Justice Dems in Disarray

The far-left peaked. Layoffs at Squad HQ shows the decline continues.

The higher something climbs, the faster it falls back to earth.

Justice Democrats epitomized the energy and ambition that powered the ascendant progressive movement of the early Trump years. Founded by far-left political entrepreneurs who cut their teeth on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, the upstart group burst onto the scene in 2018 with primary challenges to establishment Democrats — including a threat to knock off Hakeem Jeffries.

Justice Democrats harnessed unprecedented energy in response to Trump’s election and diverted it into primary campaigns against other Democrats in some of the safest Democratic seats in the country.

But the post-2018 surge of far-left energy catalyzed by Justice Democrats, the “Squad,” and a small but organized ecosystem of Bernie-linked groups like Our Revolution wasn’t built to last. Like a prairie fire, the far-left spread fast and soon exhausted its primary fuel supply. Justice Democrats and Our Revolution quickly burned through the handful of deep-blue districts where they could win primaries before smoldering in the face of their incredibly narrow appeal.

Over the course of the last 18 months, we’ve asked “whether the groups and individuals who built the entrepreneurial infrastructure to power the far-left momentum surge from 2016-2020 were past their peak.” With each passing review, the answer is an increasingly resounding “yes.”

In March, Justice Democrats announced a four-day work week. In July it laid off half its staff.

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A Brief History of the Far-Left

In March 2022, we eulogized the “remarkable five year run” of today’s far-left movement:

In 2016, Bernie's momentum upended the presidential primary and spurred talk of revolution.

In 2018, AOC led the four-member “Squad,” channeling the energy of Trump blowback and making talk of revolution tangible.

In 2020, the Democratic presidential primaries were dominated by ideological litmus tests that would have been unthinkable in the Obama era while the Squad grew from four to seven.

In 2022, the Squad had its lowest membership yield of any cycle, adding just two new members. Meanwhile, entrepreneurial groups like New Consensus and No Excuses PAC — both founded by founders of Justice Democrats — appear to have burned out, if not died altogether.

But the midterms not only marked the shrinkage of the far-left’s organizational might, but the third consecutive cycle of real-life election data showing the far-left’s performance (or lack thereof). As we told The New York Times’ Tom Edsall in December:

Far-left political science deniers refuse to accept the fact that moderate candidates still outperform those at the extremes. While there may be fewer swing voters now, the closeness of elections maximizes their importance. All the data points to moderate outperformance — from political science research to election results to common sense.

After three cycles, what does the far-left have to show for itself?

1. Zero Republican Seats Flipped: As Third Way explores in a thorough post-election deep-dive, the mainstream NewDems have flipped a combined 42 Republican seats from 2018 to 2022. Justice Democrats? Zero. Our Revolution? Also zilch. Meanwhile, they successfully primaried a center-left incumbent in 2022 only to lose the seat (which Biden won handily in 2020) in the general — meaning they’ve officially flipped more seats blue to red than red to blue.

2. Underperformance Across the Board: Time and time again over the last six years, the far-left has proven the existence of what we call the “progressive penalty”: uber-progressive candidates generally underperform more moderate alternatives — not just in swing seats but in some of the bluest seats in the nation. From Kara Eastman’s blowout loss in a seat Biden won handily in 2020 to the fact that every member of the Squad underperformed in 2022, the far-left runs behind the mainstream.

The far-left doesn’t have a strong electoral record to stand on. It comes as a surprise to no one but the red rose Twitter bubble that Justice Democrats is struggling to stay afloat.

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Momentum in the Middle

It’s not 2018 anymore. The progressive knee-jerk reaction to the Trump era was understandable in the shocking aftermath of 2016, but our democracy is now in crisis.

Meanwhile, as Matt Yglesias points out about Justice Democrats’ downsizing, the fact that a Democrat is in office has meant that the winds that guide American politics are no longer blowing left.

This contributes to “a general statistical phenomenon that people tend to overlook”:

If something that’s normally distributed undergoes a modest shift in the average, you end up with a huge change in the number of outliers… Even at the peak of backlash against Trump, very few people were hardcore leftists. But a general leftward shift in the distribution of opinion leads to a large proportionate increase in the number of leftists. And a general rightward shift back under Biden leads, mechanically, to a huge decline in the number of leftists.

In today’s political landscape — with the appetite for socialism continuing to decline and the threat to democracy rising — now is no time for progressive puritanism. It is time for an empathetic second wave resistance to channel a new wave of energy into the pragmatic middle — the battleground on which American democracy will live or die.

A new generation of energetic big-tent moderates like Mary Peltola, Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez, Adam Frisch, and Will Rollins will lead this new resistance — and they will win not by running on purity tests and hashtaggable slogans, but on the promise of normalcy, sanity, and the ability to govern in an era overrun with extremism.

In 2024, these leaders will be running to win their swing races alongside mainstream Democrats like President Biden. The winds of progress will be behind the middle — and those who can win it.

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Win the Middle, Save Democracy

Justice Democrats and the far-left had an impressive five year run that exploded well beyond reason.

The path forward in the Biden era will run through a big-tent movement capable of welcoming voters in and winning swing seats.

The far-left isn’t doing that — and never was. Groups like Justice Democrats had a few high-profile wins in a handful of deep-blue districts — and an abysmal track record in swing districts. But they’ve peaked, and it’s now the middle’s turn.

There’s a lot the center can learn from the far-left’s rise and fall. As we said back in March of last year, it’s “time for the center-left to have its own big five year run.”

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