Does Josh Shapiro Have a Fight in Him?

By Noah Rothman

Monday, July 06, 2026

 

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro sounds like he’s itching for a fight with his party’s insurgent socialist wing, whose uncomfortable marriage of convenience with the Democratic Party is, by the insurgents’ own admission, a temporary compromise.

 

“I think what our party has to go through that will be very healthy, and something we’ve not really done since the 1992 election cycle, is to have a battle over what we believe in,” Shapiro told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday. But the governor has a dog in this fight.

 

He singled out just one of the Democratic Socialist firebrands taking his party by storm, the activist Darializa Avila Chevalier. “I have profound differences from that particular candidate,” Shapiro said. “She’s not someone, you know, who, seemingly, I would agree with on many things or that we share similar values.”

 

It’s reasonable to expect that, at this point, Shapiro might have elaborated on the “values” that he believes Chevalier does not cherish quite like he does. But Shapiro did not do that. Rather, he managed only to inferentially accuse the socialist candidate of being a Democrat in name only – a reality that the DSA’s operatives barely bother to conceal, and one that does not seem to concern their voters.

 

That timidity is in keeping with Shapiro’s efforts to retain the good graces of the far-left wing of his party, à la his recent expressions of support for a “radical reform” of the Supreme Court.

 

As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, Shapiro has built a successful political brand for himself as a competent executive with a distaste for theatrics. “But in an era in which Democratic voters have said they want a more combative fight against Trump and progressives are pushing the party leftward,” its reporters pondered, “there is the question of whether Shapiro’s pragmatic, moderate brand of politics can perform in a presidential primary.”

 

The question has been asked and answered. If Shapiro cannot take his own side in a fight, we shouldn’t expect anyone else to pick up his slack.