Progressives are focusing their messaging on being anti-oligarchy, training their sights not just on Republicans but also on Democrats they argue are too beholden to corporate interests.

Following Inauguration Day, Democrats on the left have been taking steps to call out the surge of incoming wealth in Washington, critiquing the GOP president whose front row was dotted with some of America’s richest leaders.

But they aren’t just looking at Trump. Liberals are also forcing a conversation about their own party’s money-in-politics problem, hoping to redirect the focus ahead of the midterms. Justice Democrats is now recruiting dozens of new candidates, while Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) former 2020 campaign manager is now running to chair the Democratic National Committee. Meanwhile, strategists are working to protect members of the Squad from defeats.

“November’s election is a mandate for the Democratic Party to clean up shop,” said Usamah Andrabi, communications director of Justice Democrats, the most prominent group in charge of nurturing new progressive candidates for the House and Senate.

Strategists like Andrabi say progressives are responding to an explicit call from voters demanding that their party “rid itself of the same consultants, donors, advisers, and career politicians that ushered in a Republican trifecta and second Trump administration.”

Incremental change up and down the ballot, they believe, is not nearly enough to tackle the supercharging of money pouring in under Trump 2.0.

For many on the left, the re-brand is long overdue. For nearly a decade, ever since Sanders angered establishment figures in Hillary Clinton’s inner circle with a primary bid, moderate Democrats have relied on........

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