Hakeem Jeffries bounded onto a Washington DC stage on Tuesday night, basking in the confidence of a newly crowned leader.
‘America is back,’ proclaimed the next Speaker of the House as Biggie Smalls, his fellow Brooklynite, played for the crowd. Jeffries described the midterms as ‘a change election’ and said voters had delivered a clear message: ‘Enough of the extremism.’
By January 3, however, some members of his own party may be ready to test that unity.
Across the country, voters elected a wave of local, state and federal officials who are further to the left than many of their predecessors.
Jeffries’s Democratic caucus now includes at least eight members of the Democratic Socialists of America, up from two in the previous term. Among them is a woman who once called for ‘a world without prisons or police’ and urged the United States to ‘literally, abolish the border.’
In the Senate, fellow Brooklynite Chuck Schumer, the incoming majority leader, will have to work with Abdul El-Sayed, arguably one of the most left-wing senators ever elected. He nearly had a fully fledged DSA member alongside him as well: Angie Nixon narrowly lost her Florida Senate race.
For Ashik Siddique, the results could hardly be more welcome.
Siddique, co-chair of the DSA’s national political committee, told the Daily Mail that Tuesday’s vote marked only the start of the organization’s advance. He highlighted the victory of his ‘rainbow-headed’ colleague Ashley Herrmann, 38, who flipped a Republican-held state Senate seat near Tampa, Florida.
Hakeem Jeffries bounded onto a Washington DC stage on Tuesday night, basking in the confidence of a newly crowned leader
Ashik Siddique, co-chair of the DSA’s national political committee, pictured here with Zohran Mamdani, told the Daily Mail that Tuesday’s vote marked only the start of the organization’s advance
Chuck Schumer, the incoming Senate majority leader, will have to work with Abdul El-Sayed
‘These results are not a flash in the pan,’ Siddique said, pointing out that DSA membership has grown from 6,000 in 2016 to 130,000 today. ‘Democratic Socialists of America are building an enduring organization that can lead an enduring movement.’
‘We’re now seeing DSA candidates win re-election to second or third terms across the country. We ran more candidates in this cycle than ever before. I think there were at least 200 candidates at many levels of government, from local offices up to Congress. So we’re really leading the conversation and helping to shift public opinion on a wide range of issues.’
Siddique said the DSA was moving the policy debate to the left, noting that even Donald Trump had discussed ending military aid to Israel on the eve of the election.
‘Nobody thought 10 years ago that abolishing ICE was a popular sentiment when we were saying it, but now it has popular support,’ he said. ‘When we said “Free Palestine,” that was not a popular sentiment among Americans 10 years ago, but now it is, and majorities of Americans across parties support a full arms embargo against the state of Israel.’
According to Siddique, DSA candidates largely campaigned on affordable housing, Medicare for All, universal childcare, moratoriums on AI data centers and abolishing ICE.
‘These are very popular things, and when you look at the range of issues our candidates ran on, it’s clear that we’ve been driving the conversation and the direction of the political left more broadly,’ he added.
But what happens when those candidates take their seats in January and confront the Democratic establishment? Could the party be heading toward an internal conflict?
Siddique responded with a chuckle.
Wouldn’t the tension between the party’s old guard and its rising left flank be difficult to manage?
‘It can be, for sure,’ he said. ‘But we have experience now with DSA members in office. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib have built strong records of applying pressure when it matters, standing on principle, even when they are part of a small minority voting against certain measures or casting lonely votes for programs not backed by party leaders. That bloc is now growing.’
Siddique said the DSA was moving the policy debate to the left, noting that even Donald Trump had discussed ending military aid to Israel on the eve of the election
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, pictured with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Governor Kathy Hochul
At the forefront of the newcomers on January 3 will be 32-year-old New Yorker Darializa Avila Chevalier, known as DAC, who is following in AOC’s footsteps.
As recently as 2020, Avila Chevalier tweeted that ‘the pyromania associated with anarchism is very intriguing to me.’ She also called for open borders, demanded the closure of prisons and advocated ‘ending policing full stop. Period. No more police at all ever.’
The old posts have since been deleted. During the campaign, after her Democratic primary rival raised them, she said: ‘My opponent wants to live in the past. He is re-litigating social media posts from half a decade ago, and continuing to champion an outdated politics that fails to serve our people. I have grown considerably in the years since these tweets, and I am focused on our community and our community’s future.’
Even so, when Vanity Fair’s editor-in-chief asked her in an October 30 interview whether a murderer should be imprisoned, she avoided giving a direct answer.
Chevalier also said Jeffries would receive her support for Speaker only if he committed to advancing Medicare for All, voting rights, investment in public housing and an end to taxpayer funding for foreign wars.
Schumer may face an even more challenging relationship with his new colleague.
Abdul El-Sayed, elected in Michigan as the first Muslim member of the US Senate, will arrive in Washington in January with his characteristic swagger—and perhaps more of it than usual.
‘They told us that the establishment was too strong, that DC was going to dictate who won and who lost, that Washington and its special interests didn’t want us,’ El-Sayed declared Tuesday night. ‘They want an America that is too small for some of us. We know that America is big enough for all of us.’
Even before taking his seat in Congress, he could not resist taunting his Republican opponents.
‘Together, fighting for something bigger, we won,’ he said. ‘So Mike, enjoy your retirement. I know you got a house in Florida and two yachts. See, you chose hate and Michigan chose hope. May we never have to see the likes of you in this state again.
‘JD, habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in January. So you know what that means? Wolverine one, Buckeye zero.’
‘Donald, look, I know you struggled with my name. So after JD swears me in January, you could just go on and call me Senator.’
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The question now is whether Schumer and Jeffries can rein in the newly elected lawmakers—and whether they even want to try.
Sam Seder, an actor and progressive political commentator, attacked Schumer’s victory speech Tuesday night, describing it as lackluster and disconnected from the moment.
The question now is whether Schumer and Jeffries can rein in the newly elected lawmakers—and whether they even want to try
Sam Seder, an actor and progressive political commentator, attacked Schumer’s victory speech Tuesday night, describing it as lackluster and disconnected from the moment
‘Jesus f***ing Christ! Are you f***ing kidding me?’ Seder ranted. ‘You just had an election where the Democrats ran the board in a way that has not happened in maybe 50 years. Do you not have a script f***ing writer?! Dude, are you serious?!’
He added: ‘Like, I don’t like his politics, but how do you not just do the basic f***ing fundamentals?!’
So, is a Democratic civil war taking shape?
‘It’s possible, and Democrats are certainly capable of that,’ said Grant Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University.
He told the Daily Mail: ‘The old joke about Democrats is that when they need a firing squad, they form into a circle.
‘But they will certainly need to figure out what their central message is, and the left wing of the party will demand a seat at the table.’
Reeher urged Democrats to ‘remain focused on economic issues.’
‘But part of the left wing wants to lean hard on cultural issues as well. Will they be able to let that go, to some extent?’
Lincoln Mitchell, a professor of political science at Columbia University, said talk of a Democratic civil war was ‘being too dramatic.’
He noted that Jeffries and Schumer both have comfortable margins, making it difficult for smaller factions to hold them hostage.
‘The example I give is AOC,’ Mitchell told the Daily Mail. ‘AOC came in with heated rhetoric, and then after a few months she realized: I can either fight with Nancy Pelosi or I can become relevant.’
‘My representative in Congress as of January is Darializa Avila Chevalier. She’s maybe, of the newer people, the most extreme left. My district, which includes some very low-income communities, is a mixed economic district.
‘Is she going to be unable to bring things back to the district because she picked a fight with Hakeem Jeffries? If so, I can point to a few candidates who are licking their chops to run against her in 2028.’
Some observers, however, see the election as evidence that moderate Democrats are also gaining strength. They point to the victories of pastor and farmer Adam Hamilton in Kansas, middle school teacher James Talarico in Texas, physician Annie Andrews in South Carolina and the re-election of centrist Jon Ossoff in Georgia.
‘AOC came in with heated rhetoric, and then after a few months she realized: I can either fight with Nancy Pelosi or I can become relevant,’ said Lincoln Mitchell, a professor of political science
Darializa Avila Chevalier, US Representative-elect for New York’s 13th congressional district, is among the most left-wing candidates elected in the midterms
Jon Ossoff’s victory in Georgia is viewed by some as evidence that moderate Democrats are gaining ground
Ossoff’s campaign highlighted that he was ‘the only Democratic US Senator up for reelection in a state Trump won.’
Johanna Maska, a political strategist who worked in the Obama White House, said the Blue Wave’s strength lay partly in its diversity.
‘The future lies in Democrats. Period,’ she told the Daily Mail, adding that voters in each state had chosen candidates who spoke directly to their concerns. Their records, she said, would now begin to speak for themselves.
‘Here’s the thing about someone like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Trump tried to say he was a jihadist and all these things before the election, and in the aftermath, all the guy’s been doing is governing, and it got so popular that he’s like filling potholes.’
‘People here in LA are saying, “Mamdani, can you help us?”’
Some observers see the election as evidence that moderate Democrats are also gaining strength, pointing to the victory of pastor and farmer Adam Hamilton in Kansas
That group of moderates also included middle school teacher James Talarico in Texas
The central question, of course, is whether the party’s competing factions will be willing to work together.
‘Today begins the great American comeback,’ Jeffries declared, striking—for now—a note of unity.
‘This is not a partisan moment; this is a patriot one,’ he concluded.
‘This is not a blue moment, or a red moment—it is a red, white and blue moment because America has won tonight.’
The DSA, naturally, interpreted the result in a different way.
The election, the organization wrote on X, showed that ‘socialism can win in the US.’