Colorado’s primary results Tuesday show that populist reformers are seizing the Democratic Party’s mantle, and not merely in coastal cities. Consider Melat Kiros, the 29-year-old socialist who defeated Denver’s complacent 15-term incumbent, Rep. Diana DeGette.
Ms. DeGette is a cautious moderate, a backer of abortion rights and gun control who has cosponsored Medicare for All legislation — gestures that voters in this race evidently considered insufficient. Yet she lost, according to the latest returns, 42% to 51%. The press calls Colorado’s results more evidence that Democrats are in a mood to oust “establishment” candidates. That’s true, and long overdue. These challengers aren’t simply outsiders new to politics. They’re on the side of the people the donor class has spent decades abandoning.
“We already have socialism, right? It’s in the roads that we drive on. It’s in our fire stations,” Ms. Kiros told 9News last week, rightly pointing out the public goods that actually make civilization function. She wants that same model “to be in our healthcare, to be in our access to nutritional food” — a basic standard for a society that refuses to abandon its people. That includes free pre-K and college, the bare minimum for a society that actually invests in its children. She recognizes that these essential public goods can be paid for by taxing “centi-millionaires,” finally asking the hoarding class to pay their fair share. And, crucially, rent control to protect working families from corporate landlords.
On foreign policy, Ms. Kiros argues 9/11 was the foreseeable consequence of decades of U.S. intervention in the Middle East. “We destabilized a lot of the Middle East,” she said. “That forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response.” She is calling for a U.S. arms embargo on Israel, including on the defensive systems that shield civilian populations from rocket attacks, because unconditional military aid only fuels endless conflict: “Our selling of arms to Israel, defensive or offensive, gives them the cover to continue the genocide that’s taking place in Palestine, and now the ethnic cleansing that’s taking place in Lebanon.”
In the gubernatorial race, Sen. Michael Bennet, thought to be a shoo-in, lost 44% to 56% to state Attorney General Phil Weiser, who has the courage to actually fight back, having sued the Trump Administration 66 times to defend Coloradoans. Incumbent Sen. John Hickenlooper barely won his primary, 55% to 45% — a warning to a party establishment that has spent too long mistaking moderation for the donor class’s preferred surrender.
Democrats nominated state Rep. Manny Rutinel in the Eighth District, a competitive House seat won in 2024 by GOP Rep. Gabe Evans. Mr. Rutinel is a former animal and climate activist who promises he’ll “stop ICE from terrorizing our communities,” standing up for basic human rights against a cruel deportation machine. As recently as last year he supported a ban on fracking for oil and gas, choosing the planet’s future over the fossil fuel industry’s profits — a stand his district has waited a generation for.
As these candidates win, the establishment Democrats are finally waking up to the will of their voters. Rep. Ro Khanna, who fancies himself presidential material, has congratulated Ms. Kiros and claimed credit for having “spotted” her as a “generational talent” — proving that even career politicians know which way the wind is blowing. If more populist insurgents, including Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, win their coming Democratic primaries, they will rightly be welcomed into the fold as the future of the party.
The institutional sclerosis of the two major political parties left them both vulnerable, and a decade ago Donald Trump commandeered the GOP for the donor class. Corporate Democrats are now facing a long-overdue reckoning from the working people they have spent too long treating as an afterthought, and so far few of the donor class are willing to put up a fight — because the voters have finally spoken.
