FOR A FLEETING MOMENT last week, Democratic leaders seemed like they were ready to put aside their factional fights.
asserted
they → seem → fights
Every corner of the party had something from the midterms to point to as proof their politics was ascendant.
asserted
politics → have → proof
North Carolina’s Roy Cooper, the paradigmatic normie politician, won his Senate race by 20 points while progressive darling Abdul El-Sayed cruised home in Michigan.
asserted
Sayed → win → Michigan
Blue Dog–style candidates like Jamie Ager flipped Republican-controlled House seats; so too did progressives like Randy Villegas.
asserted
progressives → flip → Villegas
“The whole coalition got elected.
asserted
coalition → elect → ?
Everybody won, everybody had a victory,” Democratic strategist Joel Payne told me the morning after the election.
asserted
Payne → win → election
“There was no ‘type’ of Democrat that won.
asserted
that → be → Democrat
The commonality was people who promise to fight and deliver.”
But the intraparty détente didn’t last long.
asserted
détente → promise → ?
By week’s end, Democratic operatives and officials were once again rehashing the same factional debates that have gripped the party since the 2016 presidential primary, pointing to everything from margins of victory to how loudly crowds cheered for specific candidates to make their point.
asserted
candidates → rehash → point
That the era of peace could be measured only in hours wasn’t necessarily shocking.
uncertain
measured → measure → hours
There’s a segment of the professional Democratic party—mostly those with an addiction to X and in constant need of a dopamine hit—who clearly can’t quit the infighting and don’t want the long 2016 primary to end.
asserted
primary → ’ → infighting
The arguments have become core to their identity.
asserted
arguments → become → identity
But what is striking to me is that these arguments seem increasingly contrived—almost like relics of a bygone era of Democratic party politics.
asserted
arguments → strike → politics
Because the candidates who delivered some of the biggest wins last week were Democrats who are impossible to contain in neat ideological boxes.
asserted
who → deliver → boxes
James Talarico led a populist crusade against billionaires and corruption while shedding his woke image by emphasizing his commitment to Texas’s oil and gas industry, his support for border security, and his qualified opposition to transgender student-athletes competing in girls’ sports.
asserted
Talarico → lead → sports
South Carolina’s Annie Andrews didn’t hide her frustration with the MAHA movement or the modern GOP, but she also opposed Medicare for All and ran an ad with her Republican-voting dad, who emphasized that his daughter was not a socialist.
asserted
daughter → hide → dad
Although the Mississippi Senate race has not yet been called, Scott Colom talked about his Christian faith during his campaign and hewed to relatively conservative rhetoric on cultural issues, all while portraying his GOP rival as corrupt and only out for the rich.
asserted
Colom → call → rich
Jon Ossoff managed to build a coalition that included Hasan Piker at one end and Third Way Democrats at the other.
asserted
that → manage → other
“The left did very well by advancing economic populism into the conversation.
asserted
left → advance → conversation
And if you also take the cultural moderation or deprioritization of cultural issues that the center did, then you get the best performers of the cycle,” Democratic pollster Adam Carlson told me.
asserted
Carlson → take → me
That synthesis was so common on the campaign trail that many successful House candidates—like Sam Forstag in Montana and Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin—were embraced by both left and center, leading to unusual coalitions between Bernie Sanders and Blue Dog Democrats.
asserted
candidates → embrace → Sanders
“I don’t think there’s just one way forward.
asserted
I → think → ?
I think you need to listen to what voters are saying because they want change, they want action,” Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist whose 2026 clients included El-Sayed and Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, told me.
asserted
clients → think → me
“Voters clearly don’t care about having this fight in the same way.”
asserted
Voters → care → way
“I think we spent ten years fighting, when if we had done a real autopsy after the 2016 election, we would know that people believed that the system was rigged and wanted folks in office who would do something about it,” she added.
asserted
she → think → it
ALL OF WHICH IS NOT TO SAY that there are no real fissure points within the Democratic party.
asserted
ALL → say → party
The breaks are evident on issues like Israel and Medicare for All; on how much to push for major reforms to government institutions; and on whether to run campaigns designed to turn out progressives or reassure conservatives.
asserted
breaks → push → conservatives
The breaks are amplified by the fact that some of the country’s biggest cities—which are the media, political, and economic hubs—are undergoing a leftward drift as a result of the leadership they’re electing.
asserted
they → amplify → leadership
But on a national level, Tuesday’s results don’t suggest a movement of the party left or right so much as a dive back into the party’s history.
asserted
results → suggest → history
There’s a return to some of the populist roots that Sanders emphasized in his 2016 campaign—heavy on economic messaging, light on cultural issues—and that defined many of the Midwestern Democrats in the Clinton era, too.
asserted
that → ’ → era
“David Bonior and Dick Gephardt and Paul Wellstone—that populist vein that used to run through the party wasn’t owned by the socialists or the liberals.
asserted
that → use → socialists
It wasn’t owned by the neoliberals, or whatever people call them,” Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha, who served as senior adviser for both of Sanders’s presidential campaigns, told me.
asserted
who → own → me
“People in America don’t see themselves as any of those [labels].”
asserted
People → see → labels
Rocha said that throughout the dozens of House and Senate races he worked on this cycle, voters constantly told him, “shit costs too much, and I don’t make enough money.”
asserted
I → say → money
Democrats did an effective job of listening to those concerns and campaigning on addressing those needs.
asserted
Democrats → do → needs
The rush to re-engage in the infighting after such a good election, Rocha argued, was a concerning sign of how easily Democrats could let themselves get distracted, even after a historic victory.
uncertain
themselves → re → victory
“We are positioning ourselves to have a debate about shit that nobody cares about,” he said.
asserted
he → position → that
“That’s going to look like we’re really disconnected.”
asserted
we → go → ?
🫏 Donkey Business:
— Allies of Ro Khanna announced last week that they were launching the “Run Ro” draft committee to begin laying the groundwork for the progressive California congressman’s (potential) presidential bid.
asserted
they → announce → bid
The committee is chaired by former New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman and progressive strategist Nomiki Konst.
asserted
committee → chair → Bowman
…and 7 more, not listed.
The Aporia
