Is this socialist wave the left’s Tea Party moment?

David M. Drucker, Tribune News Service

The Democratic establishment, shaken by the rise of progressive socialists, is right to wonder where this wave might lead. The similarly populist movement of Tea Party Republicans, however muddled, foreshadowed President Donald Trump. Republican candidates for Congress backed by the GOP establishment were pushed to the limit beginning in the 2010 election cycle and continuing through 2012 and 2014. Some even fell in key primaries to conservative populists who identified as Tea Party candidates. These new voices energized voters itching for change and convinced that congressional Republicans were not fighting President Barack Obama hard enough. The fact that Republicans in the House of Representatives and US Senate often did not have the votes to block Obama’s agenda was lost on angry constituents.

If that sounds familiar, look no further than the progressive populists (including but not limited to candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America) and their impact on Democratic primaries this year. They include Graham Platner’s nomination for Senate in Maine, the nomination of Melat Kiros for the House in Colorado, and primary wins for three New York congressional candidates backed by Big Apple Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a card-carrying DSA member. “It’s very clear the grassroots energy in deep blue districts is entirely with the DSA wing of the party,” said Jeremiah Johnson, cofounder of the Center for New Liberalism and a contributing writer at The Dispatch. “This is more about a desire for change and a desire for people who ‘fight’ than about specific policies.”

Two of the prominent Democratic incumbents who fell to socialist challengers — as Johnson pointed out — were in good progressive standing per their votes on the House floor: Representatives Diana DeGette of Colorado and Adriano Espaillat of New York, who happens to be chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. (Mamdani endorsed Espaillat’s challenger.)

Adam Green, cofounder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a group backing many of the upstart socialists, told me he believes this year’s batch of progressive populists have broader appeal with voters than the Tea Party did. “My worry with the Tea Party analogy is that it sounds like a wing of a wing and really, I think that the economic populists that are winning could very much have more cross-partisan appeal in a general election.” Many seasoned Democratic operatives disagree. They worry Republicans could flip an open Senate seat in swing-state Michigan if progressive Abdul El-Sayed wins the nomination and that the GOP would capture an open, Democratic-held gubernatorial office in battleground Wisconsin if socialist Francesca Hong becomes the nominee there. (Both are competing in August primaries.) Similar concerns have come up related to progressive populists’ potential for upsetting Democratic establishment candidates and incumbents in primaries in Connecticut, Hawaii and Missouri.

The fear is that the more success left-wing candidates have in primaries where Democrats dominate, the more Republicans will be able to tar the entire party as “socialist” for positions like advocating for the slashing of funding for the police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement; implementing government-run, single payer healthcare; and eliminating all fossil fuel drilling.

That’s a recipe for disaster. Socialist wins can undermine centrist and pragmatic Democrats running in the battleground districts. In red states Democrats need to win to seize majorities in the House and Senate, not to mention increase their control of governor’s mansions and state legislatures.

“In a typical jurisdiction, a Democrat needs to capture 60% of the moderate vote to win while a Republican only needs to get 40%. Case in point, (President) Donald Trump won just 41% of the moderate vote nationally,” explained Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank in Washington, DC. “Republicans can win in many parts of the country by motivating conservative voters to turn out and then winning just enough of the reasonable middle. That is because nationally there are three conservative voters for every two liberal voters.”

If past is prologue, Democratic insiders are right to be concerned. The Tea Party’s grassroots energy did help produce a historic GOP House majority in the 2010 midterm elections but may have cost the party a Senate lead, too. At the time, Republicans were positioned to flip a Senate seat in otherwise Democratic-leaning Delaware. But then-Representative Mike Castle lost the GOP primary to an unelectable Tea Party challenger. In 2012, then-Democratic Senators Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Claire McCaskill of Missouri were exceedingly vulnerable in states that had turned ruby red during their tenure.

But they won reelection even as Obama was defeated in their states after their respective Tea Party Republican challengers bungled their campaigns. The GOP finally won the Senate majority in 2014 after intervening in party primaries to quash unelectable Tea Party candidates. On top of that, Tea Party factions of the Republicans’ House majority regularly paralyzed the party during the Obama administration. They insisted on perfection or nothing and regularly thwarted incremental, conservative reforms as part of compromises with the 44th president. The failed “Obamacare shutdown” of 2013, for example, was just one political boondoggle the Tea Party foisted on the Republican establishment.

But the Tea Party did leave its stamp on the Republican Party in a consequential and lasting way: Trump. Despite some small wins at the height of the movement, what conservative populists wanted, more than anything, was a fighter. And the president delivered.