“A tectonic shift has occurred in American politics over the last month,” Davis wrote in the June 24 opinion piece. “The Democratic party has been hit by a leftward tidal wave.”
According to Davis, socialist Chris Rabb’s May primary win in a Pennsylvania House seat once held by an establishment incumbent served as an initial warning. Two weeks later, left-wing candidates swept elections across Los Angeles. Two weeks after that, the left won the District of Columbia’s municipal races. Then on June 23, the left “dominated New York City in an overwhelming display of force,” with progressive Brad Lander defeating centrist Rep. Dan Goldman, socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier unseating incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, and socialist Claire Valdez easily beating Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. The Democratic Socialists of America down-ballot slate also took four state legislative seats.
Davis, a former member of the Sanders 2020 data team who remains active in the DSA, attributed the wave to several factors. The second Trump administration, he wrote, had made Democratic voters “far more receptive to challenging Donald Trump aggressively and to policies that represent a rupture from the pre-Trump consensus.” Crowds at the Sanders-Ocasio-Cortez “Fight Oligarchy Tour” included not only the youthful radicals of 2016 but also older resistance voters who had previously favored moderate candidates.
Davis described Israel’s assault on Gaza as a driving wedge issue. “Within the Democratic coalition, this is now an 80/20 issue,” he wrote, while the party establishment and elected officials “have completely missed the moral outrage felt by the Democratic base.” Votes for Israel and donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, he said, had become “massive anvils around any establishment candidate.” He argued that the issue propelled the wins of Analilia Mejia, Lander, and Avila Chevalier by defining those races as referendums on AIPAC.
Generational shift also played a role, Davis wrote. “Sanders won large margins with Democrats under 35 in 2016. The oldest of those voters are now 45, but still voting the same.” He said democratic socialism had moved “from out of nowhere to be hegemonic among an entire generation of voters” now aging into the majority. Underpinning the shift is a decade of local organizing through DSA chapters that have built an ideological base in urban cores and the organizational infrastructure to expand beyond core constituencies.
Davis highlighted the DSA’s structure as a “democratically run, member-funded organization” as a key difference from the Working Families Party, which he described as “funded by grants from big donors, byzantine internally.” In New York’s 7th congressional district, he wrote, DSA candidate Valdez “wiped off the map” the WFP-backed Reynoso. “A left rooted in the masses is a left that is once again muscular, not tied to the whims of donors,” Davis wrote.
He concluded: “After the last month, Democratic leadership should be seriously taking stock of their position. The energy is on their left. The people are on their left.”