Progressives Claim Vindication In Midterm Bloodbath

Democrats of all ideological stripes romped across the map on Tuesday. But progressives are claiming something else in their victories: vindication.

Running on unabashedly populist platforms like Medicare for All and taxing the rich, candidates like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Troy Jackson in Maine and, if returns hold, Randy Villegas in California’s Central Valley tore up the party establishment’s playbook on winning in swing territory — in some cases, toppling entrenched Republicans who had fended off previous onslaughts from Democrats.

Now, at the precipice of a presidential primary that will test the Democratic Party’s post-Trump direction, progressives say their midterm wins are redefining the left from culture warriors to lunch-pail populists.

“When people think of hyper-progressives, they think of people in New York City with blue hair, nose rings and two master’s degrees,” said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist and Bernie Sanders alum who worked on 25 House races this cycle. “A lot of these movements in the Democratic Party grow out of San Francisco, New York City, or Chicago. But all of the congressional seats that were won tonight — especially with Latinos – were all won in the exurbs and out in the country.”

The left was on a tear in urban territory too, most significantly in the Los Angeles mayoral race, where Nithya Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, appeared poised to unseat Mayor Karen Bass, a deeply unpopular incumbent who nevertheless was backed by California’s Democratic establishment. Raman’s strong showing on election night — with even Bass supporters expecting returns to push her over the top — cemented DSA’s improbable rise to a power center in the Democratic Party, closing in on controlling governance in the nation’s two largest cities.

“The Democratic Party in California, and especially in Los Angeles, has been asleep at the wheel,” said Rick Cole, co-director of Raman’s transition team. “The streets are broken. The sidewalks need repair. Rents are too damn high, and young people feel completely disenfranchised by an insular Democratic establishment. And they knocked on doors and they logged onto social media. This represents a fundamental revolt against business as usual.”

Nationally, progressives were pushing Tuesday’s results as a blow to the idea that certain candidates of the left were simply unelectable in contested battlegrounds.

A handful of progressive Democratic Senate candidates ran only a few points behind their party’s more centrist, consensus-building gubernatorial nominees. The differentials could still boost moderates’ case that their candidates are the strongest electoral performers. But progressive candidates didn’t cost Democrats key seats this year — and they came away with plenty to celebrate.

Establishment Democrats downplayed the implications of the election for the party’s left flank, arguing that the powerful Democratic tide washing over the country was not unique to progressives.

"Our wins are so big tonight that there's no one part or wing of the Democratic Party that's going to dictate anything," said former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

Antonio Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles and close Bass ally, said, “Good candidates give you a leg up. And I think we had better candidates — some progressive, some moderates — than the other side.”

He added, “And more importantly, people are just tired of Donald Trump.”

But other Democrats, even as they cheered progressives’ success, were more wary about the newly emboldened left.

“Democrats are hoping … that DSA has a certain level of maturity when it comes to how they build a coalition in the House, how they build a coalition as they become elected leaders in different parts of the country, because we have to keep pressure on the Republicans,” said Michael Trujillo, a Democratic strategist from Los Angeles. “We have to keep the pressure on Donald Trump in this White House. The enemy is not your seatmate.”

The calls for comity were at odds with the election night celebrations of some of the winning progressives, who framed their victories not just as a blow to Trump and Republicans, but their own party’s leadership.

“They told us that the establishment was too strong. That D.C. was going to dictate who won and who lost. That Washington and its special interests didn't want us. They told us that when all the votes had been counted on Aug. 4, and then again on Nov. 3, it would have been time and money and energy wasted,” El-Sayed said in a defiant victory speech in Detroit. “Guess what? It's Nov. 3, and the votes have been counted. And guess what we showed them? That a movement of the people, by the people, and for the people will ultimately win."

Michigan was perhaps the fiercest staging ground for the war between the Democratic Party factions. Progressives looked to the battleground state as their biggest proof point of the cycle that they could win on purple turf. They argued it was El-Sayed’s populist economic message and policies like Medicare for All that captured voters’ attention — and have accused the party’s establishment wing of undercutting the progressive’s campaign, from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer backing Rep. Haley Stevens during the bruising Democratic primary to Stevens’ late-stage switch to supporting former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) openly criticized the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee of not making an “equitable investment” in El-Sayed and other left-flank candidates.

But those aligned with the party establishment insist they’re the ones who propelled El-Sayed over the finish line. Senate Majority PAC, Senate Democrats’ main super PAC, said it plowed more than $65 million into the race and went up earlier on television than planned given the onslaught of GOP spending against El-Sayed.

Democrats’ romp also led to some unexpectedly close races for progressives the party establishment largely dismissed, stoking some resentments on the left about missed opportunities.“[In] the Angie Nixon race, the Democrats left her all alone. It is a damn shame. What more did she need to prove? She blazed out of that primary against the odds,” said Nina Turner, a former Ohio state legislator and progressive firebrand. “There needs to be a reckoning over her race and Charles Booker in Kentucky. If the DNC and DSCC had invested in those races like they did for others, these two courageous public servants could have won.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who chairs Senate Democrats' campaign arm, said the party “did invest in Florida” but that it is “a very big, expensive state, so you would have needed Texas-sized money to win in Florida.”“She would have needed that kind of fundraising machine because it's such a hard state to organize,” she said. “It's just huge. But I think what she accomplished, with what she did raise and how she engaged and created enormous energy on the grassroots is a testament to the strength of her candidacy. I think Florida now will forever be a state we will look at and try to flip."

Across the country in California, the crowd at a downtown nightclub erupted as Jorge Contreras, director of the Working Families Party in California, clicked through promising early returns for the state’s progressives — Villegas, Angela Gonzales-Torres and Jane Kim — and booed at the mere mention of the moderate Democrat Villegas beat in the primary.

“What we have proven tonight is that you can run this kind of campaign without taking that money, without taking money from corporations, without taking money from AIPAC, by staying true to our values. And despite all that, we still won decisively, and I think that sends a message that politics can be done differently,” Villegas said as he declared victory just hours after the polls closed.

It’s a message that progressives now expect their party’s 2028 hopefuls to internalize.

“For 2028, this is proof you need to follow your values and be a candidate that actually speaks the truth and is not bought by corporate overlords,” Contreras said.

Daniel Miller, Jalen Beckford, Alex Nieves, Jessica Piper, Jordain Carney and Tyler Katzenberger contributed to this report.