The Progressive Wave

“Congressional candidate Cori Bush speaking at an Expect Us rally” by Craig Currie licensed under CC BY

Despite falling short of nominating Bernie Sanders for President in 2020, American progressives still have reasons to be hopeful this year. Progressive candidates found strong success at state and local levels across the country in the 2020 Democratic primaries, setting the stage for a strong showing in November. In September, Rhode Island Senate President Pro Tempore Harold Metts, a 30-year legislative veteran, was defeated in the Democratic primary by nearly 20 points by 26-year old Tiara Mack. Mack is a Planned Parenthood worker endorsed by several prominent progressive organizations, a dramatic change for the state of Rhode Island. Mack handily won the general election on November 3rd, becoming the first openly LGBTQ+ Black person elected to the Rhode Island State Senate. In a similar primary contest, social worker Marie Pinkney defeated Delaware Senate President Pro Tempore David McBride, one of the longest-serving legislators in the state’s history. Pinkney, who was endorsed by many progressive organizations, won again in November, becoming the first LGBTQ+ member of the Delaware legislature. While these states are generally Democratic strongholds, many of their lawmakers have been entrenched in their seats for decades. Mack and Pinkney’s victories marked some of the first times incumbents have faced major challenges from Democrats with politics different than their own.

What is bringing all of this success? Recent worldwide events have spurred various liberal ideologies into the forefront of political conversation. The COVID-19 pandemic has reignited discussion of Medicare-for-All as a viable federal policy. Wildfires in California have made it clear that we, as a country, need to readdress climate change. The death of George Floyd at the hands of the police has forced us to confront issues of systemic racism. These dialogues represent a modern rejection of Trump-era politics and general dissatisfaction with the current Democratic establishment. It is not a fluke that 15 out of 22 candidates in Rhode Island backed by progressive organizations won their primaries in September. In Delaware, four of the seven September Democratic primaries for the state legislature were won by progressives. 

The success of these more liberal candidates is a show-of-force for Progressivism as a whole, representing the largest and most successful challenge to moderate, established Democrats in recent decades. Progressive discourse has started to become more mainstream in recent years thanks to the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but this year, in particular, has significantly shifted how the electorate thinks about and addresses these issues. With the COVID-19 pandemic and a national recession in full swing during primary season, it is no surprise that progressive candidates found substantial success at the polls.

While there were notable gains for progressives in state elections, there have also been gains in Congress. This year, progressives including Jamaal Bowman, Mondaire Jones, Ritchie Torres (New York), Cori Bush (Missouri), and Marie Newman (Illinois) all won primaries in solidly Democratic congressional districts. Bush bested 10-term Congressman Lacy Clay on August 4th, receiving over 20,000 more votes than in her 2018 primary against Clay. Bush was one of four candidates for Congress who were both nationally-endorsed and members of the Democratic Socialists of America, along with Bowman, Ocasio-Cortez, and Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib. Bowman, Jones, Torres, Bush, and Newman all won their November 3rd contests, bringing in a new wave of progressives to the House of Representatives.

Bush’s success in 2020 is a notable testament to the grassroots campaigns that progressive candidates have been trying to perfect since 2016, as well as to popular support for progressive policies. A July 2019 poll conducted by PBS, Marist, and NPR found that 63% of Americans over the age of 18 thought a Green New Deal was “a good idea.” Between September-December 2019, two NBC and Wall Street Journal polls saw support for Medicare-for-all amongst Democrats rise from 63-68%. Even more promising for progressives is a January 2020 Kaiser Family Foundation poll that measured support for “a national health plan, sometimes called Medicare-for-all” amongst Democrats at 77%. These opinions were reflected in the election results as well, as all 112 co-sponsors of Medicare for All that were up for election won their contests. 98 co-sponsors of the Green New Deal were on the ballot, with 97 of them winning their elections as well. 

A key development that has made the path to party nomination much more feasible for progressive Democrats is the rise of political action committees and organizations devoted to electing progressives into office. It is not uncommon for presidential campaigns to create various organizations that remain involved in politics long after the campaign has dissipated. This was exactly the case following Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. National organizations such as Justice Democrats, Brand New Congress, and Our Revolution were all spun out of Sanders’ 2016 campaign, and have all contributed to campaign logistics and funding for new progressives across the country. On state and local levels, the Working Families Party, Rhode Island Political Cooperative, and Reclaim Rhode Island all played major roles in assisting Northeast progressive candidates, even going as far as hiring full-time staff and endorsing town council candidates.

With all of this in mind, it makes sense that progressive candidates are becoming more and more competitive. Even in Kentucky, which hasn’t had a Democratic Senator in over 20 years, progressive state representative Charles Booker presented a very real primary challenge to the eventual nominee Amy McGrath, who does not support Medicare-for-All or “free college.” McGrath was long considered a guaranteed nominee having raised over $40 million for her campaign by June 2020. Booker received 42.62% of the primary vote to McGrath’s 45.41%, a difference of just over 15,000 votes.

Why is it worth paying attention to this year’s progressive wave? For starters, there is a precedent for state legislature shifts and midterm elections to foreshadow trends in national politics. For example, in 1966, the Republican Party gained 557 state legislature seats and 47 seats in the House of Representatives. This set the stage for a Nixon presidential win in 1968 and four decades of Republican domination of the presidency (1968-2008). In 2018, the Democratic Party flipped roughly 350 seats on state legislatures and gained 40 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, the largest net gain in the House since 1974. While the Democratic majority in the House did suffer in the 2020 elections, it is possible that progressives will see an increase in vote share which will continue to grow throughout the next few election cycles.

Progressives in the Democratic Party are at a pivotal moment. They can gain national recognition, win more funding than they’ve ever had access to before, and become a sizable coalition within federal and state legislatures, or they can succumb to infighting and lose the momentum they have built up over the last several years. To realize their potential success, they must decide which platforms are going to unite the Democratic base while securing the support of more moderate voters. To achieve this, they may have to be willing to sacrifice particular positions that have proven unpopular with voters—for example, slavery reparations and plans for universal basic income. With the right candidates, however, even these policies have the potential to become viable on a national stage.