Something is happening in the Democratic base.
For a year and a half Democrats have been disgusted with President Trump. They’ve been similarly outraged by the fecklessness of their own party leaders. Now, after a handful of surprising primary elections last night in Colorado, a third observation is coming into focus: The Democratic base would like to shove the entire political establishment into a blade grinder.
In Colorado’s deep-blue First Congressional District, a 29-year-old democratic socialist beat longtime Representative Diana DeGette; in the neighboring Eighth District, a young progressive trounced a more moderate Democrat and will go up against a Republican incumbent—who narrowly won his seat—in November. Statewide, one moderate officeholder won’t get the job he wants: Longtime Senator Michael Bennet lost his primary for governor to Colorado’s attorney general, who ran to his left.
Two years after Joe Biden’s visible decline helped Trump return to the White House, these results are further evidence that the base is angry—at institutions, about Israel and ICE, and about its own leadership’s handling of Trump. But more than using any specific set of policies as a litmus test, Democratic voters appear drawn to the candidates who most radiate disdain for the status quo. Maine’s Graham Platner, with his sweatshirts and tattoos and the damning revelations about his past, was the first to demonstrate this desire, when he beat the establishment-backed Janet Mills. Last week, a pair of candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani ousted incumbent Representatives Adriano Espaillat and Dan Goldman.
“If you look and sound like someone who should be in elected office,” one Democratic strategist told us, “voters want nothing to do with you.”
Like Espaillat in New York, the 68-year-old DeGette was slow to recognize the seriousness of the challenge she faced from Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist who was born a few months after DeGette began serving her first term in Congress. This is partly because DeGette is not exactly a mushy moderate. First elected in 1996, she has been a progressive voice close to the party leadership for decades—and she ran with the endorsement of a former Congressional Progressive Caucus chair, Representative Pramila Jayapal.
But last night, both DeGette and 74-year-old John Hickenlooper, who was able to beat back a challenge to his Senate seat, seemed to have underappreciated the Democratic base’s desire for generational and political change. Kiros defeated DeGette by nearly 10 points; Hickenlooper’s DSA-backed opponent came closer than expected. “Diana DeGette hasn’t done anything wrong,” but right now, “being in Congress really works against you,” the Democratic strategist, who is affiliated with a race in Colorado, told us, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer an unvarnished assessment.
DeGette’s district, which encompasses almost all of Denver, is solidly Democratic and probably a guaranteed win for Kiros in November. This makes Kiros’s victory similar to some of the progressive movement’s victories last week in New York, where three Mamdani-backed candidates won in deep-blue districts.
But north of New York City, the Democratic establishment scored a big win: The party leadership’s preferred candidate, Cait Conley, won her primary in a purple district now held by GOP Representative Mike Lawler. Her success allowed some senior Democrats to claim that where it really mattered—in the swing districts that will determine which party controls the House next year—the party’s voters were sticking with candidates with more crossover appeal. DeGette’s defeat in a safely Democratic district followed that logic. “Is it shocking that a further-left progressive candidate wins in a further-left progressive area? I’m not surprised by it,” Representative Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat who represents the Denver suburbs, told us as polls were closing last night.
But at least one progressive victory in Colorado yesterday could have more significant ramifications for the national balance of power. Colorado’s Eighth District, north of Denver, is not a liberal bastion. Republican Representative Gabe Evans beat a Democratic incumbent by about 2,500 votes two years ago, and he is now one of the Democrats’ top targets this fall.
Many in the party establishment were rooting for Shannon Bird, a 57-year-old former state legislator, to win the primary. She secured the backing of The Bench, a new Democratic group that has prioritized electability over ideology, and touted her experience finding common ground to pass legislation. But progressives rallied around a much younger state legislator, Manny Rutinel, who has emphasized his working-class roots and vowed to fight the Trump administration aggressively. Yesterday, Rutinel captured the nomination handily.
Rutinel, who is 31, is not nearly as far left as Kiros or Darializa Avila Chevalier, the candidate who toppled Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, last week in New York City. (Rutinel touted an endorsement from Espaillat in his race.) Rutinel reportedly shifted his stance on a number of issues during the primary, moving away from progressive positions opposing fracking and supporting single-payer health care and student-debt cancellation. But some Democrats worry that those earlier views, as well as Rutinel’s harsh critique of cattle farming—a big industry in the district—will make him a weaker choice than Bird in a general election.
Rutinel being the nominee “will hurt us writ large,” the Democratic strategist said. The voters in a general election will not all be the same burn-it-down Democrats who weighed in last night; they’ll be older, moderate Republicans and independents. His frank assessment: “We’re not going to flip this seat now.”
Not all Democrats share that fear. And Rutinel’s race this fall is one of several across the country that could redefine what it means to be electable. When we asked Crow, a moderate who touts his national-security credentials as a former Army Ranger, whether he shared the strategist’s concerns about Rutinel, he replied: “Whoever that consultant was doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.” Ideological labels, Crow argued, are less relevant to voters now than “whether or not somebody is a street fighter, whether they’re willing to go to the mats for the people they represent.”
After Democrats lost big in the 2024 election, some party members speculated that a Great Ideological Rejiggering was in order. One group of strategists launched a think tank to help encourage candidates to embrace “heterodox ideas” that make their candidacies more palatable to independent and Republican voters. On his podcast, Ezra Klein suggested that Democrats should consider running candidates who oppose abortion in red areas. Other strategists launched groups such as Majority Democrats to recruit and support more “electable” Democrats.
But the beauty of primary elections is that they reveal the preferences not of consultants or talking heads but of actual voters—albeit ones who tend to be more politically engaged. And this year, those highly engaged voters aren’t as interested in heterodoxy as they are in total disruption.
Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, is delighted with Kiros’s win over DeGette, and with the broader successes of insurgent Democrats so far this primary season. He predicts more of them to come, including in Michigan, where his organization has endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, the most progressive candidate running in the state’s competitive Democratic Senate primary. Candidates such as Kiros and El-Sayed, Green says, will redefine the conventional wisdom about what kind of Democrat can win in what kind of place. “Milquetoast, boring Democrats,” he said, “are not electable.”
The party’s base certainly feels this way. We’ll find out in November if their instincts are right.