Beware the Democrats’ ‘Redshift’

The lines between camps in the party are blurry—but moving left.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Crowley in Middleton, Wis, Aug. 12. Photo: Kayla Wolf/Associated Press

When Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley narrowly defeated state Rep. Francesca Hong in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary, Democrats breathed a sigh of relief. A victory by Ms. Hong, they assumed, would have put the governor’s mansion in Madison in play. And yet Tuesday’s results were another sign of how deeply democratic socialism has burrowed within the Democratic Party—and how all stripes of Democrats have moved left.

Mr. Crowley doesn’t belong to the Democratic Socialists of America, as Ms. Hong does. Nor has he called to abolish prisons and “cancel Thanksgiving,” as Ms. Hong once did. But he blamed opposition to his 2019 state resolution honoring Colin Kaepernick on “white privilege” and supported the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Mr. Crowley’s current platform is vague. He wants to streamline permitting and spend more on housing, healthcare, education and “climate resilience.” He sounds like an Obama-era progressive, eager to tax and spend and “nudge” with good intentions, regardless of disappointing results.

Progress has progressed in recent years, however. The Democratic Party has undergone its own version of the cosmic redshift, in which light bends toward the red end of the spectrum at great distances. As Democrats rocket toward the socialist fringe, every part of the party shifts left.

“Moderate,” “centrist,” “liberal,” “progressive,” “democratic socialist”—the labels applied to Democratic candidates in 2026 are as varied as they are slippery. And the longer you study Democratic infighting, the more you see Democrats adopting socialism under the banner of “progressivism.”

Look at Minnesota. On the same day as Mr. Crowley’s surprise win, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan walloped Rep. Angie Craig in the North Star State’s Democratic Senate primary. NBC News called Ms. Flanagan’s win “another major victory for her party’s progressive wing.” But is there a difference between a “progressive” and a socialist like Ms. Hong?

Not really. Ms. Flanagan was endorsed by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who identifies as a socialist. Neither Mr. Sanders nor New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Ms. Hong.

Moreover, Ms. Flanagan supports Mr. Sanders’s signature policy, “Medicare for All,” which would replace employer-provided and private health insurance with a government-run program. Ms. Flanagan wants to abolish ICE. She has falsely accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. All of these are positions held by Mr. Sanders and his acolytes.

And they’re the same positions held by Abdul El-Sayed, the former public-health official who won last week’s Democratic Senate primary in Michigan. NBC News said that Mr. El-Sayed’s victory established “a Midwest beachhead for a progressive left on the march this midterm cycle.”

Though Mr. El-Sayed has socialist views, attended socialist events for years, headlined a Democratic Socialists of America fundraiser, campaigned with socialists like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Mr. Sanders and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, and pals around with commie livestreamer Hasan Piker, he denies the socialist label. “When it comes to the question of socialism, I’m not a socialist,” he said during the final primary debate with Rep. Haley Stevens. “I’m just a capitalist who understands how capitalism works.”

No argument there: The El-Sayeds’ combined tax return for 2025 showed an adjusted gross income of more than $675,000. The couple own rental properties in Ann Arbor, Mich., Dubai and Bangalore. Capitalism is working for him, for sure.

Isn’t it confusing, though, for the media to call a self-described “capitalist” with a platform indistinguishable from socialism a “progressive”? Who, exactly, is being fooled?

The laundering of socialist ideas through “progressive” politics harms Democrats, who begin to assume that far-out proposals won’t hurt them in a general election.

Kamala Harris is a classic case. In an October 2024 Gallup poll, taken one month before she lost the presidential election to President Trump, 51% of registered voters said that Ms. Harris was “too liberal.” That hasn’t stopped her from embracing the latest socialist surge.

She’s phoned New York City’s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. She wasted no time endorsing Mr. El-Sayed for Senate. And in late July she said America should consider abolishing the Electoral College, granting statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and adding four justices to the Supreme Court. Guess who would appoint them.

How long before Ms. Harris signs on to Medicare for All—a policy she was forced to abandon before dropping out of the 2020 Democratic primary? And would that make the former vice president and presidential nominee a progressive or a socialist—an outsider or an insurgent? The lines between Democratic camps are blurry. One bleeds into another.

The party keeps an internal open-borders policy. Finding the Democratic mainstream is a difficult and confusing task. Maddening, even.

What the media describes as a Democratic civil war might rather be a natural and recurring process of capitulation to the extreme. “The policies of the moderate left invariably turn out to have germinating within themselves contradictions that lead to crises in economic policy, social policy, foreign policy,” wrote Irving Kristol in 1983. “And as the moderate left comes into discredit, the more militant and extreme left once again regains the commanding heights of ideological authority.”

So it is today, as the Democratic base rages against Mr. Trump, MAGA and the GOP.

For the past generation, the trend on the left has been in one direction: larger government on one hand, less personal discipline on the other. Hence a better way to evaluate Democrats would put substance before terminology.

If a candidate wants to impose Medicare for All, abolish ICE, end support for Israel, remake America’s constitutional system, fund “gender transition” for minors and allow men to compete in women’s sports, he’s moving toward the socialist platform even if he doesn’t admit the label. And he should be opposed.

Mr. Continetti is a Free Expression columnist at WSJ Opinion.