What Happened to the Democratic Establishment?

By Jim Geraghty

Thursday, July 30, 2026

 

The Michigan Senate primary is August 4. The three most recent surveys have Abdul El-Sayed up by a wide margin over Haley Stevens. Our old friend Henry Olsen crunches all the numbers and concludes El-Sayed is favored to win.

 

The Wisconsin gubernatorial primary is August 11. A new survey shows Francesca Hong remains well ahead, with 38 percent, with her closest competitor former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes at 16 percent. Remember, there is no runoff; Hong just needs the most votes on primary election night.

 

It’s not that every self-identified socialist candidate or those affiliated with the DSA won or is winning Democratic primaries this year. But many did, in ways that warrant attention. Melat Kiros beat 15-term incumbent Representative Diana DeGette in Colorado’s first district. Darializa Avila Chevalier beat incumbent Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th district. Brad Lander beat incumbent Dan Goldman in New York’s tenth district. You could throw in Graham Platner beating Governor Janet Mills in Maine.

 

I don’t often read Vox, but Astead Herndon reframed the phenomenon going on in the Democratic Party in a potentially useful way: What if what we’re witnessing within the Democrats is less the rise of the party’s left wing, and more the collapse of the party’s center or establishment?

 

Even when they aren’t facing a DSA or socialist challenger, being perceived as part of the “establishment” has suddenly become a severe liability for Democratic politicians. Michael Bennet, the three-term senator who looks exactly like the guy you would cast in a movie or TV show to play a senator from Colorado, lost his state’s gubernatorial primary to State Attorney General Phil Weiser.

 

What happened to the Democratic establishment? In theory, they’ve still got the money and the power. Incumbency is usually a huge advantage in elections, and the mainstream media usually adores candidates who are on the left — but not too far on the left.

 

I think what we’re seeing in this year’s primaries reflects a long-building crisis of confidence in the Democratic Party, where the party’s grassroots have gradually concluded that their party’s leaders don’t know what they’re doing.

 

Put yourself in the shoes of a typical loyal Democratic voter and think about what you’ve seen in the past decade or so.

 

·         Hillary Clinton and her campaign wanted to face Donald Trump in the general election, because they were convinced Trump would be the easiest to beat.

 

·         Four years later, the elderly Joe Biden won. As 2024 approached, Democrats were repeatedly assured by Biden and his team that the president was good to go for another four years — despite polling indicating that 86 percent of Americans believed Biden was too old to serve another term. Then Biden turned in his catastrophic debate performance.

 

·         Then the Democratic grassroots were assured by just about every high-level party leader that Kamala Harris was the right choice to be the party’s nominee, and that there was no need, or time, for a primary. For several months, the message from her campaign, the party’s leaders, and a largely aligned media, was that Harris was “brat” and “joy.”

 

·         When Harris selected Tim Walz, the party’s establishment almost universally hailed the choice as inspired. Then Walz proved to be a flop on the debate stage, the highest-profile moment for a vice-presidential candidate.

 

·         While some Democratic Party leaders had private doubts about Harris’s ability to beat Trump, they kept them to themselves. Some analysts confidently predicted that Harris would win. Ann Selzer, the celebrated Iowa election pollster, missed the outcome in her state by 16 points.

 

·         After the 2024 election, grassroots Democrats suddenly heard a dramatically different story, that the Harris campaign always thought they were heavy underdogs. Harris senior adviser David Plouffe said, “Even post-debate, we had ourselves down in the battleground states. . . . I think it surprised people, because there were these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw.” (This would later be contradicted by Harris, who claimed her campaigns’ “internal analytics” had her “ahead in all the battleground states as of the previous Friday.”)

 

·         After the election, everyone started noticing that Harris, along with the Biden campaign, had raised more than $2 billion, double what the Biden campaign had raised four years earlier, and way more than the victorious Trump campaign. So where did all the money go, and why didn’t it lead to any swing state wins? Subsequent reporting suggested the Harris campaign was wildly overpaying for basic services because of time constraints.

 

If you’re a rank-and-file Democrat, you probably feel like you’ve been jerked around for years by party leaders who keep telling you everything is going to be all right and to trust them, but who then fumble at the worst times.

 

But you know who didn’t have any significant role in any of the messes laid out above?

 

Bernie Sanders.

 

Sanders has offered a consistent message since he became a household name running against Hillary Clinton — everything in American life that you don’t like is the fault of “the millyun-aihs and the billyun-aihs and the big banks.” He furiously denounces America’s wealthy and corporations as greedy, immoral, and grotesque. He isn’t complicated, he never has his finger to the wind, and looking and sounding like Howard Beale in Network, he’s mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. He’s not even going to pay a lot for this muffler.

 

He’s Luigi Mangione without a firearm.

 

And the socialists and DSA candidates get to be the candidates who stand for change, compared to their intraparty rivals. To a certain degree, a party’s establishment always represents the status quo, or at most, gradual and incremental change. And lots of Americans have been dissatisfied with the direction of the country for a long, long while.

 

I also think there are two other factors driving the crisis of confidence among Democrats.

 

First, if the Democrats’ blue state model is so self-evidently superior . . . why does it take forever to get anything built in a blue state, and why are school performances so subpar? Why has California spent about $14 billion on its high-speed rail project over a decade with no track laid yet? Why does California have the highest cost of living in the country? Why is there a consistent trend of people moving from blue states to red states in recent years?

 

One of the supposed advantages of the Democratic establishment was that it was supposed to be the pragmatic, realistic wing of the party that knew how to govern and get results, not a bunch of idealistic crazy dreamers.

 

Second, it would help if the men representing “the establishment” stopped being such heinous creeps — Andrew Cuomo and Eric Swalwell, most notably, but we can throw in Tim Walz arguing that the deportation of a convicted child rapist “doesn’t make us safer” and “we can’t all be judged by our worst day.”

 

(Yes, Graham Platner evened the score somewhat.) The average Democrat believes Donald Trump is the epitome of evil and the world’s sleaziest sexual predator; it’s not surprising that there’s talk of a second wave of “Me Too” gaining momentum. Whether or not Democrats actually stand for a higher standard in consequences for sexual predation and misbehavior, Democrats very much want to believe that they stand for a higher standard in consequences for sexual predation and misbehavior.

 

Max Miller, the Ohio Republican No One Wants to Talk About

 

Speaking of heinous creeps . . . are Republicans sure they want second-term Ohio Representative Max Miller to run for another term? The allegations against him by his ex-wife make him sound like an absolute monster:

 

Representative Max Miller, a second-term Republican representing northeast Ohio whose political rise was fueled by his close relationship to President Trump, has been accused by his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, of domestic abuse against her and their 2-year-old daughter.

 

Ms. Moreno, the daughter of Senator Bernie Moreno, also an Ohio Republican, has said that Mr. Miller scalded her chest and stomach by throwing hot water from a skillet at her body; held a gun to her head; pushed her against a wall and hit her head; and fractured their daughter’s collarbone and bruised her shoulder.

 

According to court documents, their daughter at one point told Ms. Moreno, “Daddy kill you.”

 

Mr. Miller has not only denied it all, he has gone on offense against Ms. Moreno, making damaging accusations of his own in a series of media interviews, court filings and countersuits that have kept the family’s personal trauma in the headlines. He has called his ex-wife mentally ill, a liar, a stalker and a dangerous individual who has made him and their daughter unsafe.

 

I notice Ohio GOP Governor Mike DeWine isn’t exactly running to the ramparts to defend Miller’s reputation:

 

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is concerned by the domestic abuse allegations against Republican Congressman Max Miller, but said it should be up to voters if he remains a U.S. representative. Now, a Democratic member of the Ohio delegation is calling for Miller’s resignation.

 

Across party lines, politicians are concerned about multiple women’s claims of domestic violence by Miller. The congressman has denied every allegation.

 

“The accusations are certainly very serious and certainly troubling,” DeWine said.

 

Ohio held its primary May 5; Miller ran unopposed. Under Ohio law, if Miller were to withdraw, the state GOP would select his replacement.

 

Rahm-Page

 

In a normal time, someone like Rahm Emanuel would get at least somewhat serious consideration for the Democratic presidential nomination. You’re not going to find many candidates with a more varied resume — representative, White House chief of staff, mayor of Chicago, U.S. ambassador to Japan. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that Emanuel is way to your left in terms of ideology. But he’s always been a hard-charging guy who recognized the importance of results. Compare his legacy as mayor of Chicago to Lori Lightfoot’s, or the results so far under Brandon Johnson.

 

But so far, Emanuel is an asterisk in national polling, and he’s going to have a steep uphill climb.

 

Emanuel’s been writing occasional columns for the Wall Street Journal op-ed page — on how the “Bernie Bros” could harm the Democrats’ chances in the midterms, on how Democrats can learn from Texas on how to adopt and promote wind and solar energy, and how the U.S. alliances with Israel and with NATO need to be retooled. (His one on parenthood is particularly good.)

 

But notice Emanuel’s choice of venue for his pre-campaign messages. The Wall Street Journal op-ed page is considered right-of-center, but it’s a particular niche of right of center: pro-business, hawkish foreign policy, serious, intellectual, usually anti-populist. This is Emanuel’s “lane” in the Democratic Party — one that is not particularly big, but which he may well have all to himself.

 

ADDENDUM: I suspect many fans of Dr. Anthony Fauci believed at the start of yesterday that Senate Republicans were on an unhinged witch hunt, and that there were perfectly reasonable explanations for everything Fauci did. And taking the Fifth was just a reasonable move to avoid any entrapment or future prosecution.

 

And then Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri asked a couple of basic questions:

 

Hawley: Let’s try something. What day of the week is it today?

 

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

 

Hawley: What color tie are you wearing?

 

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

 

Hawley: What color is the carpet in front of you?

 

Fauci: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

 

Really? Fauci thinks he might incriminate himself by saying what day of the week it is, or what color his tie is, or what color the carpet is?

 

Does Fauci come across as reasonable to you in that exchange?