Establishment Loses & the Democratic Party Reveals Its True Self

This essay appeared in the June 25, 2026 edition of UNFTR’s premium newsletter. Become a UNFTR memberto receive our bonus newsletter each week and for other perks.

The ostensibly liberal Democratic Party, which has been in a state of perpetual malaise for years, including when Barack Obama was president, took a gut punch as leftists emerged stronger in the wake of various primary elections. The results instantaneously sparked rapturous condemnations of people on the left, as some described the events of that night as an existential wake-up call and compared it to the right’s Tea Party movement, which began in 2009.

The most hysterical reactions came in response to what has been dubbed the “Mamdani Sweep” in New York, in which three candidates the New York City mayor backed helped upend the establishment and, for the foreseeable future, disemboweled machine politics in a city that sits at the center of global capitalism.

Of the three Congressional primary victories, two of them produced flashbacks to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s defeat of long-time incumbent and Democratic leader Joseph Crowley, a feat routinely described as a “political earthquake,” as a pair of incumbents were knocked off by Brad Lander, a one-time Mamdani rival-turned-staunch ally, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, who fended off incendiary attacks by the corporate wing of the party.

If AOC’s victory shook the establishment to its core, then the results could only be seen as having a force-multiplying effect, shattering the Richter scale by potentially rewiring the Democratic Party.

And the corporatists seem to sense it, too, because they struggled to come to grips with the results—blaming everyone but themselves for voters’ repudiation of the party at the polls. The two most notable losses revolved around a pair of well-known incumbents: Reps. Daniel Goldman, best known as the chief litigator in Donald Trump’s impeachment, and Adriano Espaillat, among the most influential Democrats nationally. Separately, Claire Valdez, a state assemblywoman, secured the other major victory for the Mamdani-endorsed candidates, defeating Antonio Reynoso, the influential Brooklyn Borough President.

The through-line for each appears to be Israel, which has become deeply unpopular nationally among Democrats. Goldman, a self-described “proud Zionist,” has been one of Israel’s strongest allies in Congress. In May 2024, after South Africa had made its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and as the death toll continued to horrifically climb in Gaza, Goldman released a statement in which he said “there is absolutely no genocide in Gaza.”

Goldman was also the recipient of significant campaign contributions from AIPAC, which, while still very much influential, has attempted to support candidates financially in other ways due to how negatively it’s now perceived by many on the left. As for Espaillat, he has refused to characterize Israel’s war of annihilation as a genocide and never strayed from the party’s position toward Palestinians, despite industrial-scaled killings and suffering.

He also saw a surge in donations in the waning days of this campaign, particularly from donors aligned with AIPAC. Per Drop Site News:

“On a single day, June 4, 2026, Espaillat raised just under $112,000 from 69 wealthy donors at an average of $1,623 per contribution. Not a single donor listed an address inside Espaillat’s district, which encompasses Harlem and surrounding areas, and 48 of the donors have also given large amounts of money to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) since 2023. That number goes up to 67 out of the 69 contributors if you include donations to AIPAC-adjacent organizations like Democratic Majority for Israel and the Republican Jewish Coalition. At least 44 of the new Espaillat donors have given heavily to Republicans.”

While multiple polls have shown that Israel has become deeply unpopular with the Democratic base, the corporate wing of the party has stubbornly stood by Israel’s right-wing government, which has waged war on various regional neighbors, most recently Lebanon.

As the losses mounted, Democrats became apoplectic, but seemingly refused to engage in self-reflection.

Among the most common talking points is that those who successfully primaried establishment Dems “hate the Democratic Party,” suggesting that its “big tent” political project is dead. It all but confirms what many progressives and those on the left of the party have long said: that Democrats are more sympathetic to their donors than the working class, that they don’t actually care about human rights or the slaughter of children, and that their ultimate objective is political survival and consolidating power.

Former Democratic Party Chair Jaime Harrison said out loud last Tuesday evening what many party skeptics had already suspected:

“I say this with no ill will or animosity: if you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination. Don’t use our resources. Don’t rely on our volunteers. Don’t use our infrastructure. Don’t ask Democrats to invest their time, money, and energy in your campaign. Focus on building the party you actually support. Political parties aren’t perfect, but they’re built by millions of people who knock doors, make calls, organize meetings, and fight for the values they believe in. If you don’t believe in the party, then don’t ask its members to carry you across the finish line.”

Harrison’s reaction is striking when you consider that those who have attempted to build political projects outside of the party ecosystem have been repeatedly excoriated. The modern version goes back to Ralph Nader, who was condemned for playing “spoiler” when George W. Bush Hanging Chad’d his way to victory against Al Gore.

“The Democrats don’t fight for what they say they believe in,” Nader said in 2003—a sentiment that rings as true today as it did when Bush was allowed to run roughshod over the Constitution and mainstream the unitary executive approach to government long-coveted by his vice president, Dick Cheney.

Most recently, Green Party candidate Jill Stein and, to a lesser extent Libertarian challenger Gary Johnson, were blamed for handing the 2016 election to Trump despite Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote.

Under Harrison’s view of how politics should work, Stein did everything she was supposed to—organize outside of the Democratic Party and try to shape the conversation from the outside. But as the Dems reeled from Trump’s shocking win, they quickly turned Stein into the chief villain of what had been an incendiary election cycle.

“[I]t is also undeniable that third-party voters cost Clinton the election, too,” Vanity Fair wrote. “Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, won 3 percent of the popular vote and over four million votes—many of them in close states that could have swung the election for Clinton. Johnson won 25,000 votes in New Hampshire, for instance, where Clinton lost by just 4,000. Stein, the Green Party candidate who ran to the left of both Clinton and Bernie Sanders, played spoiler in Michigan, receiving 51,444 votes in a race where Clinton lost by 12,686. Stein also received about 1 percent of the vote in Wisconsin, potentially enough to have tipped the state to Clinton.

“But like every third-party spoiler—remember Ralph Nader?—neither of the also-rans are accepting any responsibility for having tilted the election to Trump.”

The attacks became so vitriolic that the establishment and their allies in corporate media weren’t content with building a political case against her—they had to make her an enemy of the United States, too. The chaos that ensued forced Stein to go on the record saying “I am not a Russian spy.”

Through it all, many of Stein’s supporters insisted that a vote for her didn’t necessarily mean they would’ve pulled the lever for a Democrat if she wasn’t on the ballot. As it turns out, the shoddy argument that the media and political elites sold to Americans proved to be paper thin, according to a paper published in February 2022 by a pair of political scientists.

“Our analysis indicates that the majority of Johnson’s and Stein’s voters would have abstained from voting if one or both of those candidates had not contested the 2016 election. Of those who would have voted, we estimate that approximately 60% of Johnson’s voters would have voted for Trump, and 32-33% for Clinton. And, for Stein’s voters, we estimate that 75-80% of those still voting would have chosen Clinton, versus 17-18% for Trump. Reallocating these votes accordingly would not have altered the outcome of the 2016 election.”

For her part, Clinton went on to blame everyone but herself—from former FBI Director James Comey and Vladimir Putin to Obama and Bernie Sanders, the latter of whom set aside his differences and did everything he could to help Clinton beat Trump.

The knives came out again in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. Democrats tried to block third-party candidates from getting on the ballot for the contest, and also hired a “team of lawyers,” as The New York Times described it, for “tracking the threat” that third-party candidates supposedly posed. They were so scarred from the manufactured third-party crisis of 2016 that Democrats proudly publicized how they were buying ads to convince voters on the left—who were told this week to find a new home—not to support Stein, Dr. Cornel West, or any other alternative candidate for that matter.

Harrison hasn’t been the only one telling critics of the Democratic Party to pack their bags. James Carville, the well-known political strategist and media darling, claimed in an interview that “These people do not like Democrats. Not only are they not Democrats, they wish Democrats poorly.”

And there it is, folks. It took a few socialists to beat their buddies for the Democrats to reveal what they’ve always felt in their hearts: that their club is exclusive to only those who share their corporatist values and will protect their donors’ interests.

In a way, it’s a level of transparency that’s very much welcomed. But it’s revealing in another way: Not only do they not want you in the club, they actually detest you.

It doesn’t matter that you’re speaking out against injustices around the world, that you’re opposed to genocide and the mass slaughter of babies, that you don’t want any more wars, that you think everyone has a right to healthcare and a living wage, that housing should be affordable.

They don’t care about you.

The mask finally came off because, as they often do in moments that feel existential, people’s true natures were revealed. On one hand, you had cheering crowds basking in the victories of working-class people fighting for working-class values. On TV screens and inside the halls of power, the establishment was seething: How dare people ask for more than scraps??

I guess we can say Democrats have lost their way—but there’s an entire generation that has been presented little evidence the party ever actually fought for the most vulnerable, or actually stood for something outside of protecting Wall Street and never-ending wars.

And, for the most part, it’s that generation that is now exposing Democrats for who they truly are: weak, feckless, and unapologetically resentful of anyone who dares to dream. And so they did something truly rare. They told the truth: They can’t stand you.

Image Source

• Personisinsterest, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.