Liberal insurgents change face of Democrats
The Democratic primary elections of 2018 have brought an end to an era of deference by liberals to establishment leaders in Washington and the states as an emboldened coalition of women, young people and racial minorities claimed ownership of the party and steered it to war against President Donald Trump.
In an echo of the Republican Party’s metamorphosis in the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency, when Tea Party activists on the right revolted against Republican elites and reforged the GOP as a party of fire-breathing rural populism, Democratic voters and activists have increasingly succeeded at transforming their party into a more ambitious liberal force. In key races, they have also replaced elected leaders with newcomers who look and sound like the diverse, youthful base the party relies on in presidential elections but asserts itself sparingly in midterm elections and down-ballot primaries.
Should that mood of insurgency prevail on Election Day, it could set the stage for an even more tumultuous phase of redefinition in 2019: A liberal base that feels validated after November may be unlikely to heed calls from party leaders to pick their battles in the new Congress, or to approach the 2020 race with sensitivity to more conservative sections of the country. The next presidential primaries could become a climactic test for the awakened Democratic base, with women and candidates of color holding an appeal others might struggle to match.
Former Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., whose state was rocked Tuesday by primary upsets, said Trump had helped fuse once-fractious Democratic constituencies into a powerful alliance for primary season. Meehan, president of the University of Massachusetts, likened it to earlier moments of political realignment, when ethnic groups like Italian-, Irishand Greek-American voters learned to work together in the mid-1900s.
“The time has come where women, as a group, and Hispanic voters, African-American voters, have figured out: Damn it, it’s our time,” said Meehan, who predicted Democrats would face more contested primaries in the coming years.
The Democratic culture shift has been most pronounced in an array of densely populated Eastern states, where entrenched leaders have long worked to restrain the revolutionary policy aspirations of the left, and where local political machines have imposed a system of rigid hierarchy and incumbents often serve for life. Effectively leaderless since Obama’s departure, liberal Democrats have challenged authority most fiercely in the urban precincts where the party still holds power, and where gaping economic and racial disparities are on vivid display.
The most dramatic upsets have come in New York, where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old activist and former bartender, defeated Rep. Joe Crowley, a Democratic boss in Queens and Washington, in a June primary; and Massachusetts, where Ayanna Pressley, a 44-year-old member of the Boston City Council, on Tuesday wrested the nomination away from Rep. Michael Capuano, a 10-term progressive she branded as passive and conventional. Both women channeled liberal alarm at Trump and at social inequality in their own communities, and promised an unyielding fight for change.
But Democrats have tested their own party’s incumbents across the whole stretch of primary season, and over larger swaths of blue America: Last winter in Illinois, a movement marshaled by women nearly ousted Rep. Dan Lipinski, a centrist Democrat who opposes abortion rights; soon after in Pennsylvania and Maryland, younger candidates of the left ejected incumbent state lawmakers. Liberal voters toppled two senior state lawmakers in Massachusetts the same night they nominated Pressley, and they appear likely to flex their power again in New York’s state primaries Thursday.
In some revealing openseat races, Democratic voters have also flouted the directives of party leaders and embraced inspiring activists. They nominated Jahana Hayes, an African-American educator, for Congress in Connecticut over a candidate approved by the state Democratic Party; and picked Andrew Gillum, the African-American mayor of Tallahassee, for governor of Florida over a field of better-funded candidates that included the scion of an imposing dynasty.
These primary elections might not have much impact on the battle for control of Congress this year. Democrats need to gain 23 House seats to take power, and nearly all the primary upsets have occurred in deep-blue seats that the party controls.
But if a good number of those candidates take office next year, in Washington and the states, it could heighten the disparity between the party’s old-guard lawmakers — largely white Democrats, or black leaders of a now-distant generation — and its new arrivals, and propel Democrats toward a more conclusive choice about their identity in 2020.
Already, a small handful of rebels elected in previous campaign cycles has rattled the Democratic leadership clique and challenged their tactical and ideological preferences. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, 45, who took his seat by defeating a longtime incumbent, has inspired a skeptical Democratic Party to contest a Senate seat in Texas, thrilling online donors and party activists with his campaign against Sen. Ted Cruz.
And Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who defeated a scandal-tainted incumbent in a 2014 primary election, has quickly emerged as perhaps the most formidable critic of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California. Moulton, 39, is said to be considering another primary challenge in 2020, against Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., 72, who is up for re-election that year.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a first-term lawmaker elected over a veteran Democrat in 2016, said the party should consider becoming “more neutral” in future primary campaigns, to help attract new talent. Khanna said the party infrastructure can still play a powerful role in deterring candidates from running in primaries, or in shunning them once they do.
“Everyone from the president and Pelosi, to others, endorsed the incumbent, and that’s just the way it worked,” Khanna, 41, recalled of his own campaign. “When I would walk into a room, people would not even want to be in the same photograph, because it was just not done that you would challenge incumbency.”
But Khanna said that culture was fading. “Incumbency is having less value,” he said.
Pressley’s campaign was a study in that phenomenon. The first black woman to serve on the Boston City Council, Pressley summoned support from a diverse coalition dismayed and angry about Trump, and captured the urgency of the moment with the slogan: “Change can’t wait.” She acknowledged throughout the race that there were few ideological differences between herself and Capuano, but argued that they diverged meaningfully on matters of political style and attitude.
Pressley won by 17 points.