There Is a Revolution on the Left. Democrats Are Bracing.

Analytics 21:20 22.07.2018
For Rachel Conner, the 2018 election season has been a moment of revelation.
 
A 27-year-old social worker, Ms. Conner voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries, spurning the more liberal Bernie Sanders, whom many of her peers backed. But Ms. Conner changed course in this year’s campaign for governor, after concluding that Democrats could only win with more daring messages on issues like public health and immigration.
 
And so on a recent Wednesday, she enlisted two other young women to volunteer for Abdul El-Sayed, a 33-year-old advocate of single-payer health care running an uphill race in Michigan to become the country’s first Muslim governor.
 
“They need to wake up and pay attention to what people actually want,” Ms. Conner said of Democratic leaders. “There are so many progressive policies that have widespread support that mainstream Democrats are not picking up on, or putting that stuff down and saying, ‘That wouldn’t really work.’”
 
Voters like Ms. Conner may not represent a controlling faction in the Democratic Party, at least not yet. But they are increasingly rattling primary elections around the country, and they promise to grow as a disruptive force in national elections as younger voters reject the traditional boundary lines of Democratic politics.
 
Energized to take on President Trump, these voters are also seeking to remake their own party as a ferocious — and ferociously liberal — opposition force. And many appear as focused on forcing progressive policies into the midterm debate as they are on defeating Republicans.
 
The impact of these activists in the 2018 election has been limited but revealing: Only about a sixth of Democratic congressional nominees so far have a formal affiliation with one of several important insurgent groups. Fifty-three of the 305 candidates have been endorsed by the Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, the Progressive Change Campaign and Our Revolution, organizations that have helped propel challenges to Democratic incumbents.
 
But the voters who make up the ascending coalition on the left have had an outsize effect on the national political conversation, driving the Democrats’ internal policy debates and putting pressure on party leaders unseen in previous campaigns.
 
Mark Brewer, a former longtime chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, said “progressive energy” was rippling across the state. But Mr. Brewer, who backs Gretchen Whitmer, a former State Senate leader and the Democratic front-runner for governor, said Michigan Democrats were an ideologically diverse bunch and the party could not expect to win simply by running far to the left.
 
“There are a lot of moderate and even conservative Democrats in Michigan,” Mr. Brewer cautioned. “It’s always been a challenge for Democrats to hold that coalition together in the general election.”
 
Progressive activists have already upended one major election in Michigan, derailing a former federal prosecutor, Pat Miles, who was running for attorney general with the support of organized labor, by endorsing another lawyer, Dana Nessel, who litigated against Michigan’s gay marriage ban, at a party convention.
 
In more solidly Democratic parts of the country, younger progressives have battered entrenched political leaders, ousting veteran state legislators in Pennsylvania and Maryland and rejecting, in upstate New York, a congressional candidate recruited by the national party.
 
In Maryland, Democrats passed over several respected local officials to select Ben Jealous, a former N.A.A.C.P. president and an ally of Mr. Sanders who backs single-payer health care, as their nominee for governor. And in a climactic upset in New York last month, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Democratic socialist, felled Representative Joseph Crowley, the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House.
 
[Read about Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s debut on the national campaign stage in Kansas.]
 
With about two months left in primary season, a handful of races remain where restive liberals could flout the Democratic establishment, demolishing archaic party machinery or pressuring Democrats in moderate areas to tack left. Beyond Mr. El-Sayed, there are also insurgents contesting primaries for governor in Florida and New York, for Senate in Delaware and for a smattering of House seats in states including Kansas, Massachusetts and Missouri.
 
The pressure from a new generation of confrontational progressives has put Democrats at the precipice of a sweeping transition, away from not only the centrist ethos of the Bill Clinton years but also, perhaps, from the consensus-oriented liberalism of Barack Obama. Less than a decade ago, Mr. Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, derided the “professional left” for making what he suggested were preposterous demands — like pressing for “Canadian health care.”
 
That attitude now appears obsolete, on matters well beyond health policy. Corey Johnson, the progressive speaker of the New York City Council, who supported Mr. Crowley over Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, urged Democrats to recognize the intensity of “anger, fear and disappointment from people in our own party,” especially those new to the political process.
 
“They’re young, and a lot of them are folks that weren’t around or weren’t engaged when Obama ran for the first time,” Mr. Johnson, 36, said. “So this is their moment of: Let’s take our country back.”
 
In a source of relief to Democratic officials, the millennial-infused left has left a lighter mark in moderate areas where Republicans are defending their congressional majorities, and where bluntly left-wing candidates could struggle to win. In House races, Democrats have mainly picked nominees well to the left of center, but to the right of Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
 
Across most of the approximately 60 Republican-held districts that Democrats are contesting, primary voters have chosen candidates who seem to embody change — many of them women and minorities — but who have not necessarily endorsed positions like single-payer health care and abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.
 
Some national Democrats remain skeptical that voters are focused on specific policy demands of the kind Mr. El-Sayed and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez have championed. Former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, a left-of-center Democrat who ran for president in 2016, suggested the party wants “new leaders and fresh ideas” more than hard-left ideology.
 
“Sometimes that may be filled by a leader who calls herself a Democratic socialist, and sometimes it’s not,” said Mr. O’Malley, reflecting on the political convulsion that touched his home state. “Sometimes it’s with a young person. Sometimes it’s with a retiree. Sometimes it’s with a vet.”
 
Several crucial Democratic victories since 2016 have also come with avowedly moderate standard-bearers, such as Senator Doug Jones of Alabama and Representative Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania, who won grueling special elections. And unlike hard-liners on the right, Democratic activists have not contested Senate primaries in conservative-leaning states where the majority is at stake, allowing centrists to run unimpeded in Arizona and Tennessee.
 
Yet among Democratic stalwarts, there is a sometimes-rueful recognition that a cultural gulf separates them from the party’s next generation, much of which inhabits a world of freewheeling social media and countercultural podcasts that are wholly unfamiliar to older Democrats.
 
Evan Nowlin, a writer and barista supporting Mr. El-Sayed, said he had been motivated to volunteer by a podcast hosted by The Intercept, a left-leaning news site that has intensively covered challenges to the Democratic establishment.
 
Mr. Nowlin, a soft-spoken 26-year-old who supported Mr. Sanders in 2016, said the traditional Democratic leadership had plainly failed to inspire the country. “I think they’re generally spineless,” he said.
 
In some instances, the party’s rebels may be too brazen even for some of the candidates they have supported. The gradations of Democratic revolution were on display at an event in Brooklyn Tuesday celebrating the Working Families Party: Cynthia Nixon, the actor running in a September primary against Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, a more moderate Democrat, drew cheers hailing Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow Democratic socialists.
 
But Mr. Jealous, the Maryland nominee for governor, who is supported by Working Families and addressed the event, was warier of the socialist label. After embracing Ms. Nixon on stage but not quite endorsing her, Mr. Jealous chuckled at a question about the resurrection of Democratic socialism as a political identity.
 
“I’m a venture capitalist,” he said, noting his work as an investor. “I’m kind of like the last person to ask.”
 
In Michigan, however, Mr. El-Sayed is counting on a mood of ideological ambition to decide his primary: He remains an underdog, facing a well-funded rival in Ms. Whitmer, who is backed by powerful labor unions like the United Auto Workers. She has led in recent polls, while a third candidate, Shri Thanedar, a wealthy wild card, has complicated the race.
 
Aiming to build momentum, Mr. El-Sayed will campaign later this month with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, to whom he linked himself in generation and political outlook. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez also campaigned in Kansas Friday for liberal House candidates and was slated for an event over the weekend for a primary challenger to a Democratic incumbent in Missouri, William Lacy Clay.
 
“The rise of somebody like Alexandria seems kind of obvious to somebody in our generation,” Mr. El-Sayed said in an interview, casting the moment in grand terms: “The machine, whether it is on the right or on the left, has assented to this broken system of corporate politics, and I think people are real frustrated about that.”
 
That mind-set unnerves Democratic veterans like Mr. Brewer, the former party chairman, in a state where they have long struggled to overcome a Republican machine aligned with the business community. Mr. Trump’s slim victory there exposed divisions between the national Democratic Party and many of the white union members on whose votes Michigan Democrats rely, underscoring Democrats’ tenuous position in 2018.
 
But within deep-blue precincts where Democratic insurgency appears strongest, talk of accommodating the center is in short supply.
 
In Massachusetts, where several incumbent House Democrats are facing feisty challenges, Michelle Wu, a 33-year-old member of the Boston City Council, said voters are demanding leaders who share their intense alarm about economic and racial inequality. Defying the local machine, she recently endorsed Ayanna Pressley, a fellow council member, in a primary against Representative Michael Capuano, a long-serving liberal.
 
“People want to believe we can take our own future into our hands,” Ms. Wu said.
IEPF issued a statement regarding Azerbaijani children at the UN Human Rights Council

News line

Russia accuses Ukrainian military chief of ordering downing of war prisoner plane
22:10 05.07.2025
Türkiye supports firefighting operations in Syria’s Latakia
22:00 05.07.2025
UNRWA calls for immediate fuel delivery to Israel-blockaded Gaza before shutdown of basic services
21:45 05.07.2025
Pashinyan: Armenia needs new constitution
21:20 05.07.2025
UN chief condemns Russia's recent 'series of large-scale' attacks on Ukraine
21:00 05.07.2025
Kazakh servicemen arrive in Azerbaijan to participate in Tarlan - 2025 exercise
20:45 05.07.2025
Erdogan: US has crucial role in achieving ceasefire in Gaza
20:20 05.07.2025
Building collapse in Pakistan kills 15
19:45 05.07.2025
Turkish FM Fidan to attend 17th BRICS Leaders Summit in Rio de Janeiro
19:30 05.07.2025
Australia pledges $283M for green energy project by explosives maker
19:10 05.07.2025
OPEC+ speeds up oil output hikes, adds 548,000 bpd in August
18:45 05.07.2025
Inter completes signing of Ange-Yoan Bonny from Parma
18:20 05.07.2025
Turkish president sees Zangazur corridor 'as part of the geoeconomic revolution'
18:00 05.07.2025
Turkish president urges Azerbaijan, Russia to show restrain amid tension
17:45 05.07.2025
China says war 'not a solution' to Iranian nuclear issue
17:15 05.07.2025
At least 18 people injured after fire alert on Ryanair plane in Majorca as passengers abandon jet & leap from wing
17:00 05.07.2025
Azerbaijani PM meets with UNESCAP executive secretary
16:45 05.07.2025
Lebanese president affirms coordination with Syria, warns against sectarian tensions
16:15 05.07.2025
21 killed in Israeli strikes on tents, school-turned-shelters in Gaza Strip
16:00 05.07.2025
Turkish construction sector takes on international projects worth $6.2B in first half of 2025
15:45 05.07.2025
Azerbaijani woman wrestler becomes European champion
15:30 05.07.2025
Mayor: Death toll in Russian attacks on Kyiv reached two
15:15 05.07.2025
Texas floods kill 24 people and leave many missing from girls' summer camp
14:45 05.07.2025
Conor McGregor has interest in White House fight after Trump's UFC idea
14:30 05.07.2025
Netanyahu era sees 40% surge in Israeli settlements in occupied West Bank
14:15 05.07.2025
Equatorial Guinea sues France in UN court to block sale of Paris mansion
14:00 05.07.2025
US president 'disappointed' over phone call with Putin
13:45 05.07.2025
Academy of Azerbaijan`s State Security Service hosts graduation ceremony
13:30 05.07.2025
Azerbaijan and Pakistan ink memo in Khankendi
13:15 05.07.2025
Trump says there could be Gaza deal next week
13:00 05.07.2025
First flight from Türkiye to Syria launched
12:45 05.07.2025
US marks its 249th anniversary of independence
12:30 05.07.2025
Azerbaijan's role in regional integration discussed at London conference
12:00 05.07.2025
Uzbek Minister: Mirziyoyev's visit to Azerbaijan crucial for dev’t of transport links
11:45 05.07.2025
Trump says US will start talks with China on TikTok deal this week
11:30 05.07.2025
Prime Minister of Pakistan Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif concludes visit to Azerbaijan
11:15 05.07.2025
Pakistani premier proposes low-emissions corridor at Economic Cooperation Organization summit
11:00 05.07.2025
Rwanda pledges to deliver on its part of US-brokered peace deal with DR Congo
10:45 05.07.2025
Hezbollah rejects calls to disarm before end of Israeli ‘aggression’ against Lebanon
10:30 05.07.2025
Trump says Gaza ceasefire deal may come next week after ‘positive’ Hamas response
10:15 05.07.2025
Hamısı