A specter is haunting America – the specter of democratic socialism.

To be a bit less glib – if you’ve been paying attention to this cycle’s primary season, you know that the Democratic Party has been undergoing what some observers have categorized as their own version of the Tea Party revolt that Republicans experienced during the Obama years. As of this writing, three Democratic House incumbents have been defeated in non-redistricting related primaries1Texas Representatives Al Green and Julie Johnson both lost primaries that pitted them against either an incumbent or former representative due to the mid-cycle redistricting of the state’s congressional map. – Dan Goldman and Adrian Espaillat in New York and Diana DeGette in Colorado. In each instance, the insurgent that wound up winning (Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Melat Kiros, respectively) have publicly identified as a socialist, with Avila Chevalier and Kiros being active members of the Democratic Socialists of America (Lander left the group in 2023). There have been a number of consistent policy themes throughout these victories (namely opposition to the Israeli war in Gaza and expansion of government-funded healthcare programs), but the macroview seems to focus on two real trends: that rank and file Democratic voters, frustrated by the party’s inability to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, are in search of “fighters” who will take bolder stances and a more aggressive strategy towards combating the president; and that the left-populist/socialist movement sparked by Bernie Sanders’ presidential candidacies did not die with his 2020 campaign. This wave of socialist success isn’t new this year, either  – socialists took out establishment candidates to win the mayoralities of New York City and Seattle in 2025, providing the network of former Sanders organizers and operatives with a sense of hope that it was finally their time to run the Democratic Party in 2026.

But this year’s congressional upsets all took place in deep blue districts where a Democratic victory is all but assured in November. In order to truly test the thesis of Sanders’ campaign – that an openly socialist candidate could win back the working class voters that began to hemorrhage from the Democratic Party in the mid-to-late 2010s – the left needed a candidate who could take out an entrenched Republican in a state with a blue collar, rural, and largely white constituency. 

They thought they found their man in Graham Platner. An Iraq War veteran turned oyster farmer and local harbor master who also supports Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and frequently rails against Israel and “oligarchy,” Platner provided the perfect mix of blue collar image and left-populist bonafides, making him the left’s preferred choice to try and unseat longtime Maine Senator Susan Collins, a Republican that Democrats have been unable to dislodge from power for decades in an otherwise Democratic state. Establishment Democrats, led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, tried to counter Platner’s rise by recruiting Maine Governor Janet Mills into the race. But Mills failed to generate the enthusiastic grassroots support of the barnstorming Platner and stopped campaigning weeks before the primary even took place. Platner wound up easily winning the nomination with over 72% of the vote, and the most raw votes in Maine Democratic Senate primary history. 

But things did not end well for Platner (to the extent they were ever going well in the first place). He was able to weather some early controversies – even after it was revealed that he had a penchant for making inflammatory Reddit posts and had a tattoo that resembled the SS’s Totenkopf emblem, his polling numbers against both his primary opponents and Collins held steady. They only began to slip when the New York Times published articles alleging that he had been sexting with women other than his wife as recently as 2025 and detailed his erratic, borderline abusive behavior in past romantic relationships. But even as his numbers withered, he still looked competitive, and remained the only viable option in the Democratic field. In fact, he was even able to spin some of this reporting as evidence of a relatable “redemption” story, telling a crowd soon after the latter article’s publication, “The state of Maine raised me, and the state of Maine saved me.” Unfortunately for him, they couldn’t save him after another ex-girlfriend alleged via Politico that he drunkenly sexually assaulted her – claims that caused most of his elected supporters to abandon him, and ultimately facilitated his withdrawal from the race. 

Since Platner’s exit, there have been a litany of articles regarding what went wrong, from a practical standpoint, with Platner’s campaign. The short version is that progressive political operatives – including Fight Agency founder Morris Katz and strategist Dan Moraff2In the days since Platner’s withdrawal, reports have revealed that Moraff himself was fired from the campaign of formerly DSA-affilaited Pennslyvania Representative Summer Lee for sexual harassment and fostering a toxic work environment. – became less concerned with what could go wrong with running an unvetted entity with a history of alcoholism like Platner and instead became tantalized by the possibilities, going as far as to suggest that, following his election to the Senate, Platner could be a viable presidential candidate in 2028. But beyond arrogant operatives, I’d argue that the failure of Platner represents a much deeper flaw in the left’s proposed takeover of American politics – namely, their overwhelming, almost debilitating, contempt for the establishment. 

Perhaps the defining quote of the Platner fiasco comes from Moraff, who claimed in a now infamous Wall Street Journal interview, “Part of our thesis here is that people do not want their candidates grown in vats. They want people who are real human beings, and they want people who do not look and sound like the vat-grown people who’ve been leading this country off a cliff for the last century.” For a while, Platner’s resilience seemed to validate this thesis, and it’s hard not to see its appeal. Plato famously wrote that “those who take office should not be lovers of rule,” and the idea that a great leader could emerge from an unlikely source seems completely congruent with the principles of American democracy. George Washington may have been a privileged member of the landed class, but his reluctance to become president and refusal to accept any monarchical honorifics is indicative, in the American imagination, of his virtue. And while Abraham Lincoln’s dark horse nomination in 1860 was the product of sophisticated convention maneuvering, the notion that a backwoods autodidact could go from one unremarkable term in the House of Representatives to become the most important president of all time serves as an irresistible testament to the purity of American meritocracy. Our modern presidents, most of whom boast Ivy League degrees, family money, and/or a telegraphed and decades-long thirst for the office, just don’t scratch the same itch. The idea that an “outsider” can emerge to set things right is understandably irresistible3 Of course, sometimes people will insist that a Penn graduate born to wealthy parents who has been trying to insert himself into politics since at least the 80s still qualifies as an outsider. . 

But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that the left’s enthusiastic embrace of Platner – and, in some corners, their instance that he was the victim of an establishment-led screwjob – is as much informed by ressentiment as it is by romance. Since at least Sanders’ first presidential run in 2016, there has been a growing notion by some members of the left-populist movement that, to paraphrase someone from the opposite end of the political spectrum, facts shouldn’t care about your feelings. Camera-ready polish and political correctness are a bourgeois concern, a product of “HR lady politics” – it shouldn’t be about saying the right things, but doing the right things. After all, there are people dying from a war in Gaza and a lack of medical care here at home. If someone is able to solve those two problems, who cares if they’re a little mean in the process?

I think it’s underappreciated, to a certain extent, the way this mindset informed the left’s reaction to Sanders’ back to back nomination losses to both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Sure, some of them may indulge in conspiracy theories about the DNC, but more than anything, they seem to believe that he should have won because he was the candidate with the best politics, the only one willing to tell the truth about the rigged American economy and take the fight to the billionaires who got off scot-free after they left the rest of the country holding the bag after the financial crisis. It’s why, I think, so many of them are still smarting from the way that the establishment candidates dropped out after the South Carolina primary to consolidate around Biden in 2020. For a brief moment, it seemed like the prophecy was being fulfilled – having won two of the first three primaries, Sanders’ message was finally breaking through among the Democratic voters, who were rejecting his milquetoast, mainstream opponents. That their savior could be felled by a basic bit of political maneuvering was a symbol of how rotten the system had become. The person with the best politics stood no chance against the people who were better at being politicians. 

It’s an understandable gripe, but a naive one. American politicians obtain office via elections, not the mandate of heaven, and you can’t get elected unless you’re able to persuade voters that you’re a better option than your opponent (something that the numbers suggest Sanders would not have been able to do even if it remained a multi-candidate race . The left’s inability to do that until recently isn’t a systemic problem – it’s a them problem, and a reflection that their message doesn’t resonate with quite as many people as they think it does. I absolutely buy the thesis that finding people like pre-scandal Platner to spread their message could expand their base in particular states, for example. I absolutely reject the idea that standing behind people like post-scandal Platner won’t taint them in the eyes of many of those same people. 

But I don’t think Moraff and his sympathizers are completely wrong in their diagnosis of what ails the Democratic Party, either. Too many Americans view them as the party of the “vat” people, of inauthentic strivers who are more interested in maintaining the status quo than disrupting the system to support the everyman. Despite being the party of the New Deal, the Great Society, and the Affordable Care Act, they’ve played it too safe too often in the Trump era, hoping that the self-destructive nature of the modern Republican Party will obviate the need for a bold new vision. The success of candidates like Zohran Mamdani indicates that a powerful message can overshadow certain qualities (support for Palestine, identifying as a socialist) that the establishment would have considered serious liabilities a decade ago. It also indicates that a clean-cut image and a blemishless criminal and ethical record go a long way to making voters more comfortable with more radical policy proposals. 

Platner’s candidacy became such a flashpoint because, at some point, the Democratic factions became less focused on defeating Susan Collins than defeating each other. After the primary, the left thought they had finally got one over on the establishment and spiked the football. After Platner withdrew, the establishment relished the chance to shout “I told you so” and make the left beg for forgiveness. But if the Democratic Party has any hope of reclaiming power and defeating and reversing the most malignant of Trump’s policies, both sides will have to come together, agree to disagree on some things, and focus on their true enemy. Debates over style and tone can wait. Stemming the march of an increasingly authoritarian administration cannot.