Forgot Your Password?

New to The Nation? Subscribe

Print subscriber? Activate your online access

.nation-small__b{fill:#fff;}

The Left Insurgence Is on the Rise—and the DNC Is Flailing

The outcome of the Michigan primaries calls Democratic conventional wisdom into question. Just don’t expect Ken Martin to do anything about that.

By any sane measure, Democrats should be extremely bullish on the electoral prospects ahead. President Donald Trump’s approval ratings continue to crater into the mid-30s, now placing him roughly in the same territory where Richard Nixon was on the eve of his resignation. The GOP’s disastrous war in Iran clocks an even lower approval rating, and the associated escalation in the cost of living now has voters saying they trust Democratic handling of the economy over the GOP’s for the first time in a decade. Three-quarters of the respondents in a recent CNN poll agree that Trump isn’t in touch with the problems ordinary Americans are facing, while nearly that quotient says that he’s neglecting the country’s most important problems. Given these trend lines, the GOP’s razor-thin six-vote majority in the House of Representatives is unlikely to survive November’s midterm balloting, and Democrats are now plausibly competitive in enough Senate races for a majority there to be thinkable—a scenario that would not have been imaginable this time last year.

There’s also considerable energy convulsing the party’s base, as left-reformist candidates continue to run up key primary victories. Last night’s close election in Michigan saw Abdul El-Sayed, a strong advocate for Medicare for All, critic of US support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and scourge of the plutocratic takeover of our politics, land the US Senate nomination—a key seat in the battle for a Democratic Senate majority. El-Sayed overcame the 12-to-1 spending advantage of his establishment opponent, Representative Haley Stevens. William Lawrence, founder of the Sunrise Movement, also won the nomination for Michigan’s seventh House district, while Justice Democrat Donavan McKinney defeated centrist millionaire incumbent Shri Thanedar in the state’s 13th district. Coming off of big wins for democratic socialist candidates in New York and Colorado, the Michigan results not only demonstrate that insurgent left candidates are viable in statewide races in the Midwest; they also show a strong ability on the part of grassroots organizers to galvanize an activist base to a reform cause. That factor was notably lacking in the Democrats’ dismal 2024 showing, but became a vital source of strength in a low-turnout midterm cycle. One clear measure of this heightened grassroots enthusiasm: Jocelyn Bennet, the winner of the gubernatorial primary who ran all but unopposed, garnered half a million votes more than the winner of the contested GOP primary did—a 60 percent increase in voter participation.

Yet, at the leadership level, the opposition party continues to be stuck in doldrums mode. In political terms, Democrats are still on the back foot before the MAGA right’s multifront series of putsches yielding a brownshirt immigration police state, an open-auction model of Beltway corruption, and a concerted........

© The Nation