WASHINGTON — In early 2020, Bernie Sanders won two back-to-back primaries and progressives appeared on the verge of conquering the Democratic Party. But after losing that race to Joe Biden and facing recent setbacks, the movement is readjusting its ambitions with an expectation. Kamala Harris win this fall.
Gone are the skyrocketing demands for Medicare for all and the Green New Deal to transform the health and energy sectors that Harris endorsed in his failed 2020 bid and has now backed out of. Progressives are instead coming up with a more pragmatic and economy-oriented agenda, including raising the minimum wage, funding child care and new Medicare benefits for seniors.
Pramila Jayapal, president of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who endorsed Harris, said progressives were playing the cards they were dealt.
“I don’t think there’s ever been perfection on the ballot. But it’s real progress,” Jayapal said in an interview with NBC News. “Unless Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren is elected president, we still have work to do to make these exact things mainstream.”
“Our very… Progressive Caucus agenda It’s what we know he’s for, as it was for the Biden-Harris administration, and I believe the Harris-Walz administration will be for it,” he said.
The left has rallied around the vice president in a dual race against Donald Trump, though progressive leaders have had little direct contact to discuss his vision for the presidency. As a sign of this tension, Sanders, I-Vt., He has been slow to endorse Harris, but on Friday he did praised its early policy applications to address food, housing, drug and child care costs.
It’s been a tough year for progressives. two members Representatives of the left-leaning “Deputy” of the House of Representatives. Jamaal Bowman, DN.Y.and Cory Bush, D-Mo. – lost their primaries in safe blue districts to more moderate Democrats. It’s the movement’s first electoral setback after six years of successfully zeroing in on various Democratic strongholds to elect progressive incumbents. Activists blame it on the millions of dollars spent by the pro-Israel group AIPAC and its allies to oust lawmakers critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza after the October 7 Hamas attack.
Asked what lesson he learned from the Bush and Bowman defeats, Jayapal said, “I see it as a lesson for us to make big money out of politics.”
Other prominent Left-affiliated party members, including Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa.and Ruben Gallego, a candidate for the U.S. Senate of Arizona, have abandoned the label amid disagreements over issues such as immigration and border policy, among others. Gallego is currently a congressman representing the Phoenix area. He left the Progressive Group this year, he’s leaning right on border security.
This year, the Democratic Party more broadly drifted significantly to the right about immigration when searching strengthen law enforcement. Some in the party also emphasize progressive social causes in their campaigns.
As voters’ opinions change, a senior aide to a Senate Democrat said they’re having some effect “on how Democrats talk about these kinds of things.”
“You don’t really see a lot of Democrats trying to hold on to criminal justice reform and policing,” this person said. “And you definitely see Democrats [concede] All school closures during covid. … And it really stunted some of the kids’ development. So, it is in the mind, in the psyche.”
Recent polls highlight these changes, even among the Democratic electorate. This spring Harvard Youth Survey It found that 53% of 18-29-year-old voters feel there is an immigration crisis at the southern border. Only 16% disagreed with this opinion. This poll showed that young men have gone from a +22 Democratic advantage to just +3 over the past four years. At the same time, young women became 6 points more Democratic.
“This country is different in good economic times and in bad economic times,” said Republican Bill McInturff, a pollster for NBC News, adding that concerns about inflation and the economy “have people feeling very stressed, and ‘I’ve got big problems of my own.’ so I have a certain tolerance for worrying about other things.”
A Pew Research Center surveyReleased in June, it showed a significant drop in support for some progressive social messages. The share of Democratic voters who believe that black Americans have benefited greatly from societal advantages did not decrease by 16 points between 2020 and 2024. 9 points from 2017.
Will Stancil, a political analyst who lost last week’s Democratic state House primary in Minnesota, said the GOP’s war on “wokeness” has made Democrats less forceful in pushing back on key things like “racism is a real problem, you need to.” to fight against it'”
“It’s not controversial to me,” he said. “And we’re now having a lot of trouble building what I thought a few years ago.
Perhaps the most consequential were Pew’s findings about immigration. The percentage of Democrats who say undocumented immigrants should not be allowed to stay in the country legally rose 9 points from 2017 to 16%. Among all voters, this number has increased by 19 points since the same year.
“It’s immigration that’s changing everything right now,” said a Republican Senate aide, who described the vote swing as “massive” and added that “I never thought I’d see” the increased support for deportation that Pew showed.
Osama Andrabi, a spokesman for the progressive campaign group Justice Democrats, blamed the backlash on right-wing interests pushing back progressive victories.
“We have seen the legislative parts that form [progressives]Like the Inflation Reduction Act, historic investments in climate change, historic investments in jobs. … If you ask Democratic districts about these policies, they are very popular, very popular among all voters,” he said.
Other Democrats say the progressive victories of the Biden era have not been fully appreciated in some corners of the left — which they say could make it harder to pass progressive legislation in a future administration. A Democratic Senate aide felt there was “no appreciation” for the left’s role in shaping Biden’s agenda, and that progressives were “more interested in demonstrating how different they are from the establishment Democratic Party than in seeing the Democratic Party as a means to an end.”
Echoing the aide, Stancil said that the main divide on the left now is between those who identify themselves in opposition to the Democratic Party and those who do not.
“You’ve seen on the sidelines what I would describe as a sort of jealousy of the left, which centers around getting things done, progressivism centered around specific policy issues, an almost apocalyptic rhetoric of ‘we’re doomed, nothing can save us.’ , America is doomed, burn them all,” Stancil said. “And there’s a kind of joy in that that I think is sometimes hard to separate from the far right.”
In addition, waves of pro-Gaza protests across the country have provided some examples overshadowing anti-Semitic rhetoric and vandalism The cause of Middle East peace and Republicans have drawn widespread criticism from Democratic leaders as they seek to marginalize the entire Democratic Party. Pro-Israeli Ritchie Torres, who represents the deep blue region, also left the Progressive Caucus this year amid its response to the Gaza conflict. Fetterman has waged an open political war against the left by supporting Israel’s bombing of Gaza, saying the time to discuss a ceasefire is after Hamas is destroyed.
Although there were victories.
Progressives rallied against Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and behind Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz when Harris finished 2nd. Harris ended up finishing 2nd at Walz. Advocates are energized by the rise of Harris, who has given the party new hope after Biden. ended a struggling re-election campaign. Some are willing to give Harris the space he needs to abandon his past positions and lean to the right on issues like immigration in the final months of the election.
“Less than three months to the election, I’m 100% done with these loser, gossiping bulls. We have to win,” said the progressive organizer, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about his peers. “We’re not in an advocacy moment right now; we are in the moment of winning the damn election. “We’re going to take the floor on November 6th, and if we’re successful in the next few months, then we’ll have the opportunity to push a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress to pass good legislation.”
“The worst thing that could happen to immigration would be a Trump victory,” the activist said. “The second worst thing that could happen would be to win the White House but lose the Senate.”
Democrats face a steep uphill battle for a majority in the Senate. If Harris wins and Republicans take control of the chamber, he will have effective veto power over the legislative agenda and the agenda of the Progressive Caucus.
Jayapal said the left was being targeted because of its successes.
“I think it was a recalibration,” he said. “It seems to me that progressives have excelled in many ways. I measure our success by what we do. I think Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been the most progressive administrations we’ve had in my lifetime.”
For Republicans, there is an acknowledgment that, despite some setbacks, progressives remain formidable opponents.
As a Republican Senate aide put it: “I’m not ready to bury the left yet.”