Kelly McParland: Could Democrats blow another chance to contain Trump?

Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier speaks during the "Our Team, Our Year" Get Out The Vote (GOTV) rally at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, on June 18, 2026. Photo by KENA BETANCUR /AFP via Getty Images

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Everyone’s talking about the big socialist upsurge in the U.S.

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In reality it’s not that big an uprising. The “national leftward pull,” as cited in one news report, consisted of a handful of primary victories in New York and Colorado, two Democratic states choosing among Democrats for November’s mid-term elections. The revolution, as such, consists of parts of the country that were already inclined towards leftyism showing signs of feeling even more lefty than usual.

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Still, it’s captured a lot of attention. Numerous newssitespronounced the results a “socialist sweep.” The New York Post termed it “anti-Israel, anti-capitalist” as well. Fox News warned MAGAites that “the Democratic Socialists of America are dictating their terms and sending warnings to the Democratic Party not to cross them.”

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That elements of the left would be feeling more than a little agitated with the performance of the Democratic establishment is entirely reasonable: The two most senior elected Democrats remain Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. HakeemJeffries, two New York political lifers drawn from the usual old guard cast of characters, the ones who thought Hillary Clinton was a sure bet to beat Donald Trump in 2016, couldn’t come up with anyone younger or more vibrant than Joe Biden in 2020 and lacked the nerve to keep Biden from self-destructing in 2024 until it was far too late.

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Eighteen months into Donald Trump’s second term there’s no indication a greater sense of vigour has seized the party’s upper echelons. The most talked about figure remains Bernie Sanders, the 84-year-old senator from Vermont who isn’t even a party member but caucuses with Democrats for the sake of convenience.  Potential candidates for the 2028 election include a pair of weather-beaten names: California Gov. Gavin Newsom — direct from a high-cost, high-tax state known for its crime and homelessness crises and its inability to deal with wildfires, and former vice-president Kamala Harris, another Californian who’s already lost once to Trump but doesn’t think it was her fault.

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Outside the cobwebbed confines of the party’s leadership there’s a pervasive worry. Among that portion of the population fervently praying for deliverance from an increasingly madcap White House, anything that threatens the chances of outpacing Republicans in November’s midterms is reason for alarm. Having blown their chances repeatedly, the likelihood they’ll do it again can’t be dismissed.

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According to pollsters, upward of six in 10 Americans has reached the conclusion the Trump team of grifters, billionaires, opportunists and oddballs is a pox on the country and needs to be stopped before it can rename the capital in his honour and require all newborns to be painted with orange faces.

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Why it took them so long is a question for later. For now the task is to avoid fumbling the last chance they’ll have before 2028 to put a halt to the turmoil. A sharp lurch to the left would certainly be one way to snatch a late-game defeat.

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New York has established itself as the cradle of the radical cause. The city that established Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the country’s official angry young Democrat followed it up by electing Zohran Mamdani as mayor. Choosing a Muslim in the largest concentration of Jewish residents outside Israel was certainly a novelty, but the startled reaction was a bit overdone given that the best party elders could manage as a rival was the disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo, still living down the sexual allegations that drove him from office.