Are The Democratic Socialists Winning or Losing?

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**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:36)
From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroeff. This is The Daily.
The left wing of the Democratic Party has now faced key tests in two swing states, and the results were mixed. On Tuesday, Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong lost the Democratic nomination for governor in Wisconsin in an upset, after leading by double digits in the polls. And last week in Michigan, despite being heavily outspent by his opponent, Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination for Senate by a slim margin. Today, my colleague, Chief Political Analyst Nate Cohn, helps make sense of those conflicting outcomes, and explains what they tell us about the state of the populist left in Democratic politics. It's Thursday, August 13th.
Nate, welcome back to The Daily. It's wonderful to have you here.

**Nate Cohn** (1:46)
Thank you for having me. Great to be here.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (1:49)
So we want to talk today about what this moment means for the Democratic Party. For the past 10 years, it feels as though we've been talking about this divide in the party between the progressive left and the moderate establishment. And it feels like the story of this primary season for Democrats is, to what extent is that progressive flank ascendant in the party and in national politics?
In the last two weeks, one of those candidates narrowly won in Michigan and another narrowly lost in Wisconsin. I don't totally know what to make of that. It feels a little confusing to me, but fortunately, that's what we have you for. So, Nate, what should we make of that?

**Nate Cohn** (2:28)
Fortunately, I think it isn't very confusing. It's pretty clarifying. We've had two races in two weeks in states that are presidential battleground states, reasonably representative of the country politically in different ways, where the progressive left has essentially been tied a little bit ahead or a little bit behind with their establishment rivals.
This is pretty different from what we've seen over most of the last 10 years, when the progressive left has basically only been reliably competitive in heavily Democratic, young, highly educated urban areas. Now that can happen twice in two weeks, after all, in presidential battleground states, and therefore perhaps even nationwide. That still comes with limits. There are large parts of these states where the progressive candidates aren't faring very well, and that suggests that there are also large parts of the country where the progressive left wouldn't fare very well. But this represents a really significant improvement in their standing within the Democratic Party, compared to where they seemed to stand just a few years ago.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (3:26)
Okay. I want to dig deeper into what you actually mean by the limits that these candidates are facing and what they've actually gained. But before we do, can you just spell out what we mean exactly when we talk about the left here? Like, who are these candidates? I heard a sigh.

**Nate Cohn** (3:45)
It's a little challenging to define. We don't just mean progressives after all, right? Progressives have been winning Democratic primaries for decades, half of Democrats in Congress could be said to be progressives in some form or another. We mean a new kind of young, activist-backed candidate of, for lack of a better word, the progressive left.
I think the core of this new activist progressive left are the self-identified democratic socialists, Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and their allies. Beyond them though, there is a group of politicians who looks a lot like them but does not necessarily characterize themselves as democratic socialists.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (4:22)
Like who?

**Nate Cohn** (4:23)
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan is one great example. He was endorsed by both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, but he doesn't call himself a democratic socialist. But it's hard to see why he's not a democratic socialist. He doesn't distinguish himself from them on the issues in many ways, and he's comfortable allying with them and importantly allying with them against the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (4:43)
So data-wise, when you look at the numbers, which are your bread and butter, you're looking at candidates who are either members of the democratic socialist organization or are effectively part of that platform. They are aligned with many aspects of it.