RCP co-founder Tom Bevan, Thursday on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” said the Democratic Socialist wing within the Democratic Party has proven it can win primaries outside the bluest districts and has made the party’s internal “war” a national competition. Still, races like the Michigan Senate matchup between Mike Rogers and Abdul El-Sayed will prove whether the movement is viable nationally: <\/p>\n
TOM BEVAN: There’s a war that is going on inside the Democratic Party right now – this push and pull between the sort of centrists and folks who want to move the party to the left. As we’ve seen, the Democrats have said – at least the establishment Democrats have said – Look, last November, it was moderates that won governorships in Virginia and New Jersey. And then it was, Well, Mamdani was a special case. Don’t worry about that. And then it was, Well, these are just urban districts that are deep, deep blue, and so they don’t really touch sort of middle America. But then you had a DSA candidate winning in Colorado – still kind of an urban environment there. But then you look at these last two weeks. Michigan is a state that Donald Trump won two out of the last three times. So is Wisconsin. This is in the heartland. This is the Rust Belt. These are statewide races. And yet you have a candidate in El-Sayed who ends up winning, albeit more narrowly than people thought. And then you have Francesca Hong, who ended up losing, but also very narrowly, and pretty much was running even with the establishment candidate there. So I think that the Democratic Party – the DSA folks – have proven that they can organize and they can be competitive in races that are outside of these deep-blue House districts where they’ve been winning these primaries and sort of low-turnout elections. And I think, as I said, that means this fight is going to continue. And it’s going to be vigorous heading into 2028. C-SPAN HOST: Is there going to be another test before 2026? Is there another primary that you’re watching? Or, at this point, is it a matter of having that fight in the general election and seeing if that message can resonate and pull independents and even some Republican voters over? TOM BEVAN: Yeah. I mean, right now El-Sayed is a test case, right? He’s the guy who – again, he said he’s not a DSA member, so we’ll call him DSA-adjacent. He certainly holds a lot of the positions that some of the DSA folks hold. But he’s also a very talented politician. He’s very slick. He’s very good at sort of turning questions around, deflecting, not getting caught or trapped in any of these questions about some of the more radical DSA positions. On the other hand, he has these associations with Hasan Piker. He was asked about that on Meet the Press last weekend and sort of walked a little bit away from that. So we’ll see. But he’s running, as I said, in a state that is a swing state. It is very much one of the big seven swing states that have been crucial to deciding the presidential race in the last three or four cycles. And if he can win there against a pretty strong Republican candidate, Mike Rogers, I think that’s going to be the race that showcases where the energy of the Democratic Party is. If he loses, obviously, the Democratic establishment will say, Aha, told you so. We cannot be running these candidates. They’re too far out of the mainstream. And that will be an argument that they take into the 2028 presidential primary. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n