By the League National Electoral Committee
The recent Democratic primary victories of Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Angie Nixon in Florida sent shock waves through both Republican and Democratic establishments. They were the latest and most powerful in a wave of wins by progressive, socialist and/or working-class candidates campaigning for seats in Congress, legislatures, city councils and school boards all across the country.
These victories were won against pro-corporate Democrats who often outspent them by as much as 15 to 1. They were won by campaigning for practical solutions to the basic issues facing working-class voters. After decades of playing defense, these election campaigns coalescing around positive demands and programs to improve workers’ lives. They are not only creating programs, but they are organizing to win the elections necessary to be able to fight for them. And as the Mamdani movement has shown, when they win, they are organizing to implement them.
As Angie Nixon said, “My vision is for a country where we build housing people can actually afford. … Where healthcare is treated as a human right. Where public schools are fully funded. Where we invest in climate resilience before disaster hits. Where we protect democracy because people cannot fight for a better life if their voices are being silenced.”
ELECTORAL ADVANCES
These campaigns are grounded in the sections of the working class that are threatened and abused by the private property system’s embrace of digital production and artificial intelligence (A.I.) The millions who have no future in the billionaire economy pose an existential threat to the two-party system that capital has used to control the US working class for over 200 years. Their electoral advances are provoking fierce attacks from all sides. The Trump administration recently put out a State Dept report branding anyone opposing the billionaire agenda as a “political terrorist.”
Democratic Party leaders have attacked them from a different direction, mainly by claiming they cannot effectively fight MAGA fascism because they are “unelectable.” This is a laughable charge from the Democrats who masterminded the epic failure of 2024. First, they said progressives could only win in coastal blue states. Then, when El-Sayed won in Rust Belt Michigan, they said he cannot win in November because he did not carry the African American vote. Then, when Angie Nixon won in deep South Florida – and swept every Black community in the state – they said she cannot win in November because she is African American.
The organizers behind these victories are a diverse coalition of electoral entities – Working Families Party, Democratic Socialists of America, Leaders We Deserve, Justice Democrats and more. They include different ideologies and different strategies, but they all coalesce around fighting for the basic needs demands of the working class. Working Families Party has developed a “Working Families Guarantee”: homes, health care, good jobs, childcare and time to spend with your family.
These groups do not always agree and they sometimes even support different candidates in the same race. But the important thing is that they are moving millions of people in the same direction – toward a break with the pro-capitalist, two-party duopoly and toward building a political movement supporting the basic human rights demands of our multi-racial working class.
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS
One important contribution of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has been to reintroduce the concept of socialism into the American political debate. Even within DSA itself there is widespread confusion over exactly what socialism actually is – everything from Marxism to FDR New Deal capitalism. However, the basic concept of government accountability to ensure human needs is a powerful foundation for a movement to be able to work out what socialism, or a cooperative economy, actually looks like in practice. In the era of A.I., meeting human needs will require grappling with basic issues of not only redistributing wealth, but public ownership of corporations and the means of creating wealth in the first place.
Sanders, who calls himself a socialist, has called for public ownership of half of the A.I. industry; El-Sayed, who calls himself pro-capitalist, has called for public governance; and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who also calls himself pro-capitalist, calls for taxing A.I. to create a multi-billion-dollar jobs program. The fight for these just demands, alongside calls for wealth taxes and billionaire taxes will necessarily be at the forefront of the struggle for control of the predatory corporations that are destroying America.
UNITY AND VISION
The role of revolutionaries is to continually push for unity around the immediate demands of the working class and keep the movement on the course necessary to meet those demands. Economics and history teach us that a cooperative economy is necessary to get there and revolutionaries have a responsibility to elevate that vision at every stage of the battle.
The fight for unity has to combat not only the overt racial bigotry of MAGA, but the insidious divisions sown by corporate agents inside the Democratic Party. They criticize DSA because it is majority white and college-educated (although most DSA candidates have been people of color). This is a weakness that many DSA members are already working to overcome.
The Mamdani campaign, for example, reached deep into the African American community and raised its share of votes in majority-Black neighborhoods from 39 to 64 percent between June 2025 and the New York mayoral election in November 2025.
As Afua Atta-Mensah, the campaign’s political director explained at the time:
“Some of the shifts you may have seen were moving from the general idea of how this helps everyone – which is true – to the specific. Deed theft is about Black communities. You should say the word ‘Black.’ If it’s for them, say it. Don’t just mention the ‘disproportionate impact.’ When we’re talking about maternal mortality, clearly you have to talk about Black women. So say it. And let’s go to Central Brooklyn and talk about it.”
Atta-Mensah now is commissioner of the city’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice.
All the various working-class organizations involved in these campaigns have flaws and limitations. The point is not to dwell on them and definitely not let them divide us, but to work to overcome them. If some of our supporters come from positions of privilege and bias, let’s address that but also welcome them to the battlefield. After all, A.I. is coming for all of us. As Angie Nixon said, “I am a Black woman with natural hair. I scare people just being my authentic self. So I want to be clear, this isn’t about people’s labels, this is about people’s needs.”
Published on September 14, 2026.
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