The Crest of a New Wave

According to Politico, this group is already strategizing how to operate as a collective, whether in the interest of gaining influential committee posts, changing rules to benefit outside challengers in future primaries, or increasing their procedural might. One of their first tests will likely come early during the fight to elect the next Speaker of the House. 

Polls show Democrats in a cardinal position to retake the House of Representatives, and current House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a mainstream Democrat who has been hostile to DSA’s entry into the political landscape, is the broader party’s top pick for the role. But the left flank has options, whether backing another, more progressive candidate or working to wrest concessions from leadership — such as votes on marquee priorities like Medicare for All and cutting off aid to the Israeli government, or democratic reforms that make it harder to stamp out dissent in the party. 

What’s more, the Bloc may well expand its ranks beyond the left-wing candidates from safe blue districts. Progressives are running competitive races in swing districts across the country, and a possible Democratic wave could be on the horizon due to voter disgust with skyrocketing gas prices, an unpopular war in Iran and Republicans’ fixation on handing control over to tech oligarchs. The ​“new majority makers,” as the American Prospect​’s David Dayen calls them, include Randy Villegas in California, William Lawrence in Michigan, Matt Dunlap in Maine, Sam Forstag in Montana and Brian Poindexter in Ohio. 

If any of these candidates emerge victorious, pressure would mount on the Democratic establishment to bend to the incoming demands of the left cohort — and it would help elevate the policy pursuits that have animated their grassroots campaigns: instituting a living wage, radically expanding union rights, increasing taxes on the ultrawealthy and getting corporate money out of politics. 

The success of insurgent candidates — and the potential for the largest arriving crop of congressional progressives in generations — is all the more striking due to the massive sums spent against them by an array of right-wing forces: Super PACs representing pro-Israel interests, the growing artificial intelligence (AI) industry and cryptocurrencies. Together, those groups spent more than $180 million to defeat progressive candidates this primary cycle, yet they still weren’t able to stem the tide of left-wing triumphs. 

In November’s Senate races, stalwart progressives like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota and, incredibly, Angie Nixon in Florida stand a chance of overcoming their Republican opponents, potentially helping flip control of the chamber.

Yet regardless of the overall outcome, members of the Bloc will enter Congress with a mandate to move the goalposts of politics away from the dictates of billionaires and toward dignity for working people who want government to serve as a vehicle to deliver real material change in their lives. That’s the example now being set by leaders like Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York City, who’s putting democratic socialist principles into action by freezing rents for millions of renters, expanding universal childcare, forcing corporations to pay back millions of dollars in stolen wages and standing with residents left behind for decades by a profit-hungry elite establishment.

President Donald Trump’s second term has been marked by audacious action: dismantling federal agencies, mass firing government workers, undoing the regulatory state, attacking labor unions, sending armed agents into American cities to kidnap residents, starting a new illegal war in the Middle East, enacting broad tariffs and launching trade wars that have exacerbated the cost of living.

It’s true that presidents hold far more power than lawmakers, but the growing set of left elected officials can act just as audaciously, taking action that will make clear that the working-class majority — not a cabal of wealthy power brokers — should be at the center of our politics.

The left electoral project now bearing fruit — led by groups like Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party and DSA — was kicked into action on the national level by Sanders’ first presidential run a decade ago. During that campaign, Sanders told journalist Ezra Klein, ​“The only way that real change is going to take place is when millions of people get involved in the political process and tell the United States Congress and any president of the United States that ​‘You have to start working for us and not just for the wealthiest people in this country.’”

“When that happens,” Sanders continued, ​“huge things occur.”

Trump is still in the White House, and the prospects for the type of political revolution Sanders has championed may seem narrow. Yet there’s no doubt that over the past 10 years, the Democratic base has moved decisively in the direction of Sanders and his acolytes, and farther away from the Third Way, centrist approach that has long defined the modern incarnation of the party.

This shift spells an opening to build a fighting alternative to both the far-right MAGA sycophants and the pro-corporate Democrats — one that can finally help remake American politics.

The ballot box is far from the only, or primary, domain of organizing for social change. Movements like the anti-ICE protests in Minnesota and the rapidly spreading nationwide fights against data centers model the kind of popular uprisings necessary to challenge the Right and move the center of political gravity in the direction of the working class.

But contesting for, winning and wielding political power is no longer just over the horizon — it’s becoming a reality. With the 2028 elections around the corner, we’ll soon see if we’re only just approaching the crest of a new wave.