Democratic wins ignite centrist-progressive fight over path to 2028

Democrats emerged from Tuesday’s elections with sweeping victories that gave them control of Congress as well as something they’ve missed since President Trump’s return to the White House: a solid argument that they know what it takes to win.

From Texas to Pennsylvania, victories by candidates who appealed to the political middle gave new ammunition to those who think Democrats need to appeal to people outside their base to reclaim the White House in 2028.

At the same time, the election of progressive Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan offered a counter lesson: that voters could also be willing to get behind candidates running with a liberal ideology.

The results have set the table for a debate over the party’s direction, one that is likely to be waged within the House and Senate caucuses and on the presidential primary debate stage as soon as 2027.

Some Democrats on Wednesday said it’s a welcome debate and that the party should realize it needs both centrists and liberals to win across the country. Limit the infighting, suggest some of these insiders, and learn to work together.

“To win in a lot of places you need a big tent and a big tent needs multiple poles to stand,” said Democratic strategist Eddie Vale. “There is no one magic trick to win elections and we need different types of candidates in different districts and states to win.”

“We need to continue that moving forward instead of fighting over whose group or ideology was the one thing that won it,” Vale added.

But battles over how forcefully to push back on Trump are likely to quickly dominate the conversation.

In particular, Democrats even before the midterms were preparing for debates over investigations into Trump and whether it might lead to impeachment. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who is expected to be the Speaker, will also have to deal with these pressures.

“Look, we won. But now the challenge really begins. We can continue the political nonsense of recent years or we can use this time to improve upon our message,” one Democratic strategist said candidly.

“In many ways, people weren’t voting for us Tuesday night, they were voting because they’re pissed off at the status quo,” the strategist said. “They’re pissed off at the establishment. But they still have huge, huge doubts about us. And what we do next is going to matter. If we start pulling the political moves, we’re going to pay in 2028.”

Democratic strategist Basil Smikle agreed, saying Democrats need to “focus on the voter and not Trump” and that lawmakers need to “push policies that improve affordability and stick communities together through their institutions.”

Smikle said Democrats including Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Andy Beshear of Kentucky are likely to continue to gain interest in the coming months.

“I think the groundwork has been laid for a new Democratic coalition that only helps whomever emerges in 2028,” Smikle said. “The fact that Democrats also won big in important swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio — even in the South with North Carolina and Georgia — suggests that the map for Democrats has expanded greatly from 2024.”

As Democrats dissected Tuesday’s results, the chatter among Democrats was rampant on Wednesday about who might be the best fit to be the nominee in 2028 and what their message might entail.

Some continued to make the case that only a moderate could win nationally. But there were voices in the party who said Tuesday proved otherwise.

Pointing to El-Sayed’s win in Michigan, they said it created a big opening for a candidate like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who is a democratic socialist.

“Aside from the Democrats who won Senate and gubernatorial races in battleground states, AOC was last night’s biggest winner,” said Robert Wolf, a Democratic power broker and former CEO of UBS Americas, using a common nickname for Ocasio-Cortez. “Populism is landing with voters everywhere, and the trends back to Democrats amongst Latino voters helped expand the map to places like Texas and even Florida.”

“This puts her in a great seat to run for the presidency,” said Wolf, who held one of former President Obama’s first fundraisers in New York and quickly got behind his candidacy in 2007.

John Morgan, a longtime Democratic mega-donor, added that if Ocasio-Cortez had the progressive lane to herself, “the others would cannibalize each other … and she is the nominee.”

“America is desperate and hurting,” Morgan said. “That’s when revolutions occur.”

But moderates continued to pound the drum on Thursday that the biggest winners in purple and red states were candidates who appealed to the middle and independents.

“If anyone thinks we’re going to win with a DSA or progressive candidate in 2028, I’ve got a bridge to sell them today,” a second Democratic strategist said, using an abbreviation for the Democratic Socialists of America. “Look at the races one by one. With the exception of Michigan, the Democrats who won statewide appealed to a broad swath of their electorate, full stop.”

The strategist also said the message coming out of the midterms has to be focused exclusively on the economy.

“And we’ve got to do it quickly. We need these two years to show the electorate that we heard what they had to say and we have a plan,” the strategist said. “If we don’t prove that in the next 18 months, it’ll be 2024 all over again.”

But Vale said the biggest lesson of the midterms is that the Democrats need a “big dose of patience and humility about ‘knowing’ who the best candidate will be.”

“Candidate quality mattered a lot this cycle, and we need to let the crucible of the primary play out to see who is going to be the best to emerge,” he said.