As the 2026 Senate primaries take shape, Democrats can’t stop flirting with far-left toxic progressives. Where Democrats go from here will tell us how the political environment will shape up for 2028.
The Democratic base’s love affair with toxic, far-left candidates is most apparent in Michigan, a race that Democrats are confident they can win regardless of who emerges in the primary. The GOP nominee is almost certain to be former Rep. Mike Rogers, a generic Republican who narrowly lost the 2024 Senate race by 0.34 points. With that in mind, the most sensible pick for Democrats would be Rep. Haley Stevens, herself a generic Democrat who is polling better against Rogers than her two challengers.
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The problem for Democratic voters is that Stevens may not be left-wing enough for the party’s taste at the moment. Don’t get it wrong, Stevens is a toxic political force herself. She has a history of public outbursts when things don’t go her way. But, by any measure of the party today, she is a generic Democrat, which doesn’t excite the progressive base. Even worse, Stevens is not obsessed with villainizing AIPAC and Israel for everything wrong with the world. AIPAC even — gasp — donated to her in her 2022 House race.
That means that Stevens is clinging to a small lead in a three-horse race. According to RealClearPolitics, Stevens sits at 26.5% in the primary, just ahead of state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (24.5%) and former Wayne County Health Director Abdul El-Sayed (18%). McMorrow is an obnoxious progressive scold who said that she would assault Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney-Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh if she saw them at a football game tailgate. El-Sayed is a far-left antisemite backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and is so obsessed with Israel that he cast a protest vote against Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential primaries.
Stevens is the sensible choice, the most likely one to win the seat in a race that will likely be far more competitive than Democrats think. And yet, Democratic voters continue to flock to the more toxic progressive candidates in the field as they drive politics to a more hateful and hysterical place. If Democrats dump Stevens, it paints a picture of a more noxious and socially destructive party for 2028.
Maine Democratic Primary
The other trend to watch from Democrats is the promotion of caricatures of masculinity that they think will appeal to the men they drove away over the past decade. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the race to finally defeat Sen. Susan Collins in Maine.
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Collins has been an untouchable Republican, defying political gravity in a blue state, no matter the resources poured in against her campaign. Her 2018 victory in a blue wave year, where Democrats never even fathomed they could lose the race, was proof enough of her electoral dominance. Democrats have a sensible candidate in Janet Mills, the incumbent governor who has proven (twice) that she can win statewide. Candidate recruitment does not get better than that.
But they instead appear to prefer Graham Platner. Platner has been portrayed as a working-class oyster farmer. He is a man (with a beard!) and a former U.S. Marine. At first glance, he is definitely an upgrade over Democrats’ attempts to make Tim Walz the pinnacle of masculinity in 2024.
But Platner’s image is a fraud. He attended an elite boarding school and a private school on the dime of his rich family. His father is a lawyer, and his grandfather was an interior designer who worked on the headquarters of the Ford Foundation. He is a product of the wealthy elite, even as he tries to paint himself as a man of the people as a self-professed socialist (a label he now distances himself from). He also has a bit of a hateful past, including getting a Nazi tattoo inked on his chest and posting online about how he hates police officers.
Despite being a silver-spoon elitist cosplaying as a salt-of-the-earth oyster farmer, Platner is currently in a dead heat with Mills.
Texas Democratic Primary
The desire for faux masculine candidates who appeal to men and toxic progressives who want to burn everything down meets in the Democratic Senate primary in Texas, where there is no sensible Stevens or Mills-esque candidate. The candidate Democrats think could appeal to men is James Talarico, a state representative who podcast host Joe Rogan says should run for president.
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Talarico is a slick talker, flexing his Christianity whenever given the opportunity, which makes Democrats think he is a hard counter to Republicans among religious voters. Talarico’s religious pitch and male podcast listening appeal fall apart pretty quickly with just one look into his political background. For example, in 2021, he claimed in a hearing that there were not two biological sexes, male and female. In fact, he claimed there were six, in an effort to oppose a bill that prevented boys from playing girls’ sports.
The other half of this primary is Rep. Jasmine Crockett, the personification of toxic progressivism. Crockett is a racist, a divisive identitarian, and a hateful force in American politics. She has openly said she doesn’t want to win over GOP voters in Texas because she just wants to talk to “people of color.” (Par for the course with her divisive, racist ideology, she does not realize that many of those people voted for President Donald Trump).
If it comes down to a choice, Democrats evidently prefer the noxious partisan, as Crockett is currently polling ahead of Talarico. Crockett has become a media darling for Democrats, so much so that her entrance into the race drove out inoffensive former Rep. Colin Allred, who lost the 2024 Senate race. Crockett is almost certainly too hateful and too progressive to win in Texas, but the fact that Democrats are anointing her as the face of the 2026 cycle shows that both she and the toxic politics she promotes will have a role in 2028.
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Texas Republican Primary
There are not many interesting Senate primary battles on the GOP side this cycle as of now, as the GOP sits in a holding pattern under the assumption that Vice President J.D. Vance will replace Trump as the head of the party. There is one primary of note, a throwback to when conservative (now “MAGA”) firebrands tried to topple the establishment.
Sen. John Cornyn is facing a challenge from both Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt. Hunt and Cornyn are apparently battling for the same voters as the “safe” “MAGA” candidates, as both think Paxton is an electoral liability in a general election. A choice to elect Paxton would mean that GOP voters are still happy to throw their support behind candidates who can lose winnable races, a constant issue for the party since Trump took over. Aside from this race, Republicans don’t appear to be making any grand changes, while Democrats are set to show what direction their party is heading after being lost in the wilderness for the past year.
