Don’t Listen to the Corporate Media; Progressive Candidates Are on a Roll

On July 15, Adelita Grijalva won the Democratic primary for Arizona’s special election to fill the 7th congressional district seat. Grijalva will now go on to almost certain victory in the September election to fill the vacancy left by her late father, Raúl, who died in March.

Grijalva, whose father was a former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, ran on a progressive platform advocating for the construction of affordable housing, rights for trans people and other members of the LGBT community, and a recognition of equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis. She was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), as well as by a slew of left-leaning organizations and labor unions.

For The New York Times, though, Grijalva’s win was evidence of a seemingly unrelated phenomenon: the limits of Zohran Mamdani’s brand of politics. Baffingly, coverage of a special election in Arizona, in which the favorite candidate of the progressive ecosystem claimed a decisive victory, began with this sentence: “The Mamdani momentum withered in the deserts of southern Arizona on Tuesday night.”

The author of the piece, Jack Healy, went on to draw a false equivalence between Mamdani and another candidate in the race, Deja Foxx, whose age—Foxx is 25, while Mamdani is 33—apparently, de facto, aligned her with the Mamdani wing of the Democratic Party. Never mind that Grijalva and Mamdani shared scores of endorsers and substantial overlap in their platforms. For the Times, Grijalva’s victory was yet more evidence of Mamdani’s flailing candidacy, personal shortcomings, and general unfitness for office.

Where voters see a leadership vacuum at the head of the party, progressives are taking the reins and building creative and forward-thinking campaigns that actually challenge entrenched billionaire power and the Trumpist fascism that it enables.

Healy’s article continues a shocking trend from the Times and other mainstream media outlets that has taken hold since Mamdani’s somewhat-upset victory over Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s June mayoral primary. The Times has reported breathlessly on the specifics of Mamdani’s college applications; penned editorials entreating him, for the millionth time, to take a more accommodationist line on Israel; and run sham non-endorsements that have veered into self-parody to such an extent that the newspaper’s behavior has sparked satire sites.

The Times’ repeated attempts to twist reality to fit a narrative depicting the collapse of progressive politics is evidence that just the opposite is true: Once again, progressive policies and candidates are on a roll. Grijalva and Mamdani’s wins came in two distinctly different districts. Mamdani won in the ultradiverse megalopolis that sits as the center of the United States’ cultural and economic power, while Grijalva won her primary in a mixed rural and urban district that partly borders Mexico and is majority Latino. Taken together, these wins put the lie to an oft-circulated idea in politically centrist circles: that progressive policy can only win in young, urban areas.

While Tuesday’s primary results in Arizona do nothing to discredit Mamdani’s victory in New York last month, there is a political dynamic that is implicated in Mamdani and Grijalva’s convincing wins: the unpopularity of the centrist wing of the Democratic Party. Surveys conducted since U.S. President Donald Trump’s win in 2024’s presidential election point to high degrees of dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party and its leadership, including among its own constituents. Party leaders have been repeatedly criticized for failing to adequately address the crisis of Trump’s early second term and for being incapable of formulating a compelling counternarrative that can lure disenchanted voters back to the Democratic Party. And, the party has repeatedly doubled down on its stalwart support for Israel’s “right” to wage an ongoing genocide in Gaza, despite polling that shows that that position puts its at odds with the majority of its base.

It should be no surprise then, that voters are feeling more drawn to the wing of the party who isn’t afraid to buck party orthodoxy on issues like affordability, immigration, and Israel. Where voters see a leadership vacuum at the head of the party, progressives are taking the reins and building creative and forward-thinking campaigns that actually challenge entrenched billionaire power and the Trumpist fascism that it enables. While corporatist Democrats are busy working behind the scenes to undermine Mamdani in the general election in November, they might be better served by taking a step back and putting a finger to the wind.

If Democratic leaders are hell-bent on continuing to ignore the preferences of their base, it may be up to the party’s progressive wing to save the party from itself. Zohran Mamdani’s refreshing win can be the first of many victories for progressives in the era of the second Trump administration. Whether the party establishment is ready to embrace this new political reality remains to be seen.