Party Cannibals
So hangry are the Democrats, who look to devour Republicans in the midterms, that they look upon their own as appetizers.
Call it the Zohran Mamdani effect. His win in New York energizes like-minded Democrats around the country, some in districts more moderate than the Big Apple. (RELATED: The Democrats Decide to Lose)
Jonathan Paz, a Waltham, Massachusetts, city councilor, challenges House Minority Whip Katherine Clark from her left in the 2026 Democratic Primary.
Perplexed Republicans marvel that any space exists to Clark’s left.
In 2022, Capitol Police detained her and more than a dozen of her colleagues protesting another branch of government in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Clark boasts a transgender child with his/her own arrests at demonstrations, including one on the Boston Common that witnessed “ACAB” and “No Cop City” spray-painted on the Parkman Memorial Bandstand. Clark does not share a last name with her husband but reportedly does share an apartment with Reps. Grace Meng, Lois Frankel, and Julia Brownley.
In other words, Katherine Clark looks and acts like an identikit progressive politician. But that does not stave off a progressive primary challenger.
“They’re not stopping Trump,” Paz claimed in a Monday morning campaign announcement. “They’re not making life more affordable. They’re not building a party for the working class.”
Paz, who says he witnessed the deportation of his Bolivian father, believes that the Democratic Party has failed its constituents. The constituents in Massachusetts-5 include carbon copies of Clark in leafy Lincoln and Lexington. Massachusetts-5 also includes grittier, more immigrant-rich areas within Framingham, Waltham, and Revere.
If this were Eugene McCarthy primarying Lyndon Johnson in 1968, when the Vietnam War caused a massive schism in the Democratic Party, then the Paz challenge might make more sense. The reason it does not come off as such a non sequitur is only because he replicates in Massachusetts-5 what other progressives do around the country.
A coordinated effort exists to exchange shop-worn, older progressives with newer models…
A coordinated effort exists to exchange shop-worn, older progressives with newer models (which seems similar to cyclical, new-wine-old-bottles efforts to replace “progressive” with “liberal,” and then “liberal” with “progressive”).
Dan Goldman, in New York-10, sits pretty far to the left in Congress, at least according to this tabulation of votes. He served as the lead counsel to the House managers during the 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump and became a familiar face to MSNBC viewers as a legal analyst.
Like Clark, Goldman looks like a tailor-made progressive candidate. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, an ally of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, nevertheless runs against him in the 2026 Democratic primary. Goldman’s support for Israel and massive inherited wealth figure to play as subtexts within Lander’s run.
Mike Thompson, a 14-term House member representing California-4 north of San Francisco, faces venture capitalist Eric Jones.
Like other upstarts, Jones claims that “the Democratic Party has forgotten the struggle,” “represents corporations over people,” and fails “to fight Donald Trump.” Whether a white millionaire represents the face of the new Democratic Party, Jones’s fundraising prowess cannot be ignored. Earlier this fall, NBC reported that Jones was one of two Democratic Party primary challengers to raise at least $1 million in the second quarter.
The spate of primary challengers gives voice to the inarticulate anger of Democratic Party voters. They lash out, indiscriminately, at Donald Trump for events beyond his control and at Democratic officeholders for policy change beyond their control. They do not grasp their internal policy contradictions (transgender rights and a blue-collar party!), and they certainly do not grasp that when your ideas so alienate the electorate that the opposing party controls the House, Senate, White House, and Supreme Court, your party holds little sway in the corridors of power.
Democrats must win elections again to do this. Given a fickle electorate that often punishes the party in power during midterm elections, it seems likely that Democrats will win big next November, no matter who appears on their ballot slate.
This rush left when the mass of votes sits in the center, though, seems counterproductive to the tribe’s long-term success. Better for future health to feast on exotic fare than gorge on members of the tribe.
READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn:
Calibri, Times New Roman, and the Trump Administration’s Symbolic Battle over Symbols