Socialists cheer ‘shockwave’ primary night as DSA-backed candidates win, advance across the map

The Democratic Party’s socialist wing is taking a victory lap after more than a dozen Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, backed candidates won or are expected to advance in primaries across five states.

Tuesday’s primaries produced outright wins, apparent victories and runoff advancements for more than a dozen candidates linked to or backed by the DSA, including candidates for Congress, state legislatures, and local offices such as mayor and city council. One of the biggest victories came in Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, where Chris Rabb, a sitting state representative and self-identified democratic socialist, won the Democratic primary. 

Rabb is running unopposed in the November general election, which will lead him to becoming DSA’s second nationally endorsed member of the U.S. House of Representatives, according to the organization.

DSA’s election night live blog described the results for its “ambitious slate of candidates” as “rosy,” adding, “There is a new Democratic Socialist in Congress,” following Rabb’s primary win since he will be running unopposed.

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“There’s dissatisfaction with the establishment,” Mustafa Rashed, a Philadelphia-based political strategist, told WHYY News, the primary NPR-affiliate in the area. “[Voters] want someone different and if you can unapologetically present yourself as an outsider, as someone that’s going to give you a different outcome, I think people will be receptive to that message and respond to it. And I think that’s what happened.”

“What this means is that there’s potential for a new working-class alignment of voters… [who are] saying the same thing to the political establishment and the political machine in both the Republican and Democratic Party,” Maurice Mitchell, national director for the Working Families Party, told WHYY News shortly after the results were released. Mitchell described Rabb’s Tuesday night victory as “a shockwave” heard around the nation, WHYY reported.

According to the DSA, May’s primaries were “just the beginning,” citing a list of 27 DSA-endorsed candidates on the ballot in the upcoming slate of June primaries.

The socialist victories on Tuesday landed the same week the Democratic National Committee (DNC) released a long-delayed 2024 postmortem report that warned Republicans will continue trying to elevate Democrats whose politics or positions can be used to paint candidates in competitive races as out of touch. The report also suggested Democrats need to reconnect with Middle America, the South, rural voters, men, Latinos and working-class communities while building stronger messaging around affordability, public safety and candidate quality, rather than assuming anti-Trump energy is enough.

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DNC Chairman Ken Martin first promised to release a 2024 postmortem report after becoming DNC chair, then reversed course in December by arguing the party should focus on winning rather than rehashing the failures of the last election. 

That decision triggered months of pressure from activists, Democratic operatives and potential 2028 figures, including former Vice President Kamala Harris and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, before Martin released the report Thursday with a sweeping disclaimer distancing the DNC from its findings.

“Socialism is ascendant in today’s Democratic Party, and it’s influencing and shaping the primary election contests in a way that potentially spells doom for the party in general elections,” GOP strategist Colin Reed told Fox News Digital.

Reed compared Democrats’ current left-wing primary pressures to the Tea Party-era candidacy fights Republicans faced more than a decade ago, saying it was “ironic to see the shoe now on the other foot.”

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“As someone who’s old enough to have lived through the 2010 and 2012 cycles, when Republicans had a similar challenge in nominating and choosing candidates who could win general elections, it’s ironic to see the shoe now on the other foot,” Reed said.

The danger that could be afoot for Democrats heading into the midterms, and even the 2028 presidential election, has been echoed by Democratic Party leadership who have warned their party against putting all of its energy into ideological fights at the expense of electability.

At a July fundraiser last year, former President Barack Obama urged Democrats to stop “navel-gazing,” and support candidates already running competitive races and focus less on ideology than whether candidates can deliver for voters.

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“I think it’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up,” Obama said at the fundraiser, according to excerpts obtained by CNN.

“Stop looking for the quick fix,” he added. “Stop looking for the messiah. You have great candidates running races right now. Support those candidates.” 

Some progressives, however, have viewed Rabb’s win as evidence that the winning energy behind socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani can travel beyond New York.

“Philly progressives don’t want to waste the momentum they’re seeing in Maine, Texas and Michigan on another establishment candidate,” Ryan Birchmeier, a Democratic strategist and a previous communications director for former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, told The Guardian. “They see this as their ‘Zohran moment.'”

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Rabb himself made a similar comparison in March, telling City & State Pennsylvania that voters were motivated less by the Democratic Party itself and more by “opposition to extremism” and “anti-establishment fervor.”

Rabb, too, pointed to Mamdani’s election in New York City and said he was seeing that same energy “on the ground” in Philadelphia.