The Left is undergoing a massive change. And it’s crazier than you think.
Now moderate Democrats just got kicked out of the Democrat Party.
Michigan’s Democratic primary was supposed to settle one nomination fight. Instead, it’s poured gasoline on a party-wide civil war that now shifts to Wisconsin and Minnesota, where progressive candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are threatening to repeat El-Sayed’s playbook — and giving Republicans fresh ammunition to paint the entire party as out of step with mainstream voters.
Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow victory over more moderate Rep. Haley Stevens this week has emboldened the party’s left flank ahead of primaries next Tuesday that will decide a top-tier Senate race in Minnesota and a pivotal governor’s race in Wisconsin, both states Republicans see as ripe for pickup.
Progressive Momentum Builds Beyond Michigan
“Michigan proved that working people are ready for something different, and Wisconsin is next,” Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong wrote following El-Sayed’s win. Hong, a state representative and self-identified Democratic Socialists of America member, currently leads the polling for the Democratic nomination and is backed by prominent progressives including Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ro Khanna of California.
Hong’s platform includes guaranteed paid leave and a one-year moratorium on new AI data centers in Wisconsin. She has also faced renewed scrutiny over old social media posts calling for defunding and abolishing police departments — positions she now says she no longer holds. The winner of the Democratic primary is expected to face Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, the commanding frontrunner for the GOP nomination in the race to replace retiring Gov. Tony Evers.
In Minnesota, the same ideological rift is playing out between progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan — backed by Sanders and Warren — and more moderate Rep. Angie Craig, as both compete for the Democratic nomination to succeed retiring Sen. Tina Smith.
Establishment Democrats Sound The Alarm
Not everyone in the party is cheering the leftward shift. A Wisconsin-based Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, warned that a Hong nomination “will hurt Democrats down ballot, in key congressional and legislative races” across the battleground state — a concern echoed privately by Democrats worried that a Flanagan win in Minnesota could hand Republicans an opening in a state the GOP hasn’t carried in a presidential race in decades.
The stakes are difficult to overstate: more than $80 million was poured into the Michigan Senate primary alone, making it the most expensive Democratic Senate nomination fight in American history, much of it spent by outside groups — including the AIPAC-aligned United Democracy Project — trying to stop El-Sayed. Progressive strategist Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, argued the outcome proved the left’s staying power regardless: “any win against $60 million dollars of outside spending by AIPAC and corporate interests is a giant win and sets us on a path of proving our case in November to shake up the system.”
Republicans Sense An Opening Heading Into November
El-Sayed’s win wasn’t an isolated data point. Sunrise Movement co-founder William Lawrence narrowly won a competitive primary in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, and state Rep. Donovan McKinney — backed by Sanders, El-Sayed and House “Squad” members — upset sitting Rep. Shri Thanedar in Michigan’s 13th District. The left did suffer one high-profile loss, however, as former Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, a DSA member, was routed by Rep. Wesley Bell in a St. Louis rematch.
Taken together, Republicans argue the results validate their midterm strategy of tying every Democrat on the ballot to the party’s most progressive flank. Vice President JD Vance made that case directly this week on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” arguing that “the base of the Democratic Party just wants radicals. It wants these DSA types, it wants people who hate even the idea of private property ownership.” President Trump has gone further still, routinely labeling the party’s progressive wing “communists.”
Whether that message resonates with general-election voters — or whether it’s Democratic moderates who end up paying the price for their own party’s leftward drift — will be tested in Wisconsin and Minnesota next week, and ultimately at the ballot box in November.
