The Memo: Left’s winning streak extends in Colorado despite Trump, centrist attacks

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The leftist tide coursing through Democratic politics reached Colorado on Tuesday, washing away longtime Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and putting paid to the gubernatorial hopes of Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).

In the aftermath, Democrats are asking urgent questions about the direction their party ought to take.

Voices on the left say insurgent candidates are meeting a popular appetite for more progressive policies, greater antipathy toward corporate interests, stronger condemnation of Israel’s actions, and more aggressive opposition to President Trump. According to this worldview, Democratic leaders in Washington have been timid and ineffectual.

Centrist skeptics jab back that the left — especially candidates who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — are paving a path to electoral ruin, taking positions that turn off moderates even as they win primaries in deep-blue areas. They also fear the left is handing electoral ammunition to Republicans.

Trump is among those on the right seeking to wring political advantage from the surging left. Speaking on Wednesday in North Dakota, he talked about preserving the U.S.’s exceptional nature, adding, “We’re not going to let the communists get in our way. … It’s a very unattractive lot.”

The remark served to reinforce a message the president had sounded earlier in the week.

On Monday, he told reporters in the Oval Office, regarding leftist candidates, “They use the word ‘social democrat’ because it sounds so nice, but it’s really communism you’re talking about.”

Similar attack lines are being pushed by Trump allies.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Wednesday complained that the Democratic Party had changed vastly since the 1960s era typified by former President Kennedy. Mullin contended it was now the party “of Bernie Sanders, who openly claims to be a socialist communist. That’s not the foundation of this country.”

Sanders is a longtime democratic socialist, but he is not a communist — nor, officially, a member of the Democratic Party.

Among the fundamental differences between democratic socialism and communism, communists generally favor the abolition of private property and the establishment of a one-party state. Neither of these things is true of Sanders nor of democratic socialism in general.

That is of cold comfort to more moderate Democrats, however — especially given Tuesday’s results in Colorado.

Bennet was defeated in the primary for governor by state Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is not a democratic socialist but who did promise to put up a more vigorous fight against Trump. An even starker contrast was seen in Colorado’s 1st District, where DeGette was defeated by Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old DSA member.

DeGette is on the more progressive side of the party, including being a staunch defender of abortion rights and advocate of environmental protection.

But the Israel issue became perhaps the single deepest fault line between her and Kiros.

Kiros had previously lost her job at a law firm after she wrote a post in November 2023 that cast Palestinian armed actions as the “symptom of violent resistance to violent colonialism,” while questioning how calls for the elimination of the Israeli state qualify as antisemitism.

She also argued that “the Israeli government has weaponized anti-Semitism to defend its crimes against the Palestinian people and quell any resistance or critique against it.”

Kiros’s victory over DeGette in this respect closely resembles last week’s primary in New York’s 10th District, where former DSA member Brad Lander defeated Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.).

Goldman, like DeGette, is a fairly left-leaning figure but one who is broadly supportive of Israel. For many Democratic primary voters, attitudes toward Israel in the wake of its assault on Gaza have become a moral test.

DeGette congratulated Kiros in a video message Wednesday. But, casting herself as the “quintessential legislator” willing to work across the aisle to get laws passed, she lamented: “Sadly in our toxic political climate, there seems to be little room for that type of politician anymore.”

Meanwhile, the larger intraparty debate keeps getting hotter.

Will Marshall, the president of the Progressive Policy Institute — which, despite its name, is center-left in orientation — warned that Kiros’s victory “will be celebrated by the party’s left flank as proof that the socialist insurgency is unstoppable. It’s proof of something more narrow: that voters are in an anti-incumbent mood.”

Marshall also asserted that a record 58 percent “of Americans think Democrats are too liberal, and the working-class voters the party needs lean moderate to conservative on immigration, crime, and cultural issues.”

Naturally, the left sees it vastly differently.

Justice Democrats, a leftist organization that has helped provide the organizational muscle for several of the recent victories, celebrated Kiros’s win as a triumph of the people over super PACs and the donor class.

The organization’s executive director, Alexandra Rojas, said Kiros’s victory showed the power of Democratic primary voters who are “finally getting leaders acting on their demands to bring the fight to the corporations raising our prices, the war lobbies profiting off endless war [and] genocide, and the immigration gestapo terrorizing our communities.”

The win was the latest DSA triumph, following closely on the heels of New York wins for two of its members, in addition to former member Lander, last week.

The electoral drama in the Empire State included community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier vanquishing Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), the head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Claire Valdez winning the battle for the seat being vacated by Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.), who is retiring.

All of these districts lean heavily Democratic, all but ensuring a new brace of DSA House members after November.

To Republicans, and moderate Democrats, it’s a troublesome vista. For the left, it holds the promise of a new era.

Avila Chevalier, probably the most controversial of last week’s New York primary winners, congratulated Kiros on social media Wednesday.

“I am so excited to build democratic socialist power in Congress with you,” she wrote.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

Tags

Bernie Sanders

Daniel Goldman

Diana DeGette

Donald Trump

Markwayne Mullin

Michael Bennet

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