The Democratic Tea Party Isn’t Here, Yet

(Photo Illustration by Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)

IF SOCIAL MEDIA IS TO BE BELIEVED, a hot, blue tsunami of oolong and chamomile crashed over America last night as polls closed in Democratic primaries in several states across the country.

By now, you’ve probably caught the basic narrative: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani flexed his political muscles, the three congressional candidates he endorsed swept their primaries, two sitting congressmen got the boot, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who went all-in against the DSA slate, got his clock cleaned as progressives won several contests against the more moderate pols he had backed.

Pundits and posters are tripping over themselves to herald the arrival of the Democratic Tea Party.

I regret to report that a degree of caution is in order, not because what happened in New York isn’t significant (it certainly is), but because the netizens of Elon Musk’s digital “Nazi porn bar” appear to be building a tidier and more convenient narrative than last night’s messy returns can support.

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Cast your eyes outside New York’s five boroughs for a moment. In Utah, Democrats had their first real shot at a congressional seat in years thanks to a court-ordered redistricting that carved a blue district into Salt Lake City. The two main candidates competing for the nomination in this new district were Ben McAdams, a former moderate congressman and Salt Lake County mayor; and Nate Blouin, a state senator and viral DSA darling with Sen. Bernie Sanders’s endorsement.

McAdams won by more than 30 points.

A brand-new, majority-Democratic district is exactly where a progressive candidate should, theoretically, have every structural advantage. But Utah Democrats looked at their options and went with the Blue Dog.

Then there’s Maryland’s 5th District, where the crowded race to replace retiring Rep. Steny Hoyer produced its own narrative clash. Adrian Boafo, a former Hoyer campaign manager, won that race, boosted by somewhere between $10 and $11 million in outside spending. (Breaking: Institutionalized money beats a disorganized progressive field, again. News at eleven.) The New York Times crowed “AIPAC, Crypto Cash and Rich Candidates Dominate Maryland House Races.” That doesn’t exactly scream progressive revolution.

And even within New York City itself, the imagined Democratic Tea Party wave had its limits. Ritchie Torres, the Bronx congressman, very insistent pro-Israel hawk, and perpetual bête noire of the left, survived a primary challenge from former assemblyman Michael Blake without breaking a sweat. Notably, Mamdani didn’t endorse in that contest, and it’s not hard to see why: NY-15 is one of the few corners of New York City that the mayor himself didn’t carry in last year’s primary. The Mamdani machine, for all its impressive horsepower, knew better than to race in terrain it hadn’t mapped.

So what’s the actual takeaway from Tuesday?

Zohran Mamdani is an extraordinarily popular politician who happens to command the most formidable municipal (emphasis on municipal) political machine in American politics today. And the NYC DSA chapter has spent a decade building the organizational infrastructure that lifted several of its candidates to the doorstep of Congress.

But that’s not a Democratic Tea Party. If you need further proof you can hop over the Hudson and talk to Mikie Sherrill, the moderate Democrat who won the New Jersey governor’s seat on the same night Mamdani captured Gracie Mansion.

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The Tea Party circa 2010 was an ungoverned wave of anti-government, often bigoted fury: decentralized, ideologically incoherent, and ultimately captured by grifters and opportunists (see: real estate huckster and former reality television star Donald J. Trump). What has been happening over the past year in New York City is happening at a smaller scale. It’s also not the result of some backlash against the bailout of the banks or the election of Barack Obama but, rather, years of discipline and organizing. Mamdani’s election and last night’s DSA victories represent the fruit of a decade-long project to fundamentally change the nature of the Democratic party, a project that got a major injection of enthusiasm from the war in Gaza and the election results of 2024.

Mamdani himself is a genuinely compelling politician who ran a joyful, substantive campaign on bread-and-butter issues; he didn’t become mayor because New Yorkers are especially radical. (His predecessor was Eric Adams, for goodness’ sake.) He became mayor because his supporters and ideological fellow-travelers organized. It didn’t hurt matters that his main opponent in the race was a scandal-plagued ex-governor who no one seemed to like.

The question isn’t whether what happened Tuesday matters. It does; it shows how the budding progressive movement might continue to build its power within the Democratic party in the future. But that future isn’t here yet. The Democratic establishment might look at Utah, at Maryland, at Torres surviving in the Bronx, and conclude the party coalition remains anchored more towards political pragmatism, nominating progressives in progressive places and centrists in more moderate locales.

It may take a lot more oolong and chamomile to change their view of things.

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