Democratic base.
The pair have spoken this year in front of crowds bigger than those Sanders drew during his 2016 and 2020 presidential bids, while Ocasio-Cortez has proven to be a
fundraising powerhouse.
Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, an advocacy group, said Democrats will continue to stumble if they select “stand-for-nothing” nominees.
“Running milquetoast candidates with no forward-looking vision is a way to underperform,” he said, contrasting Mamdani with other Democrats. “Running inspiring candidates with fresh new ideas who appeal to working-class voters with economic populism is a way to overperform.”
Mamdani’s socialism contrasts strongly with the more centrist approaches taken by the Democratic front-runners for governor in New Jersey and Virginia. Rep. Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey is a former Navy helicopter pilot, while Abigail Spanberger in Virginia is a former congresswoman and past Central Intelligence Agency officer.
Virginia and New Jersey are the only states holding elections for governor this year. Recent polling shows Sherrill with a
small lead against Jack Ciattarelli, a Republican running his third campaign for governor after 2017 and 2021 losses. Sherrill hopes to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in a state that hasn’t elected a governor from the same party to three consecutive terms since the 1960s.
Spanberger has centered her campaign around the economy, including fallout from the Trump administration’s dismissal of thousands of federal workers who live in Virginia as well as furloughs faced by others during the
continuing government shutdown.
Some Democrats fear a Mamdani victory will embolden the party’s progressive wing to push primary challenges against established incumbents, even in competitive districts. That could yield candidates less appealing to independent voters.
“I hope that he understands that it is easier for a progressive to win an election in Brooklyn, New York, than Brooklyn, Iowa,” former Rep. Steve Israel of New York, who led the party’s House campaign committee from 2011 to 2015, said of Mamdani. “Primary challenges to electable Democrats in moderate districts is acting as an accomplice to
Donald Trump.”
Adam Frisch, a former Colorado congressional candidate and centrist Democrat, said he fears a Mamdani win would generate “tons of lefty celebrations that become TV ads in next year’s swing districts.”
Frisch is director of electoral programs and finance chair for WelcomePAC, a center-left group trying to recruit and support centrist Democratic candidates. A related nonprofit called Welcome issued a report urging Democrats to use “less jargon from academia or the world of progressive advocacy groups” and moderate “positions on issues where our agenda is unpopular, including immigration, public safety, energy production, and some identity and cultural issues.”
The report’s recommendations, based on research that included surveys of more than 500,000 voters since the 2024 election, also encouraged more candidate conversation about the economy and less about democracy.
The angst within the Democratic Party was obvious in a survey released Thursday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. It found two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say their party makes them feel frustrated, far higher than the roughly half who said that in 2021 and 2019. Just 40% of Republicans say that of the GOP.
Once this election has passed, divisive Democratic primary contests will intensify. They will be held in some states as early as March and continue throughout the summer.
The Democratic U.S. Senate primary in Maine, between 77-year-old Gov. Janet Mills and 41-year-old Graham Platner, showcases the divides. Mills is an establishment figure backed by high-profile Democrats, while
Platner is a progressive and oyster farmer supported by Sanders.
A three-way clash in Michigan among Democrats for the U.S. Senate nomination there has exposed the
growing rift within the party over U.S. policy toward Israel.
And there are also numerous Democratic primary challenges to older U.S. House members being put forward by younger and often more progressive candidates.
Alicia Andrews, a Democratic National Committee member from Oklahoma, said her party needs to stay optimistic while also mimicking Republicans in at least one way. “They are better marketers than we are,” she said. “We have to get better at that.”
New York Post
Gothamist
