Nicholas Fandos

And launched basically a progressive movement that did meaningfully push the Democratic Party left and led to all kinds of incumbents falling across the country.

So I think anyone who doesn't take this seriously does so at their own peril.

I think this is a question a lot of Democrats are asking today.

And those who are on the winning side would say, well, they're going to help us.

The Democratic Party is losing across the country because regular people are not into our ideas.

They think we're not fighting for them.

We think we're not committed to the right issues.

And we're trying to push the party towards a place that we think it can win.

Now, a lot of those people are not actually living in the kind of districts you're talking about out in the suburbs of New York or in the middle of the country, in the Midwest, wherever it may be.

And the candidates running there, I think, look at these results and are a little worried.

Republicans have shown they are very adept at taking the extreme comments of lefties in New York City or Chicago or L.A.

and broadcasting them all over the country and saying, you may think you're voting for this reasonable moderate candidate, but you're voting to empower a party that is so crazy and outside of the mainstream, they're going to do X or Y or Z.

And that's exactly what we started to hear from Republicans just hours after the election results became clear.

President Trump himself, Speaker Mike Johnson in the House.

Warned that Marxists and socialists like those in New York City were going to be cropping up all over the country.

I think that is certainly a risk for him.

But I think to give the mayor his say, what he would allow is that he's probably going to get blamed and attacked anyway.

He's already one of the most visible left-leading politicians in the country.

And so why not take a big swing at trying to push the party to a place where he thinks he might actually help them?

By advancing ideas that he really believes are not only attractive to many Democrats, but also can be attractive and persuasive and activating to people who have either been turned off by the political process altogether or maybe voted for Republicans who feel like basically the system is not working for them.