The Dems’ Left Turn on Their Establishment
COMMENTARY
By J.T. YoungFebruary 25, 2025

The Dems’ Left Turn on Their Establishment

Frustrated by President Trump, Democrats are again turning on their establishment. However, this time, it’s not just moderates and lower-profile members who must worry. Now, even old-guard warhorses with impeccable liberal credentials must watch their left flanks.

Shock waves recently rolled like a tremor from San Francisco when Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff announced his intention to challenge former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the 2026 primary. In announcing his challenge on X, Saikat Chakrabarti said, “Watching Trump and Elon freely unleash chaos in their illegal seizure of government, it’s become clear to me that the Democratic Party needs new leadership.”

AOC’s onetime campaign manager, Chakrabarti is taking a page from their 2018 playbook that took down Rep. Joe Crowley. A solid, 10-term Democratic Party stalwart, Crowley was influential in the Washington establishment, had a seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, and was seen as a possible House speaker.

AOC didn’t care. Despite being heavily outspent, she shocked Crowley and then waltzed to general election victory. Her improbable win introduced “the Squad” to Washington and emboldened the Democrats’ far left.

Pelosi, then Democrats’ undisputed House leader, was savvy enough to ride the wave and turn it on Trump. Now that wave may be turning on Pelosi and her establishment allies.

The old guard’s response has been barely articulate. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer posed with an avocado and a Corona at a press conference against Trump’s threatened tariffs on Mexico. Sen Elizabeth Warren regularly attacks any Trump administration proposal. Democratic senators later pulled an all-nighter protesting Russell Vought’s nomination as director of the Office of Management and Budget. With fewer procedural tools at their disposal, the efforts of House Democrats have been even less effective: protests outside USAID, Treasury, and the Department of Labor.

The Democrats’ establishment was already discredited in progressives’ eyes. The old guard forced Joe Biden down their throats as an electable compromise back in 2020 – even though the liberal base much preferred Bernie Sanders. They then kept Biden under wraps to keep him in office once he won. Their lawfare strategy against Trump didn’t work. They stayed with Biden too long, then executed an awkward and public push to remove him. Next, they preempted an open nomination process by coronating Kamala Harris.

In the end, the establishment’s machinations came to naught. Now back, bigger and badder than ever, Trump is like a bull in a china shop and particularly intent on knocking over the left’s crystal – DEI, transgender participation in girls’ sports, lax immigration laws, and increasing the size of government. And he shows no signs of stopping.

Pelosi and the Democratic establishment find themselves stuck. As political pros, they can read polls and election returns; they know Harris lost because of her leftist past and Democrats’ leftist present. From opposite ends of the Democrats’ spectrum, James Carville and Bernie Sanders have said as much.

To win, Democrats need to get their party off the dead-end road they are now on. Even a recent plurality of rank-and-file Democrats agree: According to a recent Gallup poll, “Support for a more moderate Democratic Party among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents has grown by 11 percentage points, to 45%, since 2021.”

But their inability to check their party’s leftward lurch means risking losing more elections – and party members. According to an earlier Gallup poll, 35% of Democrats identify as moderates and 11% as conservatives. To understand the electoral threat, look at 2024’s exit poll: just 31% of voters were Democrats (down from 37% in 2020), losing just their conservatives (11% of Democrats) equates to 3.4% of overall voters – over twice Harris’s 1.6 percentage point popular vote margin of defeat and, which, if shifted to Trump, would have meant a 44.9%-53.2% wipeout.

Yet, as much as Pelosi and the Democratic establishment veterans know this, their hands are tied because 53% of Democrats are liberal, and despite 45% of Democrats wanting the party to become more moderate, 55% do not.

For their part, the antsy members of the Democrats’ leftwing base have nothing to lose. They get to act out their rage. Should these actions have electoral consequences, they will fall on party moderates who hold more precarious seats. So, the left wins either way: If lashing out works, they gain absolutely; if lashing out fails, they gain relatively within the party as moderate members are driven out.

Democrats have been moving left for a long time (in 1994, just 25% of Democrats were liberals). Now, they are threatening a stampede. And it may be the Democrats’ establishment – even those like Nancy Pelosi – who get trampled underfoot.

J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004-2023.