Decision 2026 Addendum:The Left Wing's Track Record in Senate Primaries This Cycle. What We Should Take Away Is Different From What They Will

 

There's been a lot written and said over the last about just how seriously we should take the far left in American politics, whether they are labeled progressive, socialist, DSA or even outright communist.

I've had a lot of time to reflect on this subject and this sums up my opinion:

The far left will be successful in the American political system as soon as they understand how America or politics works. And in the ten years since Bernie's primary run, I see no evidence that they've made any substantive progress in either.

I'm given multiple examples of why I believe this before and this week I intend to buttress it with the results of the Democratic primaries this year that more or less confirms my overall opinion. Later this week I'll deal with a final summation of how they did in the Congressional primaries this cycle and today I'm dealing with how they did in the Senate.

One of the reasons that I'm convinced the American left has yet to understand how politics works is that they have different definitions for what success looks like. In terms of the Senate this can be illustrated by how they define the term 'turnout'. Because it's pretty clear that the establishment wing of the Democrats, as represented by Chuck Schumer, and the progressive wing, which for these purposes I will refer to as Sanders-Warren, have completely contradictory definitions.

To the establishment wing and indeed most political figures, successful turnout is a two-fold affair. First there is turnout in the primary in which you do everything to acquire more votes then your opponents. In many cases that usually means going to the left to win over the primary voters. Once you've won the primary, you must then pivot the general election which means going to the center in order to win undecided, independents and possibly dissatisfied Republicans. You must build a coalition in order to amass more votes than your Republican opponent does and they are building their coalition the same way.

For the Sanders-Warren wing, however, successful turnout means winning the primary only. As far as they and their followers are concerned, winning the nomination is the end of negotiations with any undecided voters or anyone else who isn't completely on board with the metrics they set in the primary. To even consider mitigating your positions to win over the undecided is a betrayal worse then losing the election. And if there are Democrats who are uncomfortable with the position the candidate took in the primary they have two choices: shut up and get on board or vote for the Republican candidate. Put a simpler way: the establishment wants its candidates to go where the voters are, and the progressive wants the voters to go where the candidate is.

This is a formula that can only work in a deep blue House district or in the case of the Sanders-Warren wing, states where the Republican party is so moribund that that no candidate from that party could win a statewide race. For Warren and such newcomers as Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, this approach is one they can live with. The fact that there are very few other states that are either small enough and/or Democratic enough for this approach to work has done nothing to diminish their certainty that is the only approach the Democratic establishment must take.

For people who have so many degrees and claim such high intelligence, the only reason they believe this approach is workable is because they have stayed in their left-wing bubble as much as the far right stays in theirs. It falls apart the moment you think about it and they clearly don't. And as I've noted throughout the leadup to the 2026 election the DNC with Schumer's blessing has spent its time and energy recruiting senatorial candidates who can and have won elections in Republican states. These included Mary Peltola in Alaska, Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Roy Cooper in North Carolina. All have proven track records at winning at statewide races in Republican states which made them strong possibilities to do so in the midterms. As of this writing all three are in a strong position to win in November.

The Sanders-Warren wing made a different approach. Over the fall they picked several candidates to run in the Democratic primaries in states of either various shades of red, swing states, or in one case where a vulnerable Republican was running for reelection.  Eventually they settled on six candidates and yesterday the last of those primaries took place.

So with that in mind let's look at their track record in chronological order of the dates of the primaries:

 

Texas: Jasmine Crockett

Jasmine Crockett began her run for the Democratic Primary in December of 2025, challenging James Talarico. Crockett had been negotiating for a while to come up with a dream slate that could possibly win across the board at every level and eventually went forward.

February she ran an ad in the Super Bowl which might very well have used AI and earned criticism. On March 3^rd she lost to James Talarico by more than six percent in the primary. Though multiple networks called it  by midnight she didn't concede until the following morning.

Crockett dismissed the term progressive, calling her positions 'common sense'. The people in Texas thought otherwise.

 

Iowa: Zach Wahls

 Zach Wahls declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the Senat in June of 2025.

Wahls was very much an activist while his opponent Josh Turek called himself a 'common-sense moderate' and prairie populist. The biggest difference going into the primary was that Warren was privately backing Wahls in large part because he said if elected to the Senate he would not vote for Chuck Schumer as Senate Leader while Turek said he would. Turek was backed by moderates such as Maggie Hassan and Catherine Cortez Masto.

Josh Turek would beat Wahls by nearly 25 percent of the vote.

 

Maine: Graham Platner

I've written so much about this and so much else has been said about this that there's no point relitigating it here. Suffice to say Platner won the nomination but eventually was forced to withdraw a few weeks later. I think it's safe to call this a defeat for the Sanders-Warren wing.

 

South Carolina: Annie Andrews

The Democratic Party had tried six years earlier to defeat Lindsay Graham with the very progressive Jamie Harrison, an African American who'd never held elected office in his life. He raised $57 million dollars in the third quarter of 2020, the largest quarterly total raised by a Senate candidate. And he lost in a landslide by nearly ten points to Graham.

In a demonstration that the Democrats learned absolutely nothing they chose to run Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who in 2022 had lost in a landslide to Nancy Mace. Harrison endorsed her and for all intents she ran unopposed.

On July 11^th Lindsay Graham died. A primary is scheduled is scheduled for next Tuesday. While this chaos may end up benefiting Andrews – the race has moved from Likely Republican to Lean Republican – it is still an uphill climb for Andrews in a state that last elected a Democrat to statewide office in 1998 when Fritz Hollings won reelection for the last time.

 

Louisiana: Jamie Davis

For all the enthusiasm that Jamie Davis might be able to argue for he faces an even bigger battle than Andrews.  He managed to win the Democratic primary but will be facing Julia Letlow in the general.  In both her primary win and runoff win Letlow got more votes in the Republican primary then Davis did in his Democratic primary win. And while a Democrat has won the Senate in the 21^st century when Mary Landrieu did in 2008 Landrieu was in the incumbent running for her third term. No Democrat has come close to winning a Senate seat since then.

Davis at best has been given a ten percent chance of winning a seat ranked as Safe Republican.

 

Michigan: Abdul Al-Sayid

I'll be writing about the race in Michigan in its own article in the next week or so but it is worth noting several things about this race.

First for all of the polls that emerged immediately in the final week of the race – many of them leaked from Al-Sayid's campaign – the primary was much closer then the polls said. And second Michigan has an open primary structure, which means you don't have to be registered Democrat to vote in the Democratic primary.

Mike Rogers was running unopposed in the GOP primary. So we can't rule out the possibility that many registered Republicans might have crossed party lines to vote for Al-Sayid so that the candidate who all polls shows would lose in the general election to Rogers's ended up being the Democratic nominee.

The Republicans were salivating for a match-up between Al-Sayid and Rogers, a man who narrowly lost to Elissa Slotkin just two years ago. And they ended up getting it.

Al-Sayid managed to win in what was by far the closest Democratic primary this cycle beating Haley Stevens by barely one percentage point.

 

Conclusion

 

 

The left wing will take away from this cycle what they want to take away. They will do everything to put the Platner debacle, which was entirely their mess, behind them and focus on the nominees they got as 'signs' of their inevitable movement.

Reality shows otherwise. In two of the states with a competitive primary the centrist candidate trounced the left wing candidate by a considerable margin. In Michigan the left wing candidate did win but by so thin a margin it shows just how divided the Democrats are in that state.

Al-Sayid now faces the more difficult task then Stevens was because if he wants to win in the general he has to move towards the center which involves many of the establishment Democrats he's spent the last year torching.  If he does this, he will almost certainly risk a backlash from those left-wing voters who chose him in the primary and who think that if Democrats are troubled by him, they can vote for the Republican.

Andrews and Davis managed to win in their states because in them the Democratic party is so moribund that there really is that much competition. Being the most progressive candidate in that state has no real value because both South Carolina and Louisiana are among the reddest states in America.

If the Democrats take the majority back this November, as is looking increasingly likely, it will because they've nominated centrist candidates like James Talarico and Josh Turek to run in red states. Al-Sayid and Troy Jackson – whose platform is as progressive as the disgraced Platner – might actually end up hindering the parties chances. 

Al Sayid is running as a far left candidate in a swing state, one that went for Trump just two years ago and that Biden barely won in 2020. Jackson has a similar platform and is running against a centrist Republican.  Both are running campaigns that will have immense burdens on them and combined with their left-wing platforms it is not impossible the Democrats may have to spend more time and money bolstering these campaigns then they would want.

As we enter the fall campaign the Sanders-Warren wing has picked its candidates for the stretch run and the establishment wing has picked theirs. Now will come the 'unity' part of the general election where both sides try to work together and win back the majority this November.

The difference is when all the votes are cast both sides will remember who was responsible for the Democrats getting – or not getting – the majority. And since the left wing has a selective memory at best, the establishment needs to keep its long memory.