Progressives Notched 1 More Big Primary Win. Now Comes November.

Progressives powered through the primaries. Their next target: November.

Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey’s sweeping victory over Rep. Seth Moulton on Tuesday served as a capstone to the left’s primary-season romp that has expanded progressives’ power and reshaped Democrats’ midterm battle map.

Now, an ascendant left is gearing up for a major test of its growing strength in two months as it looks to prove it can win battlegrounds that will decide control of Congress.

“We need to unite our party. And we want to excite and unite the country for the general election. So I think that job's not finished until November,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who endorsed Markey, told POLITICO on Tuesday before polls closed in Massachusetts. “But I think that, of course, many of these victories indicate that the American people really want to see bold leadership from the Democratic Party on the most assertive ideas possible.”

This year, democratic socialist and progressive candidates ousted four incumbents across New York, Michigan and Colorado. Progressives defeated Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee picks in Maine and California. They propelled past moderates to clinch Senate nominations in Maine (twice), Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois and win open House primaries from Philadelphia to Texas. They’ve staged upsets in purple and even red-leaning territory.

Their recent track record shows an evolution of a movement that went mainstream with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) presidential bids. The left is no longer just insurgent. On Tuesday, progressives proved again they can play defense, too — rallying to reelect Massachusetts’ 80-year-old junior senator in a political environment that’s largely been inhospitable to older incumbents.

“What has frustrated me for years is that whenever progressives would win, they would say that it was an anomaly, it was a fluke. … So I think the number of consecutive victories that we have proves that there is a strategy behind this,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who backed Markey and several other progressives this year, said in an interview Tuesday night, shortly after Markey had been declared the victor.

“It’s not just about this cycle. It's not just about a handful of people,” she said. “It's a trend that reflects a shift in people's very hardened realities, where they are saying, ‘I'm going to demand more.’”

Progressives’ track record didn’t go unblemished on Tuesday, as a pair of first-time candidates failed to oust longtime Reps. Richard Neal and Stephen Lynch in Massachusetts.

And they suffered other losses throughout the cycle. Democratic socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong lost to center-left Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary, a narrow defeat some on the left blamed in part on Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez staying out (Sanders countered that he can’t be everywhere at once). Former Rep. Cori Bush couldn’t win her seat back in Missouri even with support from Pressley and other progressives. Oliver Larkin, another democratic socialist, fell far short of ousting moderate Rep. Jared Moskowitz in Florida.

The primary season that played out as a series of ideological proxy battles has left Democrats scrambling to reunite their warring factions ahead of November. As progressives lean into their wins as proof that the electorate wants a different message — and a different type of messenger — centrists continue to fret that left-leaning candidates and policies can’t win on battleground turf.

There’s been a particular concern about Michigan, where progressive Abdul El-Sayed’s hard-fought primary victory continues to spark infighting among Democrats who likely need to hold retiring Sen. Gary Peters’ seat to have a path to the Senate majority.

But even some centrists are acknowledging the power shift within the party.

Progressives “have the advantage now of leveraging both institutional heft and outsider brands,” said Liam Kerr, who co-founded the centrist group WelcomePAC, in a text message Tuesday night. Still, he said, the party’s ideological war remains “a stalemate until Nov. 4, when the progressive swing district nominees test their theory of the case.”

Megan Romer, a Democratic Socialists of America national co-chair, said the left is ready for the challenge.

“The Democratic Party, for a while, has been going with this idea that they need to move to the right or move to the center to capture this kind of median voter who considers themselves right in between the Democrats and the Republicans. And I don't think that's true,” Romer said. “Bringing people solutions — very, very specific solutions on issues that actually affect their lives — is just more how people engage with politics and more what Democrats need to do.”

Aaron Pellish contributed to this report.