Socialists are winning because they listen to people

Are we looking at a socialist revival in American politics? A mashup of political analysis since Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City would have you believe that we are living in either the golden age of leftism or that the communists are coming.

That might one day be our electoral reality, but not today. Yes, a lot of left-leaning candidates did well last week, with notable primary victories in Michigan and Kansas. But a lot of moderate Democrats also won their races. Some of the winning candidates had a lot of money to spend. Others were running at an extreme financial disadvantage. But the best of them are running campaigns that acknowledge that to win, Democrats are going to have to organise voters — not just fundraise off them. 

The Democratic Party has a deep structural problem. It is standing in the shadow of a past it yearns for and a future it has not yet built, and, at the moment, the progressive wing appears to be the only side that realises it.

Establishment Democrats may want to fight about the electability of left-wing candidates, but the party has bigger fish to fry. Labour unions and civil rights organisations are the twin engines of Democratic electoral power. Labour reliably delivered working-class men in the decades after the New Deal, serving as Democrats’ arterial vein in rural areas and the industrial Rust Belt. Civil rights organisations have, of course, reliably and relentlessly delivered the Black vote — and kept Democrats competitive in the South — since Lyndon B Johnson, a Democrat, signed the Civil Rights Act. Those two groups have long been a stopgap for middling Democratic candidates and muddled Democratic messaging. 

What’s most important to understand is that, now, six successive decades of economic, legal, political, and cultural challenges have made it difficult, if not impossible, for unions and civil rights groups to do that job.

Black civil rights organisations, in particular, have long worked hard to organise for the Democratic Party. They don’t just march to the polls. They cultivate voters, translate national platforms into local messaging and train candidates and staffers. The party’s electoral workhorses have been the Black women who keep the lights on in churches, drive the vans, canvass the communities, turn out the rallies and reliably deliver on Election Day. Black organisers in the South expected a Democratic cavalry after the Voting Rights Act was gutted by the Supreme Court. Instead, they feel abandoned. They look at conservative groups like Heritage Action and Turning Point USA and wonder what they could do with that kind of support.

The percentage of workers who are in a union is also at a record low. Even if Democrats find a winning, centrist message to bring back working-class voters and energise the South, the churches, schools, union halls, and volunteer societies that do the hard work of turning out the vote are under attack. Political strategist Atima Omara says there simply isn’t enough funding for grassroots organisers “to continue to do the necessary work to meet the moment.”

The candidates shaking up the Democratic Party are trying to fill the gaps these groups no longer can. They are going into neighbourhoods that traditional canvassing writes off because people aren’t registered to vote or they’re registered for the other team. They are merging old-school community relationship building with the best of digital data strategies, like microtargeting voters. When they talk about policy, they don’t just focus on blaming Donald Trump for every problem; they talk about issues that their potential constituencies tell them are important. In short, the latest crop of progressive candidates are campaigning like organisers. In doing so, they’re revealing weaknesses in the Democratic machine that have existed since Barack Obama ran for president — the first time.

Starting in the mid-2000s, the Democratic Party adopted a position that retail politics was due for an internet upgrade. Turning up for church hall meetings was well and fine. But haven’t you heard that Americans are bowling alone? Better to email. Phone banking turned into text-a-thons, where volunteers sent millions of text messages to cellphones we had not yet learned to ignore. Canvassing was fine. But the future was turning every voter into an influencer with a customised donation link he or she would text to friends and family. By the time he became President Obama, the onetime organiser was the face of the Democratic Party’s tech-forward 21st-century electoral apparatus.

That apparatus felt like the future in 2008. It would be multiracial and progressive, without trying too hard. And it would empower the little people over big-dollar donors. Which is to say, it would privilege Democrats, not Republicans.

By 2020, the Democratic advantage in digital campaigning was long gone. The GOP caught up, big time, while still growing its grassroots network. Democrats now had an internet problem — investing in tech innovations and not building their base between elections. As algorithms turned neighbours into unrecognisable partisans with crazy conspiracy theories, Silicon Valley abandoned the Democrats for Trump. Through it all, the frantic fundraising text messages just kept coming. 

The dog has caught its tail. Candidates with big war chests are finding that ad buys don’t guarantee victory. The people who are winning right now are organizing movements, not just raising cash.

You see it in Michigan. Abdul El-Sayed upset the deep-pocketed, establishment choice, Haley Stevens, by building a relational campaign on an economic populist message. El-Sayed won, in part, by characterising the $62 million in outside money that backed Stevens’ campaign as a sign of the political corruption that has activated the Democratic base. His army of 12,000 volunteers fueled a campaign that took what was once a nuclear position on AIPAC to 110 cities and 500 events. He has work to do with Black voters in the general election, but that doesn’t negate the fact that he overcame some pretty racist attacks and a huge spending deficit to clinch the nomination.

You see it in Francesca Hong’s unabashed socialist campaign for Wisconsin’s governorship. Armed with around 7,000 volunteers who are methodically executing a DSA-backed ground game, Hong is ahead in the polls despite her political weaknesses 

In Tennessee, Justin Pearson, a former organiser who once led a campaign that successfully halted a pipeline, is competing in a district redrawn to favour Republicans. Organising taught him that you don’t just find a likely voter. You develop a likely voter, through direct communication and a softer touch with fundraising texts and emails. Organisers call that relational. Or, as one strategist put it, talking with voters in a way that makes them happy to hear from the campaign.

As the MAGA media empire starts to fracture, Democrats have an opportunity to seize momentum. Like it or not, Democratic grassroots organisations favour populist politics, which progressive ideology is primed to meet. That, in turn, attracts candidates who are younger and more diverse than the establishment. Not every campaign that exceeded expectations last week is running from the left, but each one is running like candidates on the left. Strategic. Relational. Future-oriented.

It’s always dicey to make election predictions. But if I were trying to read which way the wind is blowing for Democrats in 2026 and 2028, I wouldn’t be looking for a socialist wave. I’d be looking for the candidates who are thinking and running as if they know that bases are made of people, not dollars.