Progressives Are Winning

Everything is still horrible. But there are hopeful signs.

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Donald Trump is kidnapping people off the street and shipping them to be tortured overseas. Cuts to USAID have already led to 700,000 deaths and are expected to kill as many as 14 million people. Measles, long almost eliminated, is spreading terrifyingly in the US as Trump guts public health. His administration has launched a vicious attack on science funding, intended to destroy nonpartisan science as a potential location of fascist opposition.

Meanwhile, the New York Times and much of the mainstream media spends its time treating a fascist presidency as just a whit less dangerous than left student protestors, while members of the Democratic opposition have responded by vacillating disgustingly on trans rights and burbling about how they won’t impeach Trump.

We are, in short, living under a nightmare fascist regime propped up by bigots and quisling cowards. Progressives have to struggle against all Republicans and many Democrats to even get agreement on the value of advocating for rights to free speech, assembly, abortion, and voting which were substantially more secure a decade ago, to say nothing of universal health care or labor rights. Things are bleak, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise.

But are also a number of signs that the progressive movement, electorally and otherwise, is stronger than it has been in decades, and in some ways ever. It appears to be winning, or close to winning, a range of argument within the Democratic party that have seemed hopeless through much of my lifetime.

None of this guarantees progressives will win the battle against fascism and reaction, either with Trump or within the Democratic party. But it does mean that there is a visible path forward towards better things, if we continue to demand them.

Progressive candidates are winning

The first hopeful sign is that Donald Trump is incredibly unpopular and his party is heading into what looks like a buzzsaw of a midterm.

Trump’s aggregate approval per fiftyplusone is under 35%; Democrats are +8 on the generic ballot. They have a 99% chance to win the House, a race analysts believed would be tightly contested just a year ago. In the Senate they have a 72% chance of winning—and again last year it was widely believed that they had almost no possibility of picking up the 4 seats they needed. Senate and/or governor seats in reliably red states like Ohio, Alaska, Texas, and Kansas look to be up for grabs.

In general, national elites see a massive Republican win as a sign that the whole country now wants to go fascist—as happened after Trump’s narrow victory in 2024. In contrast, when there is a major Democratic victory, Democrats suddenly seem like the future, and elites in media and public life start to give more credence and support to (at least somewhat more) progressive ideas, as happened in 2008.

There are caveats. As Julia Azari notes, elites in general are less willing to get behind Democratic victories, probably because the Republicans are the party of the powerful (rich people, men, white people) and everyone in power is more comfortable kowtowing to and empowering the powerful. So even Democratic landslides won’t lead the New York Times to rush out to hire progressive writers the way it constantly seems to seek out conservative burblers.

You saw a kind of nightmare scenario of liberal party victory in the UK. Labour won a landslide victory in 2024 under centrist Keir Starmer and then immediately rushed to embrace transphobia and anti immigrant bigotry in a way that actually shrank the possibility of progressive politics (and not coincidentally destroyed Labour’s mandate to govern.) Given the painful anti trans positions some Democrats have taken in their general election right, and given Democrat’s soft mutterings about compromise, civility, and appeasement, should progressives really see any hope in a Democratic midterm victory?

Obviously they should, if only because Democrats—whatever their manyfaults—are going to be to the left of Republicans on the vast majority of issues, and will be in a position to open investigations and maybe block judicial appointments if they win. Those are good things.

But beyond that, I think that Labour was in a very different position in 2024 than the Democrats are in now.

Labour in 2024 had purged its left wing; Keir Starmer rose to power explicitly as a rebuke to, and a replacement for, leftist Jeremy Corbyn, who had led Labour to a series of humiliating defeats. Whatever the reason for those, they were blamed on left ideology, and when Starmer won, it was seen as a validation of the center. The logical move, centrists believed, was to double down on centrism, and here we are.

The Democrats’ reactionary centrists, however, have not had a particularly good couple of years. Their gross sex pest white hope in the 2025 New York mayor’s race, Andrew Cuomo, got trounced by Zohran Mamdani, who has become the most successful and most popular New York City mayor in decades. Progressive candidate Analilia Mejia also won a shocker of an upset over a centrist in a New Jersey special in April.

Progressive victories have continued in the 2026 midterm cycle. Juliana Stratton smoked a crypto financed opponent in the Illinois Senate primary, and will now just about certainly be the state’s Senator. Progressives like Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan also won their primaries, as did Angie Nixon in Florida in another stunning upset. Progressive House candidates like Chris Rabb in PA and Brad Lander in New York have also done well. And in Maine, after supposed progressive, Nazi -tattooed Graham Platner was credibly accused of sexual assault, the party rallied round a progressive replacement, Troy Jackson.

If all the progressives lose and only centrists like Chris Pappas in New Hampshire win, that will obviously be deflating and give centrists a bleak opportunity to make the argument to sell out immigrants, trans people, Black people, and everyone else who happens to be between them and displays of performative spinelessness.

But the fact is that progressives have done so well in primaries, across a wide range of electorates—blue, purple, even fairly red—that they seem well positioned for November. Abdul El-Sayed, a particular focus of centrist hate during the primary because of his opposition to aid to Israel and his Muslim identity, has been campaigning with Kamala Harris, who clearly wants to put herself above factionalism for her 2028 run. Republican efforts to stoke factional tension by linking El-Sayed to youtuber Hasan Piker have largely fizzled, and the candidate is currently polling four points ahead of Republican Mike Rogers. Fiftyplusone gives him a 73% chance to win the seat.

Progressive issues are winning

The success of progressive candidates has been mirrored in a definite, albeit quiet, shift towards progressive positions by the Democratic caucus as a whole on several key issues.

The most impressive change here is on Israel. The Democrats have been defined by Zionism for decades; every Democratic president and Congressional leader of the last thirty years at least has backed Israel policy with weapons and UN resolution votes, even when they’ve uttered pro forma support for Palestinian rights.

But Democratic voter support for Israel’s recent policies of genocide and war has cratered. Zionist skeptic candidates like Mamdani, El-Sayed, Mejia, Troy Jackson, Brad Lander, and others have won party nominations.

Democrats in Congress have increasingly followed their voters; the last time Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders brought forward a bill to limit sales to Israel, 40 of the 47 Democrats voted for it. The House caucus has shifted more slowly, but on the last vote in July, almost half of Democrats voted to restrict Israel aid. Even rabid Zionist Rahm Emanuel has seen the writing on the wall; as he tries a doomed bid for president in 2028, he’s argued for ending Israel’s military aid.

It’s easy to be frustrated with ongoing Democratic support for a horrific genocide as Israel wages war across the region in Syria, Lebanon and of course in Iran after collaborating with the US on losing an incredibly ill-judged and illegal war of aggression. But that frustration shouldn’t blind us to the enormous distance the party has come over the last decade, and over the last few years especially. Israel could once could on bipartisan support for its ethnonationalist violence. Now, Democrats seem increasingly committed as a party to taking real steps to reign it in. That’s a major progressive accomplishment.

Another major progressive victory within the Democratic coalition is Supreme Court reform. Before 2025, centrist Democrats mostly expressed little appetite for expanding the court. President Joe Biden put together a panel on the subject in order to diffuse pressure from the left; it was intended to do nothing and did nothing. Towards the end of his term Biden put forward some more specific ideas; he suggested term limits for justices, which is impossible under the Constitution, and ealso thics reform, which is a useless wet rag with which to stop the determined conservative justice’s Christofascist assault on the rule of law and democracy. Biden never endorsed or mentioned the obvious and necessary solution to a fascist majority—treat the conservative justices like the partisan hacks they are and bury them in better judges.

But last month, influential Black South Carolina Democrat Jim Clyburn publicly called for Democrats to expand the Supreme Court to 13 justices—a number that could give Democrats a 7-6 majority. Clyburn is on the right of the caucus; if he’s calling for court reform it means that there will be little opposition to the policy among Democrats.

The impetus for this procedural reform is obvious; Clyburn is (rightly!) incensed that the Supreme Court majority has embraced racial gerrymanders and that it is attempting to break Black power and reinstitute Jim Crow in the South. Clyburn sees expanding the court as the best, and only, way to ensure Black voting rights.

But the thing about expanding the court is that it will not only affect Black voting rights. The Court has been controlled by Republicans for 50 years. Especially in the last three decades, it has become a brutal barrier to campaign finance reform, to abortion rights, to gun control, to corporate accountability, to ending the death penalty, to curbing presidential power.

Centrists do not necessarily embrace all these changes, which is perhaps why they have resisted expanding the court. But a substantial move leftward is inevitable with court expansion. Centrists, in this one key area, have at last realized they cannot compromise with fascists, and their only path forward is to ally with the left.

A reactionary court has limited progressive gains, and even progressive imagination, for literally generations. Expanding the court will not solve our fascism problem and will not mean the end of centrist bullshit. But it would give progressives opportunities they have not had for five decades; it is hard to overestimate the possible consequences.

There are also areas where centrists are dragging their heels or actively looking to throw people under the bus—especially trans people and immigrants. Here, too, though, there are some reasons for hope.

There are Democratic leaders, like 2028 contender Governor JB Pritzker in blue Illinois and 2028 contender Governor Alex Beshear in red Kentucky, who have made trans rights central to their political identity and messaging. Incoming Senate hopefuls like Juliana Stratton, Peggy Flanagan and Abdul El-Sayed have spoken for trans rights and promised to protect them in Congress. Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey crushed challenger Seth Moulton by highlighting the latter’s anti-trans stances.

The wobbling by some Democrats like Senate Candidate James Talarico in Texas or would-be Ohio Governor Amy Acton is ugly and dangerous. But progressives have not lost this fight.

Progressives are building power

The wins in primaries, in elections, and in intra-party issue fights are all downstream of longterm organizing. After long years in the wilderness, DSA and other progressive orgs appear to have figured out how to combine progressive policy stances, national fundraising networks, and “we are the real Democrats” messaging in a way that allows them to be competitive in primaries. Pro-Palestinian rights organizing and demonstrations helped build power and capacity for the Democrat’s move leftward. Pro immigrant organizing in Minneapolis, Chicago, and other cities has helped to crater Republican’s polling advantage on immigration, which in turn pushed Democrats to find their spines and refuse to rubber stamp ICE funding. The movement against data centers has helped to organize and focus resistance to oligarchs and their AI bulshit.

Donald Trump is going to be a blight on the country and the globe as long as he is in power. He is determined to harm democracy and marginalized people, and he will continue to harm them. Many Democrats hate the idea of fighting fascism and challenging power; so does a lot of the news media, so do many universities and other institutions. Progressive change remains an uphill slog. But that slog looks more possible now than it has in a while.