The signs have been bubbling up for months: The Democratic base is fed up with the status quo of their party. Democratic voters believe their party leaders are out of touch, and they don’t think they’re rising to meet this moment. They want more confrontation with President Donald Trump, and they’re hungry for an inspiring, forward-looking economic vision.

That sentiment comes through in just about all the polling of the party, in focus groups with voters, and in anti-Trump protests and populist rallies since Trump’s inauguration.

The latest sign of this frustration might just be the stunning result of New York City’s mayoral primary this week. The victory of a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani over the embodiment of the Democratic establishment, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, all with high turnout and a comfortable margin of victory, suggests Democratic voters are open to radical change. Of course, there are plenty of peculiarities that make a New York City primary contest a bit of a unique case: a toxic early front-runner, ranked-choice voting, and an open field of candidates during an off-year election. These specifics all make it risky to try to draw national implications from a local race.

But there’s at least one big warning for national Democrats from this upset: the kind of anti-establishment energy that boosted Mamdani exists in Democratic enclaves around the country. It feels familiar — reminiscent of 2009 and the rise of the Tea Party among the Republican Party’s conservative base that ended up remaking the GOP. The energy also feels similar, but more widespread, than what boosted progressive victories during primaries in Trump’s first term. And that energy suggests that the forces that........

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