The social democrat wing gains in strength but establishment Democrats continue their allegiance to the donor class.
That a messy and vindictive interparty uncivil war is in full effect between the establishment wing of the Democrat Party and the party’s emerging social democrat elements – most notably those who identify as members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – is irrefutable. It can be argued that the contemporary epoch of this war commenced in 2016, when Senator Bernie Sanders challenged Hillary Clinton for the party’s nomination for President of the United States. However, Sanders was not just challenging Clinton - he also represented an affront to the entire Democrat Party establishment, something they knew perhaps better than even he did, which may, in part, explain the extent it took to deny him the nomination as revealed through a series of emails that were so damning that then Democrat National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was forced to resign her position in infamy just ahead of the party’s 2016 National Convention. Senator Elizabeth Warren, regarded as a champion of the “progressive” wing of the Democrat Party herself, affirmed the Democrat Party establishment’s machinations against Sanders - when asked if the 2016 primaries were rigged, she answered, simply, “yes.”
Sanders’ loss was not, completely, in vain. The confluence of growing discontent with the Democrat Party establishment in concert with growing affinity for policy proposals Sanders made popular - Medicare for All, Green New Deal, Free College Tuition, among others, as well as the draconian policies of Donald Trump led to a wave of progressive/social democrat victories in the 2018 Midterm Elections including, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). These wins were followed up in 2020 with the elections of Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO). But these victories were a mixed bag as despite a historic global pandemic and the public lynching of George Floyd, along with four years of Trump should have given the social democrat and “progressive” elements of the Democrat Party all the ammunition they needed to usurp the establishment wing, the Democrats again boxed out Bernie Sanders and settled on Joe Biden who would ultimately become president.
Still, the social democrat/”progressive” victories of 2020 provided that wing of the party with what appeared to be more supposed champions in the House of Representatives. However, these champions proved to lack the requisite efficacy to enact the transformative policies, nor any of the aforementioned policies they all ran on. This much was confirmed when, during a crucial vote on funding for the zionist ethnostate of Israel’s war machine, both Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman opted not to vote against the bill - something that earned them consternation from elements of the U.S. left. By the 2024 election cycle the political reality that the so-called Squad did not amount to an efficacious opposition to the establishment wing of the Democrat Party was lucid - and, worse yet, by the end of the 2024 elections some members of the Squad were either captured by the establishment or knocked out the box by it.
If there was ever to be written a remake of William Shakespeare’s play, A Comedy of Errors, the Democrat Party's 2024 election cycle would be it. Even before the fiasco associated with Joe Biden being forced to drop out of the race by establishment elements of the Democrats, we observed the opportunism of Ocasio-Cortez who in 2024, among growing concerns of his ability to serve another term, described him as, “...one of the most successful presidents in modern American history.” Later during the election cycle, during the DNC National Convention in Chicago, and at the height of the zionist ethnostate’s live-streamed genocide against Palestinian people in Gaza, Ocasio-Cortez took to the stage to proclaim, “Kamala Harris is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza,” despite numerous evidence to the contrary. Ocasio-Cortez’s embrace of the establishment wing of the Democrat Party was significant enough for the liberal outlet, New York Magazine, to release a piece entitled, AOC is Just a Regular Old Democrat Now. Therein, the piece’s writer, Freddie deBoer, proclaimed, in discussing her support for Biden, “Since taking office in January 2019, she has deferred to party leadership again and again on the issues that matter, even as she has made token gestures of resistance to solidify the illusion that she is a gadfly.” By the end of the 2024 election cycle Harris lost her election along with Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush - Harris in large part due to the genocide in Palestine and Bowman and Bush dues to their vociferous opposition to it. The Democrats chose supporting the nation carrying out the genocide over the presidency while punishing incumbent lawmakers, via one of their largest financial benefactors, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) (and its subsidiaries like the United Democracy Project) for decrying said nation.
2025 commenced with the second inauguration of Donald Trump. While many would think that this should have shifted the Democrat Party’s focus to enjoining as many of his iniquitous and harmful policies as possible, instead we were subjected to a series of stunts that were meant to conjure the illusion that they are a proper opposition party. This was most demonstrated by the Democrats caving after instituting a shutdown of the government over healthcare subsidies, even though that particular issue was not addressed in the ultimate deal to re-open it. This craven capitulation sparked the enmity of many 2026 midterm election hopefuls, including Graham Platner who stated, “Chuck Schumer failed in his job yet again. We need to elect leaders who want to fight. … Call your senators and tell them Chuck Schumer can no longer be leader.” And, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, another 2026 midterm election cycle candidate piled on by referring to the “Democratic Cave” as, “a shit deal.” More on these two candidates and the significance of their casus belli declaration against establishment Democrats will be discussed in a moment. And while this shameful outcome and others seemed to suggest that the social democrat/”progressive” wing of the Democrat party was about to be put to sleep, the city that never sleeps had something to say about this and its response proved to engender a new epoch of the intraparty uncivil war.
On November 4, 2025, a 34-year old, Democratic Socialist, and Muslim immigrant named Zohran Kwame Mamdani rocked the Democrat Party establishment, the nation, and, perhaps the world by winning New York City’s mayoral election. This marked the second time in the same election cycle that Mamdani defeated the Democrat Party’s preferred candidate, Andrew Cuomo. The establishment Democrats wasted no time attempting to dismiss Mamdani’s victory. For instance, the neoliberal and centrist consultancy group, Third Way, a known Democrat Party establishment entity, just one day after his victor released a report Ten Reasons Why Mamdani’s Politics Won’t Win Outside of New York. One of those reasons, “Democratic voters outside NYC are not socialists,” would prove to be yet another inaccurate and disproven conclusion of Third Way, which to this day still refuses to acknowledge the role that the genocide in Palestine played in Harris’s failed presidential run. But it was not Mamdani’s win in itself that threatened the Democrat Party establishment, it’s what he did with his win and associated newly established political clout, which he put to the test in 2026, that made the establishment, in the words of quintessential New York City hip hop artist Mobb Deep, “Shook Ones.”
Mayor Mamdani had already entrenched himself in the annals of electoral politics with his win in 2025. Just six months into his mayorship he backed three insurgent congressional candidates - Darializa Avila Chevalier, Brad Lander, and Claire Valdez - in New York’s Democrat party primary for Congress - all three won. Chevalier and Lander both ran against incumbents and Valdez ran against a favorite of the Democrat party’s establishment. Chevalier’s win was arguably the most decisive as she knocked out Adriano Espaillat, a ten year incumbent and Chairman of the Democrats’ Hispanic Congressional Caucus. These wins were followed by the victory of Melat Kiros in Denver, Colorado who knocked off Diana DeGette, a 15-term Democrat incumbent, which also had the effect of repudiating Third Way’s assertion that social democrats (referred to as “socialists”) could not win outside of New York City. The establishment could not take these wins lightly as three of the four victors - Chevalier, Valdez, and Kiros - have noted that they will not commit to supporting Hakeem Jeffrries for Speaker of the House of Representatives should the Democrats flip the chamber in the upcoming general election later this year. It was clear that this wave of insurgent candidates needed to be stopped by all and any means necessary.
According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Maine has a population of just under 1.5 million people, less than the top seven most populated cities in the nation. That said, Maine is now one of the most watched places in the nation as it represents a Senate race the Democrats must win if they have any chance of re-taking the Senate. Graham Platner captured the imagination of the nation with both his policies and his controversial history - from an alleged “nazi tattoo" to off-colored comments he made on social media and chat rooms after returning from numerous tours of duty in the Middle East as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps. It was ultimately his past romantic relationships that ignominiously ended his campaign for the U.S. Senate despite winning the primary for the Democrat Party’s nomination with a record turnout. To be clear, this piece and this writer has no interest in adjudicating the serious and, potentially, criminal allegations of sexual assault against Mr. Platner that forced him out of the general election. At the same time, it is irrefutable that the Democrat Party establishment had it in for him for nothing more than challenging Chuck Schumer’s leadership, as previously noted, veraciously characterizing the zionist ethnostate’s aggression against the Palestinian people as a genocide, as well as decrying AIPAC’s influence over the Democrat Party, and pushing for the bare minimum of social democrat populist policies associated with, including, but not limited to, healthcare, immigration, corporate influence over elections, and rampant militarism. The Democrat Party establishment sanctioned a hit job against Platner that was effective - but they aren’t done.
With Platner in the rearview mirror the Democrat Party establishment have turned their sights to another bellwether state, Michigan. And here is where we see the new nadir of the Democrat Party establishment’s treachery and their willingness to use identity reductionism, racist and bigoted dog whistles, and Black people as pawns in their desperate attempt to sustain its power over the party even if it means losing elections as we saw in 2016. We are already seeing Clorox Feminist groups like EMILY'S list in concert with AIPAC attempting to paint Dr. El-Sayed as a “sexist” and “mysoginist”- claims that are absolutely unsubstantiated.
In addition, last week, a candidate for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, Will Lawrence, became the subject of controversy for remarks he made on a podcast that he hosted in 2024. During the segment, Lawrence remarked, “The extent to which the older generation of Black political leadership are such a pillar, frankly, for establishment, capitalist, imperialist American power through their role as this kind of traditionalist, establishment-ist pillar of the Democratic Party, it’s a big problem.” He continued, “It’s a big problem for left politics in this country. And it gets us every single time. It really defangs the white left and puts us in impossible positions, really.” For full disclosure and transparency, I have known Will for nearly eight years. We have worked together on climate change policy while he was a member of the Sunrise Movement and myself as an employee of the Climate Justice Alliance. Will and I had many principled debates, some of them loud and contentious, but he is not the racially insensitive or outright racist that certain establishment Democrats are attempting to make him out to be. To be clear, Will’s remarks were certainly clumsy, something he himself freely admitted and regretted. But this admission and affirmation takes nothing away from the veracity of his previous remarks. The Black Misleadership Class of the Democrat Party has been and continues to defang not just the “white left” but Black people as a whole, while also being more adjacent to, and agents of white “supremacy” ideology than Will Lawrence. That’s why it’s curious that the Coongressional “Black” Caucus (CBC) tried to take a shot at Will for his previous remarks when they are the largest recipients of blood-soaked AIPAC money than any caucus of the Democrat Party. Hakeem “AIPAC Shakur” Jeffries is so beholden to the white “supremacy” ideology of AIPAC that he has remained silent on the fact that one of his own colleagues, Representative Ro Khanna, was detained by zionist settler thugs and terrorists while recently in Palestine. We even have Jeffries on record paraphrasing renowned segregationist and white supremacists, George Wallace, as he declared, “Israel today, Israel tomorrow, Israel forever.” Given the documented instances of the CBC and the likes of Jeffries pledging more fealty to the zionist ethnostate than to Black people - including Jeffries’ recent plea to his Democratic Party colleagues to reject a bill to cease sending money to Israel (introduced by Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky), the idea that they and other elements of the Democrat Party establishment would even suggest that Will is a racist or racially insensitive, when they consistently uphold white “supremacy” ideology through their votes and fealty to their AIPAC alabaster puppet masters is the equivalent of if Adolf Hitler suggested that Christopher Columbus and Hernan Cortes acted too brutally against Indigenous people.
The Democrat Party and the CBC have no legs to stand on when it comes to accusing others of racism or sexism. This is why it’s so melancholious to witness so many Black people and women falling for their BS. They fail to realize that the use of identity reductionism in service to the Democrat Party, as Kwame Ture once described as, “racist and capitalist to the core” only serves the race traders and race traitors of the Democrat Party more than it ever will Black and other marginalized peoples. Furthermore, they fail to comprehend that this intraparty war within the Democrat Party will not result in victors, only casualties - chief among them Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor and working class people. At the same time the interparty war lifts up two incontrovertible facts. The first is that the Democrat Party cannot be salvaged or ever taken over by social democrat/”progressive” elements…it’s corporate and zionist simply won’t allow this and would rather see its demise than its capture by the likes of Mamdani, Sanders, and DSA. The second is the contradictions of the social democrat/”progressive” wing of the party who insist on running as Democrats in the first place. How can so-called Democratic Socialists even pretend that they can rationalize running as socialists who wish to be members of a capitalist, neoliberal, imperialist, and corporate political party?
Perhaps it’s time to take anachronistic blow hard James Carville up on his request that the party’s social democrats facilitate the process of tearing the Democrats asunder by leaving the party and starting their own. According to Black Radical Tradition elder and veteran of New York City/State politics, Charles Barron, this is not as Sisyphean a task as many may think. While once on a phone call with Mr. Barron he exclaimed, “What is a political party other than like minded people working in solidarity to advance independent social and political power?” Mr. Baron is correct in that It doesn’t take millions or billions of dollars to start and sustain a political party as much as it takes political valor and political will. Until the social democrat/”progressive” wing in concert with the masses comprehend this fact, we can expect establishment Democrats to continue undermining any and all attempts to direct this settler colonial nation in service of the people in lieu of service to their corporate masters, the zionist apparatus, and the capitalist dictatorship.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.
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