OpEd: Despite the Rising DSA, the Democratic Party Actually Moved More to the Center
www.mediaite.com

... As the dust settles on the 2026 midterm elections, with only Alaska's Senate race yet to be called, a surprising reshaping of the Democratic Party has taken place. Instead of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's (D) ascendant wing of the party filling the power vacuum left in Washington by President Donald Trump's crumbling MAGA movement, red-state Democrats are on the upswing.

While the progressive left scored some wins and a troupe of democratic socialists are heading to Congress next year, the real power base will be among the 44 Democrats who flipped their seats from the GOP. Those Democrats are now accountable to constituencies that are certain to reshape the Democratic Party's priorities and move the party more toward the center.

With a likely majority of more than 260 seats, no one faction of House Democrats will easily be able to extort the rest of the majority, and the leadership's goal will be first and foremost on keeping the seats they flipped.

Some of those seats, like North Carolina's 9th District, saw the now-ousted incumbent, Rep. Richard Hudson, win reelection in 2024 by 18 points. Rep.-elect Richard Ojeda (D-NC), an Army veteran and former host on The Young Turks, is going to have to work overtime to brand himself as a Democrat who can keep that deep-red seat.

Part of that work will require keeping a distance from the most progressive elements of the House Democratic caucus, who are certain to be the focus of conservative media in the next two years. DSA-affiliated Rep.-elect Darializa Avila Chevalier (D-NY) spoke on a podcast in October about wielding her newfound power. The "point of building power is to use it," she said, arguing that "whatever we call ourselves, whether that's a squad' or a bloc or whatever . . . we have just grown the number of people who share our values in Congress significantly." ...