Establishment Democrats are panicking as voters in their party move sharply to the left. Politico reports, “Leftist candidates swept a trio of deep-blue House seats in New York City, a seismic victory that toppled two incumbents, including the powerful chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. And after a string of progressive battleground wins in earlier primaries, moderates are making it very clear that the left’s winning streak is potentially just starting.”

The victories in New York this week could partially be explained by local factors. Mayor Zohran Mamdani is popular, and he endorsed a slate of progressive challengers that successfully won upset battles against rivals with heavy backing from the establishment. Mamdani’s own surprise victory was powered by the organizational strength of the Democratic Socialists of America, which has emerged as a formidable machine in New York politics.

But the rise of the left is not just a New York story. As Politico notes, “Progressives have romped through Democrats’ spring primaries, notching a series of wins across both safe and competitive districts and upending House and Senate Democrats’ battleplans.” In Maine’s Democratic Senate primary, Graham Platner, an incendiary anti-system candidate, handily defeated Janet Mills, the governor of the state who had been singled out for support by the party’s Senate leader, Chuck Schumer.

Establishment Democrats are not responding to these defeats with anything resembling grace or equanimity. In fact, they are freaking out, sometimes even openly threatening to tear the party apart rather than work in a big tent that includes a robust wing of democratic socialists. In effect, these establishment Democrats are threatening to hold the party hostage, saying that if the left isn’t stopped, they prefer either to sit out the election or to expel the left.

In a two-party system, this sort of my-way-or-the-highway attitude runs the risk of empowering the Republicans, even in a vulnerable political environment. Although Donald Trump is historically unpopular, the GOP might still win the midterms and elect a MAGA successor in 2028 if enough centrist Democrats throw a hissy fit and split the party.

CNN reports, “One Democratic lawmaker sitting in a battleground district told CNN that they are so concerned about the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America that they have recently begun having serious conversations with donors about leaving the party altogether.”

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James Carville, former campaign advisor to Bill Clinton, expressed the same idea in more florid terms. On a podcast, Carville ranted about Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Mamdani-backed DSA candidate who won a congressional primary on Tuesday. Carville cited some extreme positions the candidate took when younger (such as criticizing interracial marriage), which she has since disavowed. Despite his own constantly stated distaste for purity tests, Carville made no allowances for Avila Chevalier changing her mind. Instead, he said,

“Lady, I ain’t in the same party as you. I’m sorry. I’m just not. And I actually do think it’s time for Democrats to talk the ‘s’ word: schism. I really do. Everybody’s always said, ‘No, no. We’re a coalition. We’re a big tent.’ And there’s just some shit I can’t be in the same tent with.”

Carville went on to say that Democrats should “negotiate the terms of a schism” with DSA. In another interview, he insisted that if Avila Chevalier wins her seat, Democrats “should not seat her in the caucus. Her views are totally against anything that any Democrat has. We believe in pluralism.” Carville seems not to be aware of the irony of praising pluralism while calling for a purge.

Writing in more measured terms, Jaimie Harrison, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, also pushed for a schism in a post on X.com:

I say this with no ill will or animosity: if you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination. Don’t use our resources. Don’t rely on our volunteers. Don’t use our infrastructure. Don’t ask Democrats to invest their time, money, and energy in your campaign. Focus on building the party you actually support. Political parties aren’t perfect, but they’re built by millions of people who knock doors, make calls, organize meetings, and fight for the values they believe in. If you don’t believe in the party, then don’t ask its members to carry you across the finish line.

Another advocate for a split is Cathy Young, a Never Trump conservative writer for The Bulwark. She argued that Adriano Espaillat, who was defeated by Avila Chevalier, should run as an independent candidate in the general election. This is the same sore loser campaign strategy used by Andrew Cuomo, who was rejected by Democratic primary voters in last year’s mayoral race and then ran in the general election, only to be trounced a second time by Zohran Mamdani. If establishment Democrats want to use Cuomo as a template and reject the will of their own voters in this way, they will likely meet the same fate he did.

Beyond being bad politics, these calls for schism are fundamentally childish. They suggest a juvenile mindset that can’t handle defeat. They are rooted in the false idea that a political party is a piece of property that one group owns. In fact, parties are made up of their members, who belong to different factions. If your faction loses, the mature thing to do is to try to organize to win the next time.

Strikingly, the establishment is now doing what it so often accused the left of doing: acting as a spoiler. It’s long been a part of establishment lore that third-party candidates such as Ralph Nader and Jill Stein split the left-wing vote just enough to help elect Republicans. Speaking on CNN in 2023, Carville claimed, without evidence, that Jill Stein was “almost certainly an agent of the Russian government.” Carville also said Cornel West’s presidential run was a “threat of the continued constitutional order in the United States,” and “Ralph Nader was directly responsible for the election of George W. Bush.” Further, Bernie Sanders was often lambasted as not a real Democrat because he ran as an independent. For many election cycles, the left was enjoined to do the mature thing and support centrist candidates as the lesser evil to the GOP. The rallying cry was that Democrats need to be a big-tent party.

Carville was speaking at a time when the left was very much the junior partner of the Democratic coalition and the centrist Joe Biden called the shots. But now the left is ascendant; it’s not too far-fetched to think that leftists could soon be the senior partners in the coalition. Under these new conditions, Carville is jettisoning his earlier rhetoric of party unity. Instead, he’s calling for an outright split. But precisely because the left is larger now, such a schism would do far more damage to the Democratic party than the relatively minor candidacies of Nader, Stein, and West, who, in any case, were perfectly in their rights to run as third-party candidates.

When contemplating figures such as James Carville, I’m reminded of Satan, as portrayed in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. In that immortal work, the devil offers this credo: “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.” In modern terms, figures such as Carville believe it is better to reign in Hell over a fractured and defeated party than to be forced to serve in a victorious party dominated by the DSA.

Milton’s Satan possessed romantic nobility in his defiance. But translated into mundane political terms, the “reign in Hell” credo is the philosophy of losers.