Democratic Candidates Have Embraced Unity. Dem Pundits? Not So Much.

You could say this trend started in New York, in June, after relative centrist Caitlin Conley won the Democratic primary in Hudson Valley’s NY-17, winning the right to face vulnerable GOP Representative Mike Lawler. Progressive Working Families Party endorsee Effie Phillips-Staley endorsed Conley—and so did the WFP.

You could maybe even argue it began in New York City last year, when progressive Brad Lander and DSA member Zohran Mamdani endorsed each other and urged their supporters to rank the other second (New York City has ranked-choice voting) if they wanted to rank them first. Lander backers mostly did so, and Mamdani ultimately won, to the continuing horror of centrists everywhere. A year later, Lander defeated liberal billionaire incumbent Representative Dan Goldman in New York’s 10th Congressional District, with the ardent backing of Mamdani.

Why does all of this cross-ideological-lines solidarity deserve praise (and electoral excitement)? Because it is virtually ignored by the mainstream media, which would much rather cover what they perceive as the centrist “war” against Democratic progressives, especially those in DSA. For my entire adulthood, the media story is always about “Dems in disarray,” even today, as Republicans lose parts of their base, and all of their soul, to Trump’s cruelty and ignorance. The New York Times can’t call the Democratic left anything but “divisive,” even though it’s beefing up Democratic vote totals, and winning elections, all across the country.

“This is one of those moments where the pendulum has shifted, and people are anti-incumbent and anti–status quo,” says Jasmine Gripper, head of New York’s Working Families Party. “And I think what Dems need to do is be unafraid of the swing. and lean into it, and the energy. Lean into: This is how we win.”

In Wisconsin, longtime organizer Davette Baker, who supported Francesca Hong, is now solidly for David Crowley. But on her Facebook page she publicly rebuked Wisconsin’s current Democratic governor, Tony Evers, for deriding Hong’s supporters. After Crowley won, reporters asked what he expected of Hong voters. “They have to play along,” Evers said.

He corrected himself: “Not play along—they have to be part of it.” But then he went on to say Crowley doesn’t support Hong’s policy priorities. Way to go, Governor, when Crowley beat Hong by only about 3,000 votes (and statewide voter turnout was higher than it’s been in years). The Milwaukee County Executive also supports many if not most of Hong’s policies.

I know David Crowley; Baker knows him better. He started his political life as an organizer, and she’s known him since those days. She believes he supports many of Hong’s policy priorities. “I’m very excited about David,” Baker told me on Wednesday. But not so much about Evers’s interventions in the race, which she hopes party leaders have stopped.

At an August 17 joint appearance in Madison, Hong told the ideologically diverse crowd just why she supports Crowley: “[Crowley’s] childhood on Milwaukee’s north side shaped his vision of how government can add or subtract. Support or obstruct. Grow a community or deplete it,” Hong said. “David has lived the struggles that far too many Wisconsinites can relate to [and] have lived themselves.” Her supporters continue to ask Crowley to endorse Hong’s proposal to add a new, higher state tax bracket, and so far he hasn’t. We’ll keep watching.

But this is how the system is supposed to work: People who are allies on the vast majority of issues marshal their supporters to push for their policies; they don’t sit out crucial races and denounce their victorious rivals as the enemy.

Carville, Begala, Axelrod—older white men who, to their credit, ran some important Democratic victories around the turn of the century— could stand to learn from a new generation of Democrats, progressives, socialists and centrists, who understand the stakes in these 2026 midterms and the importance of expanding the Democrats’ reach.

Asked on Meet the Press last Sunday whether democratic socialists have a role in his party, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen—himself a white man of 67—struck a different note. “Yes they do, as part of the debate. I think that those in the Democratic Party who are afraid of a healthy debate are missing the point, because Democratic voters do not want a return to the pre-Trump status quo.”

Like Jon Ossoff, Van Hollen understands that, even apart from ideology, Democrats want leaders who are fighters. Luckily they have quite a few running for election in November. Let’s hope the left-baiting critics learn a lesson from the united front these candidates are assembling.