Petty grievances won't sink Democrats' chances
But self-styled moderates are once again undermining the fight for democracy.
Most American liberals would gladly support a progressive candidate — a socialist one, even — if they were the last, best chance to defeat a literal fascist. This can be ascertained from the fact that the vast majority of Americans who identify as "socialists" could be fairly described as "liberals," and the vast majority of Americans who identify as "liberals" have a favorable opinion of socialist politicians like Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Most elected Democrats are team players too, or at least believe an intra-party hit should be carried out in a smoke-filled backroom, not on stage at the other side's rally. But there are exceptions, and while exceptions are of course not the rule, it is nonetheless of note that the least loyal Democrats are not the ones upset by a genocide in Gaza.
Earlier this year, Rep. Haley Stevens argued that she was the best Democrat to defeat Mike Rogers in the Michigan race for U.S. Senate. On Sunday, she endorsed the Republican candidate over her fellow Democrat, Abdul El-Sayed, who hails from the left wing of the party. Although the move was superficially about Israel and antisemitism, in an interview with CNN Stevens made it clear that wounded pride from her August primary defeat was a key contributor, the lawmaker bemoaning a "lack of kindness" from the man to whom she lost.
In Maine, progressive Democrat Troy Jackson is hoping to defeat Sen. Susan Collins, a reliable vote for the Trump agenda who brands herself the last moderate Republican in New England. A win there is vital if Democrats are to take back control of the Senate and provide a meaningful check on a lawless presidency.
Janet Mills, Maine's Democratic governor and one-time candidate for Senate, would prefer that Jackson win this November, she supposes. That would be better than not, probably. No, yeah, sure — it would be good.
"I encourage Maine people to vote for Democrats up and down the ballot who will stand up for our values and stand up to Trump," she posted on X recently. She was proud to vote for her party's nominee, she said, but Mills could not bring herself to actually endorse a man she clashed with while he served in the state legislature.
Sen. Angus King, Maine's other senator — a nominal independent who caucuses with the Democrats — couldn't bring himself to endorse Jackson, either.
"King's office said ... it's in keeping with his longstanding practice to not weigh in on races that involve his colleagues across the political spectrum," the Bangor Daily News reported. (In 2014, King, then Maine's junior senator, endorsed Collins' reelection campaign.)
In 2026, a Collins victory would potentially derail any Senate oversight of the Trump administration in what will no doubt be two more wild years before the next presidential election. A president with impunity, however, would be preferable to the breach of decorum (and the harm to a friendship) of any endorsement; King would not be so impolite as to treat elections as though they have lethal consequences.
It is as if politics were not a serious business, judging by the behavior of some elder statesmen — as if the stakes were control over an after-school chess club, not the U.S. Senate and the very future of the republic.
Charles R. Davis
Politics, though, is very much a matter of life and death. Who controls the American Congress can dictate the fate of tens of millions of people around the world, determining whether they receive medical treatment or arms to defend themselves.
The midterm elections will also decide whether there is an independent check on the executive or whether the president can rule unbound by so much as the threat of a subpoena. The few hundred people in national politics should act accordingly.
No question, one should probably avoid sweeping conclusions about a coalition as broad as the Democratic Party based on the actions of a few rotten apples. But it can't be ignored, either, that Democrats' least reliable soldiers are not found in its progressive flank — years of harangues about lesser-evil voting have perhaps sunk in — but among the self-styled moderates, the purported adults who have witnessed fascism come to America and still seem more perturbed by their barista's pronouns (and criticism of Israel) than the violence and hate coming direct and daily from the White House.
The petty grievances of some elected officials are unlikely to prevent a Democratic takeover of one or both houses of Congress. But the fact that some would risk it, at this late a date, after a decade of Donald Trump: that's a betrayal that no serious opposition can tolerate.
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