538: Progressives Took A Step Back In The 2022 Primaries -- But They're Playing The Long Game

[brooklynite]

When Rep. Kurt Schrader, a seven-term incumbent endorsed by President Biden, lost his primary in May, he joined a small but slowly growing list of congressional veterans defeated by progressive candidates with the backing of an increasingly influential campaign apparatus on the left.

This renewed progressive movement emerged following Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential primary run, yet despite some high-profile wins in 2018, its candidates lost more often than they won due to a scattershot strategy. Then, in 2020, when progressives got more targeted with their electoral strategy, their win rate increased. But in 2022, the progressive movement appears to have taken a small step back.

FiveThirtyEight tracked every endorsement made by a major progressive group for Senate, House and governor this primary season. We consider a candidate “progressive-backed” if they were endorsed by Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or any of the following groups: Indivisible, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, the Sunrise Movement or the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.1 We also looked at candidates backed by various groups and leaders representing the more moderate or establishment wing of the Democratic Party and found that, overall, the Democratic establishment has an edge in the battle for the party’s soul.

Eleven candidates endorsed by at least one of those progressive organizations or people went into the 2022 election cycle hoping to topple an incumbent.2 Only one of them won: Schrader’s opponent, attorney Jamie McLeod-Skinner. By contrast, in 2020, progressives won three out of 17 such battles.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/progressives-democrats-2022/

[Magoo48]

1. 74 year old here.

Last edited Wed Sep 28, 2022, 03:31 PM - Edit history (1)

This is great news. We need more progressive, younger candidates. I’d love to see more young progressive females; in my opinion, the women fight with more energy and ferocity. For example, our representative, Katie Porter, leads with her powerful, creative intellect to jab her opponents with fact supported truth. Great strategy in this time of blowhard authoritarian orators blowing chunks of unsupportable word salad in all directions.

This is not to take anything away from the sometimes extremely young male candidates we see popping up here and there in local and state elections, judging by their rhetoric, many are wise beyond their years. Some are hardened in the fires of mayhem, like young Mr. Hogg from Parkland. The horizon is bright with young prospects. Go young people.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

2. I'm not buying the narrative of 538 (and others) that makes "progressive" a synonym

for candidates backed by the so-called Justice Democrats, or Indivisible, Our Revolution, the Sunrise Movement or the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

We liberal Democrats allow this "framing" to go without push-back at our peril.