Ahead of November’s midterm elections, Democrats are in the midst of a series of heated primaries across the country, pitting more centrist candidates, often backed by the Party establishment, against leftist opponents. Two Democratic House members have already lost primaries in New York to progressive challengers, and on August 4th the Michigan primary will decide whether the leftist doctor Abdul El-Sayed can defeat the congresswoman Haley Stevens in the race for an open Senate seat. In Wisconsin, another purple state, Francesca Hong—the progressive candidate for governor—has a wide lead on her opponents in the lead-up to the August 11th primary.

To try and understand the fissures in the Democratic Party, I recently spoke by phone with Faiz Shakir, Bernie Sanders’s 2020 Presidential-campaign manager and founder of the media nonprofit More Perfect Union. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why so many Democrats are angry at the Party establishment, whether the Party is in danger of losing seats in swing states, and whether progressives, like Bernie Sanders, were right to stick with Joe Biden until the end of his reëlection campaign.

What do you see as the main division within the Democratic Party right now, and does it feel new?

I think it’s intensified. The division is over the desire of candidates to take on concentrations of wealth and power, and their willingness and desire to take on corporate greed and corporate power in general. There are people who were born for it, or desire it, and they are the candidates who tend to be doing quite well at this moment. They’re the ones who understand that part of your job in public service is to stand up to the power of moneyed interests, and how critical it is to speak out on behalf of people living paycheck to paycheck. There is friction against others in the Party who would say we don’t need that kind of tension with the moneyed élite. We have to raise money from them, we have to coddle them, we have to have public-private partnerships with them, we have to make them feel nice, and be kind to them.

I’m not saying tonally you have to be mean, but you have to acknowledge that there is friction and tension if you’re going to fight for working-class communities right now.

Do you think progressives should be focussing on running these types of candidates in safe, Democratic areas and states, so that the caucus in the House and the Senate is more left-wing and pushes for more left-wing ideas? Or do you also think they need to be pushing these types of candidates across the map?

I certainly come at this from a desire for persuasion. And, in order to be persuasive, I do tend to think that the candidates who are going to perform best across the board clearly define their desire to address concentrations of wealth and power, and the issues around corporate greed. And, if they are defined in that way, they can succeed in the reddest parts of this country. I do tend to think those candidates should start to reflect their geographies a bit, if they’re doing it the right way. So a New York City candidate who’s doing this may look and sound different than a Montana candidate who’s doing this.

You hear people like Senator Sanders, and yourself, say that the common thread for winning in diverse places is fighting for working people on economic issues. But, with candidates like Abdul El-Sayed, in Michigan, or Francesca Hong, in Wisconsin, you see left-wing campaigns running on very liberal social platforms. For example, El-Sayed has gotten tripped up over questions about defunding the police. I’m curious how you see that tension.

Many candidates run on liberal social-justice platforms. I don’t think you’re wrong that there are elements of that in this wave of progressive candidates. But what often happens is people look at their tweets from six years ago and miss how they are campaigning right now.

Look at how different candidates are talking about ICE: some use the word “abolish,” some say “reform,” some say “move funding to different agencies.” Those are all part and parcel of what I was suggesting—that you are attuned to the geographies in which you’re representing, and you are close to the people you’re representing. If you go talk to a lot of these working-class people, they are three-dimensional human beings. They know when somebody is being honest and levelling with them. And I see in a lot of these progressive candidates that, while they may have views on things that don’t one hundred per cent align with every working-class person in their district, there is a benefit because people understand the candidate is telling them what they really believe. And there’s points for honesty.

I thought you were saying that there was some need for candidates to change their pitch based on where they are running, though.

When you’re in Montana, the issues of housing play out a bit differently than the housing issues of New York City, right? The density of renters in New York City is very high. Montana, obviously, they’re going through tenant unions; they have their own issues, but there are a lot of people being squeezed out of their opportunity to own their own homes. I’m just arguing that economic justice, the way in which you talk about those affordability crises, will have geographic dimensions to them that matter to your relatability.

I see, so the issue is not that you need to moderate or change your pitch on social issues, depending on where you’re running.

Well, I agree with that, too. So if you’re running in Montana, you’re running in Idaho, you’re running in Ohio, I do think that a good candidate who is trying to appeal to the working class has to be aware of what the attitudinal views are of the community, and the candidate has to be interested in them and want to have a conversation about them. What are their views on trans kids? How’s the community feeling about immigration raids?

Darializa Chevalier is one of the most interesting candidates, and what people still miss about her is that she ran in a district that included Columbia University, and you and I both know what happened there: a ton of free-speech-restriction efforts from the Trump Administration, and Columbia students taken by ICE. And I think what Chevalier captured was a feeling of what that community was actually going through better than Adriano Espaillat, the incumbent congressman.

Her positive comments on communism may not have helped the argument that she cared about free speech.

[Laughs.] Well, you know, everyone’s their own unique candidate, let’s put it that way. It’s not to say that anybody who wins is perfect; there are no gods and prophets in this industry. It’s just about who has some sense of integrity and a willingness to fight. And this is what, in my view, it’s all boiling down to. Integrity and convictions of really giving a damn about those who aren’t élite, rich, and wealthy.

You said earlier that people want to elect someone who they perceive as sincere. But take someone like Susan Collins, who has been an enormously successful Republican politician in a blue state. I have no idea what Susan Collins actually thinks about abortion, but my gut feeling would be that, if Susan Collins actually thought that abortion was evil and Roe v. Wade should be overturned, her constituents in a blue state would not enjoy hearing that from her. Moreover, when I hear El-Sayed’s answers about defunding the police, I get confused, because it does seem to me that sometimes the wing of the Party that wants to focus the most on economic issues is in fact the most averse to changing its position on social issues.

Well, I do think our candidates come from places of conviction and sincerity, and have wrestled with their own personal views, and often are comfortable telling you that they are not poll-testing them. Often, this is why the tweets come back to hurt them, because they are really sharing with you, in a first-person sense, some core convictions. And what I think you’re correctly observing is that, O.K., well, you get into a political arena, and now your job is not to represent merely yourself but to represent others.

I do think you’re right that sometimes, on the progressive left, there’s a sense that too often a candidate who has come to a deep core conviction cannot be moved off of it. And I don’t think it does a service to politics itself if you operate that way. Politics is about persuasion. But I think part of the honest conversation about why progressives are doing well—and can and will win elections this cycle—is that I think there’s a hunger on the American public’s part, particularly born of Trump, that sees and watches him, and says, Here’s a guy who continues to yell that the election is rigged, and I think a lot of people just say, That’s probably a feeling he has, right? But we’re going to forgive him, you know, to some degree, right? Like, this is why he wins all these battleground states.

Do we think he won because he said that the election was rigged or in spite of it?

I’m saying he won in spite of it. I’m saying that working-class people say, You’re totally off and wrong on that one. However, there are other issues and other important things that matter to me, and if you can tell me that you’re persuadable around some of these other things, maybe I’ll give allowance for things that I might also disagree with you on.

If you look across the swing states with elections this fall, you have a lot of popular Democratic governors and senators: Jon Ossoff, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Tony Evers. I would not call any of them left-wing. I would say some of them seem pretty poll-tested in the way they communicate. And they’re all pretty popular. How do you understand that?

We’re merging two conversations. One is politics, one’s policy. So we could have a conversation about the ways in which some of those people you just mentioned would fare in the politicking for President. I suspect it might be a little bit different for them, despite their popularity in the states they represent. Take Steve Bullock, the popular former governor of Montana: How does he fare if he runs for President?

Well, there’s a question of how he would run in a general election versus how he would run in a primary.

Right, exactly. But I’m saying that there is a different question, politics versus policy. Right now, when I look at some of those governors, there’s a feeling, in my view, that some people have no sense of choosing who their governor is. It’s the governor, and they are rewarding and appreciating the governor for just doing the job. There’s an element of competency. You are signed up to do a job, make sure you care about it. You know, the trash is picked up, the roads are fixed and repaired, the benefits are going out on due schedule.

But there’s no contest, no primary, and they are not having to face an alternative. I might not always agree with everything Josh Shapiro says, but, if you put me in Pennsylvania, I agree. Hey, thank you, Governor. You’re doing a fine job.

He’s gonna win reëlection pretty handily, it seems like.

Probably, yeah. But also, if you had a progressive governor who was doing the job, I suspect they would also be popular. You know, there is a progressive mayor of New York City who is doing a fine job. If you do the job, once you get into office, it’s critical that now you are there to show competence and professionalism.

I want to go back to 2024. There was a Democratic President helping fund the war in Gaza, and there was real anger about the role that the Biden Administration was playing in perpetuating massive war crimes and other horrible, horrible things in the conflict. And there was real anger at the establishment for it. Now, in 2026, there is still anger at the establishment over Gaza, but it seems like there is rage at the Democratic establishment across the board, on every issue. How did that happen?

I think that Gaza and the Middle East policy always represented something much larger than the humanitarian catastrophe that we all witnessed there. One of those things was a sense from so many Democrats that we were all seeing this injustice, and we knew it was an injustice, and Democratic politicians were unwilling to show accountability over it. And, therefore, they were deemed to be weak, and soft, and not strong leaders. So the qualities associated with Democrats to this day, right, if we were to think about the adjectives being used by your average Democratic activist, they’ll say the Democratic Party is weak.

In terms of the question of whether this Gaza policy was indicative of other things in the Democratic establishment, though, you had Bernie Sanders, who was a critic of the Gaza policies of the Biden Administration, still say that Joe Biden was the most effective President in the modern history of America.

But, wait, look at what Bernie said about Biden on the Gaza issue specifically. It wasn’t like he was giving him a pass and saying—

No, but he still said that he was the most successful President in the modern history of our country, which suggests that, for him, the connection between Gaza and other things that you are making was not clear. And so the last time the Democratic establishment was in power, many people on the left, including Bernie Sanders, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, thought it was doing a pretty good job. They supported Biden even after his calamitous debate. This is why I am trying to understand the rage at the establishment from progressive candidates today.

There is a conflation of two different things, though. I think you’re saying the words “Democratic establishment” and “Biden.” Those are different things.

He was the President.

O.K., but let’s ask: Why did people like Senator Sanders and A.O.C. feel good about some of the working-class issues that Joe Biden was operating on? Look at his Administration’s work with the American Rescue Plan and later the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I do think he was one of the most pro-labor Presidents we’ve had in a long, long period of time. Those were things that working-class-oriented Democrats could see and observe and understand that this was a break from the Democratic establishment. And, in fact, you saw that break. Senator Sanders was worried about it, and I think it bore out to be true. Kamala Harris was not comfortable defending Lina Khan. Then, during Kamala’s campaign, there was talk of the capital-gains tax being changed to reflect the interests of wealthier people. Crypto. Labor. Maybe we don’t need to talk so aggressively about organized unions and labor. Senator Sanders felt and saw that Biden was separate from many of the Democratic-establishment voices, and that there would potentially be a slide back and you would lose working-class people if you replaced him on the ticket.

But you know who had already lost working-class people to a greater degree than Kamala? Joe Biden.

Those were issues to do with mental acuity, and very little about the policy debate.

You aren’t saying you think Biden should have stayed in the race, right?

At that point, Senator Sanders was saying, If we change horses, the agenda may not be as strong for working-class people, and we may lose to Donald Trump.

I don’t assume you want to say that Biden should have stayed in the race, though, right?

I don’t want to speak for Senator Sanders, right? So I want his—you know, it’s a tough place for me to be in, because I, you know, I—on the one hand, I am, you know, I am a supporter of Bernie Sanders. I work for him, and I respect and appreciate the views that he holds, and I honor them, and I, you know—

All I meant was: Is there any tension between this idea that a couple of years ago many people on the left, including Sanders and A.O.C., were saying that the last Democratic Administration had been enormously successful, and now the progressive wing of the Party seems to be channelling the utter rage that people feel with every aspect of establishment Democratic politics?

In my mind, there’s a high level of consistency in Senator Sanders advocating, as the Senate Budget Committee chairman, for the Biden Administration’s American Rescue Plan, talking it up at every turn, and saying this was very meaningful to working-class people. He was being honest and clear with people that he was pushing the President of the United States to do these things, and he was prepared to tell people that these are positive developments for working-class people. He kept his word on that.

I went back to the op-ed that Bernie wrote about why Biden should stay in the race. And I noticed that he critiqued the “corporate” media for obsessively focussing on the debate. And then when Graham Platner was denying the rape accusation against him, Platner said it was the “corporate” media going after him. El-Sayed’s spokesperson blamed the “corporate” establishment when Governor Gretchen Whitmer endorsed his opponent. Do you find this cynical, or potentially playing into the hands of the far right, which feeds on distrust of institutions?

So, along with Senator Sanders, I run a working-class-journalism organization, and, from my vantage point, we are telling stories of corporate greed and corporate influence that have millions and millions of views, and people are interested in watching and consuming this content. And yet I think a lot of our critique has long been that much of the media doesn’t find these stories sexy.

I’m not arguing with that. But when Graham Platner is accused of rape and says that the corporate media is out to get him, I think we know what he’s trying to imply here. And I worry that there is a cynicism to that, which is pretty toxic. You’re accused of misbehavior with women, and you say the corporate media is out to get you. What kind of message do you think that sends to voters?

That’s not a great message. We can agree.

I want a media that feels a responsibility to say that the issues of economic justice are meaningful and important to me because they’re meaningful and important to a lot of other people. You’re right to say, If somebody accuses somebody of sexual assault or rape, that is a meaningful and important story. There’s no downplaying it. It is fundamental to a political race and to the integrity of a human being. So, yes, it’s important. And I think there’s a lot of frustration from progressive people that says, Well, when I go and talk about the issues of labor, the issues of antitrust, the issues of corporate taxation, those you find less interesting, and that therefore builds in a cynicism on behalf of some of these candidates, some of it earned, by the media. It’s not to discount or say that the issues you raised are fundamentally important. Don’t hear me say that. ♦