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Democratic Candidates Have Embraced Unity. Dem Pundits? Not So Much.

Losing candidates have prioritized the big tent and embraced their former rivals. Why can’t the media and pundits get on board?

Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong speaks at an election-night party in Madison, Wisconsin. Hong went on to lose the primary.

Here’s the good news of this long, hard summer: In the real world of hard-fought Democratic primaries in 2026, all across the country candidates themselves are leading the way in promoting a big-tent anti-Trump party that embraces both the center and the left. There are many great examples of ambitious, popular, but ultimately losing candidates endorsing the winner in their primary race, someone who was 24 hours earlier their bitter rival. Oddly, these stories have gotten comparatively little attention.

Instead, the media has obsessed over centrist Democrats—who are not actual candidates—declaring war on the left. Third Way, a centrist group rooted in the political philosophy of the Bill Clinton administration and founded in 2005 as a neoliberal answer to GOP President George W. Bush, announced a $15 million campaign against the Democratic left after progressive Abdul el-Sayed won the Michigan Democratic Senate primary over centrist Representative Haley Stevens. Shortly after that, long-ago Clinton adviser and professional loudmouth centrist James Carville told Democratic Socialists of America members “don’t use our goddamn name,” as if he owns the rights to the Democratic brand. (He doesn’t.)

Fellow Clinton adviser and permanent pundit Paul Begala carried on the DSA bashing, blaming the group for electing Bush over Gore in 2000, in a podcast with Fox News’ house Democrat, Jessica Tarlov. That’s ridiculous: Founder Michael Harrington had died the year before, and DSA in 2000 was a shadow of what it had been, and what it would become—after Bernie Sanders, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani. It had roughly 6,000 members at the time. The group didn’t endorse Ralph Nader against Gore, though a few prominent members did.

And just last week, Obama adviser David Axelrod took aim at arguably the most vulnerable Democratic senator up for reelection this year, Georgia’s Jon Ossoff, for stating that Donald Trump would rather “travel with Natalie” (Harp, one of his closest advisers) than do his job. Axelrod insisted that this crucial senator, the only incumbent running this year in a state Trump won in 2024, had made a “gratuitous and unnecessary” reference to Harp that “distracted and detracted from the power of the message.”

Um, David? Not that I think dominating our easily distracted media is the be all and end all of political strategy, but Ossoff owned the airwaves, and the pixels, in the week after he said that, and not because people agreed with you. (We did not.)

Sorry, I was promising good news, but I got distracted by all the bad. That happens these days. But let’s go on.

We’ll start with the August 4 Michigan race between el-Sayed and Stevens. El-Sayed is not........

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