Democrat Election Strategists Hear Echoes of Republican Tea Party Revolt in New Socialist Wave

With a string of victories in this year’s Democratic primaries, Democratic Socialists are set to have an outsized influence on Capitol Hill next year. Some strategists worrying about the party’s drift to the left say they hear echoes of another revolution — the GOP’s Tea Party movement post-2008 financial meltdown — and wonder if it will end the same way. Democratic Socialists of America are arguably having their most successful electoral year in generations, unseating establishment Democrats with significant liberal bona fides in states like New York and Colorado. The next congressman from Philadelphia is almost certainly going to be a state representative, Chris Rabb, who aligns himself with the socialist movement. Other states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and California may also soon send a new cohort of left-wing lawmakers to the nation’s capital, just as the Tea Party did in the 2010 midterm elections.In 2010, the Tea Party had an enormous impact on the midterms — Tea Party-supported Republican candidates picked up 63 seats for House and Senate. In 2026, failure to anticipate the potential upheaval of the status quo is a byproduct of being overly comfortable, contends a moderate Democrat from a district on Long Island won by President Trump, Congressman Tom Suozzi. “People who do not support the DSA wring their hands at cocktail parties while the DSA is organizing,” he said in comments to Axios last month. The Democratic Socialists of America-Tea Party comparison isn’t a perfect one. Both are populist movements of people who want less corporate influence in Washington, but Tea Partiers sought lower taxes, less federal control, and greater individual liberties while democratic socialists seek to replace the current capitalist-based economy with a centrally controlled system that provides more federal support for individual needs, to be paid for by wealthy Americans. The relationship of the offshoot movement to the party apparatus, however, shares a similar trajectory and tactics, if not a central goal — to change the way Washington operates through a full-fledged takeover of existing leadership. To get there, Democratic Socialists of America and their allies are similarly decentralized as the Tea Party was, forming chapters across the country to elect a slate of new leaders in a string of primary victories over the party establishment. The Tea Party comparison isn’t a new phenomenon. Congressman Josh Gottheimer, a moderate, pro-Israel Democrat from New Jersey, reportedly joked back in 2019 that his then-new left-wing colleagues were members of the “herbal tea party.” After New York’s congressional primaries last month saw three socialists win, Mr. Gottheimer echoed what many moderate Republicans said about the Tea Party revolt — that people looking to tear down the political system are using his party as a “vehicle” to push a radical agenda and that unproductive perpetual protesters were simply trying to “hijack” the party. “Socialists aren’t Democrats,” Mr. Gottheimer said in an interview with CNN. “They’ve attacked our leadership … many of the positions are nowhere near what we believe — no police, no borders, no prisons.”To ignore the coming shakeup, however, is to misunderstand the new generation of populists, writes a USA Today columnist, Dace Potas, who calls the Tea Party a cautionary tale for today’s Democratic establishment. The emergence of the Tea Party from the base of the GOP came from frustration “with the establishment’s inability to block Obama’s agenda,” Mr. Potas wrote. The new left-wing crop of Democrats have a similar gripe about Democratic leadership not adequately battling President Trump. “These candidates span a broad range of policy positions, but they’re unified by rhetoric. They tap into voter frustration and direct the blame at billionaires, establishment politicians, Republicans, or whichever group is convenient to demonize,” Mr. Potas continued. “The throughline: Your struggles are somebody’s fault, and that somebody can be held accountable if you just put new leadership in charge.”Senator Bernie Sanders has played a critical role in leading that revolt against the party with which he votes. Much like Mr. Trump did in 2016 and the Tea Party before then, Mr. Sanders is trying to engage in a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party, railing against the establishment and corporate interests that he says dictate the Democratic agenda. Over the weekend, Mr. Sanders held rallies with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is hoping to defeat Congresswoman Haley Stevens in next month’s Democratic primary. Ms. Stevens is backed by party leadership, including Senator Chuck Schumer, as well as an avalanche of outside spending, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, against whom democratic socialists most frequently rail.“With all due respect to Congresswoman Stevens, everyone knows that this is not an election between her and Abdul El-Sayed. This is an election between Abdul and the billionaire class,” Mr. Sanders declared on Saturday.Ms. Stevens said that one essential difference between the progressive left takeover and the Democratic Party she has represented in Congress since 2019 is hostility toward allies like Israel. Dr. El-Sayed represents a flank of the party that is not interested in compromise.“He pushes a one-state solution between the longstanding conflict. And I am pushing for a permanent and lasting ceasefire. And I wanna see dignity for Palestinian people, innocent Palestinian people,” Ms Stevens told NewsNation on Sunday. Despite the “revolutionary” nature of a new movement, The Recount’s Steve Morris says Democrats pushing outsider credentials valued by populist movements are proceeding this election season to vote for “outsiders” who have been biding their time in government. “Democratic voters still prize governmental and legislative experience,” he said, noting that even exceptions like Dr. El-Sayed worked high up in county government before pursuing federal office. “The difference is really clear and it’s largely driven by voters themselves,” he said, citing a 2022 Pew poll that showed that Democrats’ voters are far less likely than Republican voters to vote for someone with no political experience. While the Tea Party, still a movement though decentralized, has been usurped largely by President Trump’s Make America Great Again base, what becomes of the relationship between Democratic Socialists and the Democratic Party has yet to unfold. In their current form, the Democratic Socialists of America are seeking something that has never been achieved before. “Nostalgia,” writes law professor and columnist Jonathan Turley, is a dirty word to newcomers who want to replace “lingering loyalty to our traditions” with “radical constitutional changes.”“History has shown that such radical proposals ultimately produce not democracy, but what the Framers called mobocracy. If we let that happen, many Americans will indeed look back at the last 250 years with a tragic sense of nostalgia,” he said.For longtime progressive strategists like Van Jones, the future of the party may come down to whether new and upcoming voters buy into ideas like abolition of police and borders, support for terror groups like Hamas, or the elimination of personal wealth or whether they reset toward traditional American values. “I’m rooted in progressive ideals and policies: criminal justice reform, Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free education, clean air and water. These are ideas I have fought for my entire adult life. But some people in groups like the DSA are pushing an agenda FAR outside those ideals,” he recently shared on X. “Yes, we want our Democratic Party to be a big tent. But we don’t need party poopers. So STOP pooping in the punch bowl — and telling us the turds are ice cubes,” he wrote.

Democrat Election Strategists Hear Echoes of Republican Tea Party Revolt in New Socialist Wave

Democrat Election Strategists Hear Echoes of Republican Tea Party Revolt in New Socialist Wave

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