US midterms: left-wing Democrats seek bigger clout

Left-wing Democratic candidates are heading into November's US midterm elections hoping not only to help their party win Congress, but to shift the party's direction if it takes power.

A series of primary victories has prompted comparisons with the conservative Tea Party movement that helped reshape the Republican Party after Barack Obama's 2008 election. The comparison is limited: today's left-wing insurgents include democratic socialists and more conventional liberals, do not share one formal banner and remain fewer in number than Tea Party-backed Republicans were in 2010.

Election forecaster Decision Desk HQ gives Democrats a 76 percent chance of taking the House of Representatives and a narrower advantage in the Senate.

Left-wing candidates have defeated establishment-backed rivals in Senate primaries in Michigan and Minnesota, while democratic socialist Angie Nixon won a primary in Florida. Five House candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America have won nominations in strongly left-leaning districts, putting the group on course to grow from two members to seven.

Our Revolution, the organisation that grew out of Bernie Sanders's presidential campaigns, says as many as 22 new allies could enter the House and six the Senate, though many of those candidates face competitive races.

Our Revolution executive director Joseph Geevarghese said left-wing activists would expect influence if they help deliver a Democratic majority. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who could become speaker if Democrats win the House, has said he does not support the DSA agenda but that its primary winners would be part of a broad Democratic caucus.

The larger a left-wing bloc becomes, the more leverage it could have in a narrowly divided House, where a small number of members can affect the choice of speaker and push for concessions.

Some centrist Democrats have warned that more left-wing nominees could cost the party winnable races. Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman told a talk radio show in August that the party had what he called a “socialism problem”.