THEY’RE OUT - GROWING STREAM OF DEMS LEAVING PARTY - SCHUMER’S MIDTERM DISASTER IS HAPPENING
Julian Epstein Calls the Democratic Divide a ‘Civil War’—But the Primary Results Show a Party in Flux, Not a Completed Takeover
Julian Epstein has spent decades inside Democratic politics.
He served as chief legal counsel to House Democrats during the Clinton impeachment battle and later worked in Democratic presidential politics.
Now he says the conflict between the party’s establishment and its socialist left has moved beyond ordinary intraparty tension.
“We are in a civil war now,” Epstein told Fox News Digital this month.
The phrase is deliberately dramatic.
It also captures a real political struggle.
Progressive and democratic socialist candidates have defeated established Democrats in several high-profile primaries, while longtime party figures such as James Carville and Sen. John Fetterman are publicly warning that the coalition is moving too far left.
But a political civil war is not the same thing as a completed takeover.
That distinction matters because the evidence cuts in both directions.
Democratic socialists and progressive insurgents have scored some of the most striking primary victories of the 2026 cycle.
In New York, candidates backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani defeated sitting members of Congress and strengthened the influence of the city’s socialist and progressive organizing network.
In Colorado, 29-year-old democratic socialist Melat Kiros defeated Rep. Diana DeGette, who had represented her Denver-based district for nearly three decades.
In Michigan, progressive challengers defeated establishment-backed candidates in both House and Senate contests.
Those are not symbolic wins.
They will change who holds office and who has influence inside Democratic politics.
Epstein argues that much of the national press has understated what those results mean.
“If you rely on [MS NOW] for news, I think you’re basically illiterate and uninformed about what’s going on,” he told Fox News Digital, adding that he believed the problem existed at CNN as well, though to a lesser degree.
He said news organizations were treating the fight as something that might become a civil war later when, in his view, the conflict is already underway.
That is Epstein’s critique of the coverage.
It should not be presented as a fact that major news organizations have ignored the story.
The Associated Press and Reuters have both devoted substantial coverage to the struggle between the Democratic establishment and its progressive flank.
AP has described a “nascent but clear uprising” after Kiros and other insurgents defeated establishment-backed candidates.
Reuters has written repeatedly about democratic socialist momentum, the party’s ideological divide and the question of whether left-wing primary success can translate into general-election victories.
The disagreement is therefore less about whether the press is covering the conflict than about how it is framing it.
Epstein believes terms such as “tensions,” “divisions” and “intraparty debate” are too mild.
Other analysts see a coalition undergoing a serious realignment without concluding that one faction has already captured the entire party.
The election results support the second interpretation at least as much as the first.
Progressives have won important races.
They have also lost important races.
In Wisconsin, moderate Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley narrowly defeated democratic socialist Francesca Hong for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
In Hawaii, Rep. Ed Case defeated a progressive challenger.
In Missouri, Rep. Wesley Bell defeated former Rep. Cori Bush in her comeback attempt.
Those results do not erase the socialist left’s gains.
They show that Democratic voters are not moving uniformly in one ideological direction.
AP’s analysis of the 2026 primaries has pointed to another explanation that cuts across the left-versus-center framework.
Many Democratic voters appear to be demanding change itself.
They are rewarding younger candidates, outsiders and challengers who argue that the party’s existing leadership is too old, too cautious or too closely tied to established institutions.
Sometimes those candidates are democratic socialists.
Sometimes they are progressives who do not use that label.
Sometimes a moderate candidate can harness the same anti-establishment mood.
That makes generational and institutional frustration part of the story alongside ideology.
Michigan is a useful example.
Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination.
He had backing from Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and campaigned with socialist streamer Hasan Piker.
His victory was unquestionably a win for the party’s progressive wing.
But El-Sayed is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, was not endorsed by DSA and has explicitly said he is not a democratic socialist.
Calling every progressive victory a DSA victory overstates the organization’s reach.
The distinction between DSA and the wider Democratic left is important because the two overlap without being identical.
DSA is an independent political and activist organization, not the Democratic Party itself.
Many of its members run in Democratic primaries because the American two-party system makes that the most viable route to office.
Other progressive candidates share portions of its economic, immigration or foreign-policy agenda while rejecting its institutional program or its socialist label.
A party can move left without every successful challenger becoming a DSA member.
That is closer to what the 2026 primary results currently show.
Epstein’s strongest argument concerns the boundaries of a political coalition.
He has said there should be no room inside the Democratic Party for people who want to destroy constitutional institutions, align themselves with extremist movements or normalize antisemitism.
He has also compared the media reaction to what he believes would happen if an extremist white-supremacist movement gained similar influence inside the Republican Party.
In that context, he said news organizations’ heads would be “collectively exploding” if a KKK movement took hold in the GOP the way he says “Hamas-aligned supporters” have among Democrats.
That is an analogy and a political characterization.
It is not a factual finding that the progressive candidates winning Democratic primaries are aligned with Hamas.
The phrase matters because Democratic arguments over Israel contain several different positions that are often collapsed into one category.
Some Democrats want to condition U.S. military aid to Israel.
Some say Israel’s conduct in Gaza amounts to genocide.
Some oppose Zionism or question the structure of the Israeli state.
Some activists have used rhetoric that Jewish organizations and other critics describe as antisemitic.
Those positions can overlap.
They are not interchangeable.
Opposition to Israeli government policy does not by itself establish support for Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.
Hasan Piker has become one of the most controversial figures in that argument.
The Twitch streamer reaches a large young audience and has appeared with progressive candidates, including El-Sayed.
He has also praised Mao Zedong and made statements about Israel, China and Cuba that critics across the political spectrum consider extreme.
Carville has said he would not remain in the same party if Piker became a defining force within it.
Fetterman has said Democrats should not elevate a person who praises Mao and communist regimes simply because he has a large online following.
Those reactions show that the boundary dispute Epstein describes is real.
But Piker does not hold office in the Democratic Party.
He does not run the Democratic National Committee.
He does not control a congressional caucus or a party committee.
His influence comes from media reach, campaign appearances and his ability to connect progressive candidates with younger voters.
Whether that influence becomes institutional power depends on what happens to the candidates associated with him.
A successful primary endorsement is evidence of influence.
It is not evidence that the endorser has taken control of the party.
The same caution applies to the claim that DSA candidates are simply defeating the “full weight” of Hakeem Jeffries and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee everywhere they run.
Several incumbents and establishment-backed candidates have suffered major defeats.
That is significant.
But party leaders have also backed moderates who won, and many progressive insurgents have lost.
Some primary contests involve safe Democratic seats where national leaders have limited leverage.
Others involve statewide races in which outside groups, unions, donors and ideological organizations spend tens of millions of dollars.
There is no single centralized battlefield.
That is part of what makes the current Democratic divide harder to compare with the Republican Party’s earlier transformations.
The Tea Party and later the Trump movement built power through primaries, media pressure, donor networks and challenges to party leaders.
Democratic socialists are using some of the same mechanisms.
But the scale is different.
Trump ultimately became the Republican presidential nominee, president and undisputed center of his party.
DSA does not control the Democratic presidential nomination, congressional leadership or national committee.
The comparison may describe a possible trajectory.
It does not describe the current endpoint.
Epstein’s historical comparison also needs precision.
The first Ku Klux Klan was founded in Tennessee after the Civil War by former Confederate veterans and became a violent white-supremacist movement aimed at destroying Reconstruction and intimidating Black citizens and Republicans.
The Klan became closely associated with white Southern resistance to Republican Reconstruction governments, and white Southern Democrats later dominated the political system that built and enforced Jim Crow segregation.
That history is well documented.
Saying simply that “the Democratic Party created the KKK,” however, compresses a complicated post-Civil War history into a modern partisan slogan.
The same is true of Jim Crow.
White Southern Democratic politicians were central to enacting and maintaining segregation and Black disenfranchisement after Reconstruction.
But the national party coalitions changed dramatically across the twentieth century, particularly through the civil-rights era and the long political realignment of the South.
The modern Democratic and Republican coalitions are not identical to the parties of the 1870s or 1920s.
Historical responsibility can be described accurately without pretending that nineteenth-century party alignments transfer unchanged to 2026.
That matters because the original argument uses the Klan and Jim Crow as proof of a continuous history of “leftist extremism.”
The historical record does not support that simple ideological line.
The Reconstruction-era Klan was a white-supremacist reaction against Black civil rights and Republican political power.
Modern democratic socialism is a separate ideological tradition centered on economic ownership, labor power, public services and structural political reform.
One can criticize both without claiming they belong to one continuous movement.
The more immediate political comparison is inside today’s Democratic coalition.
Epstein, Carville and Fetterman have all warned that the party risks alienating mainstream voters if it cannot set clearer limits on socialist politics, anti-Israel rhetoric or highly controversial media figures.
Former Sen. Joe Manchin has long made a similar argument from the party’s centrist side, though he is no longer a Democratic officeholder.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has criticized elements of the party’s left on Israel and antisemitism while remaining a major Democratic figure.
They do not form a single organized faction with one strategy.
They do represent a visible resistance to parts of the party’s leftward pressure.
The socialist and progressive wing has a different source of power.
It does not need control of national party machinery to win individual primaries.
It needs candidates, volunteers, fundraising networks and voters concentrated in the right districts.
New York and Denver have shown how effective that model can be in strongly Democratic seats.
Michigan showed that an anti-establishment progressive can win a statewide Senate nomination as well.
That is enough to force party leaders to respond even without a formal takeover.
But the phrase “it keeps winning” is too absolute.
Wisconsin showed the limit days later when Crowley defeated Hong.
Hawaii showed another when Case held his seat.
Other races have produced establishment or moderate victories.
If the Democratic Party were already captured by DSA, those defeats would be harder to explain.
The better conclusion is that socialist and progressive candidates are now competitive enough that party leaders can no longer assume they will lose.
Chuck Schumer’s position illustrates a separate problem with turning political speculation into fact.
Schumer is up for reelection in 2028.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has not ruled out challenging him for the Senate seat.
She also has not ruled out running for president.
As of August 15, 2026, she has announced neither campaign.
There is therefore no confirmed Schumer-Ocasio-Cortez primary.
That makes claims about Schumer “appeasing” the left to save himself difficult to prove.
Schumer may have political incentives to avoid alienating progressive voters in New York.
He also has to manage a Senate Democratic caucus whose members represent very different states and constituencies.
Some of his recent positions may please progressives.
Others do not.
Without evidence showing that a particular decision was made because he feared an Ocasio-Cortez primary, motive should not be presented as established fact.
The possibility of a challenge is nevertheless politically meaningful.
Ocasio-Cortez told ABC this month that she had not ruled out either a presidential campaign or a Senate run in 2028.
Earlier hypothetical polling has shown her capable of running strongly against Schumer among New York Democratic voters.
That gives her leverage even before she makes a decision.
It does not mean Schumer has already chosen surrender over confrontation.
The distinction between leverage and control appears throughout the party.
Progressives have enough strength to defeat incumbents.
They can alter the agenda.
They can force leadership to answer questions about Israel, immigration, policing, health care and the structure of government.
They can make establishment figures worry about primary challenges.
But Democratic leaders still control key institutions, moderates continue to win races and the party is trying to unite behind progressive nominees when primaries end.
Michigan demonstrates that last point particularly well.
El-Sayed defeated an establishment-backed opponent after a bitter primary.
Days later, he spoke with former President Barack Obama and joined other Michigan Democrats at a unity event.
His former rivals and party figures began moving toward support for the general election.
That is not how a clean ideological split normally behaves.
It is how a broad party behaves when its factions fight aggressively in primaries and then face incentives to reunite against the opposing party.
Whether that unity lasts is an open question.
Republican Mike Rogers is explicitly appealing to Michigan Democrats who believe El-Sayed represents a party moving too far left.
Carville and Epstein have both suggested there are candidates or political movements they cannot support simply for the sake of party loyalty.
If significant numbers of moderate Democrats actually cross over in November, Epstein’s “civil war” argument will gain evidence beyond rhetoric.
If most of them ultimately vote Democratic, the party will have demonstrated that its ideological tent remains wider than its primary fights suggest.
The media argument will also be tested by what happens next.
There is a legitimate debate over whether political journalism has been too cautious in describing the ideological stakes of the DSA program and the importance of recent primary victories.
There is a weaker case for saying the story has been hidden.
Major news organizations have covered progressive gains, establishment anxiety, socialist policy proposals and the risks those candidates may face in general elections.
Epstein is asking them to use a stronger label.
That is an argument about interpretation, not proof of a blackout.
The better case for Epstein is narrower.
The Democratic Party is going through a serious internal realignment.
Democratic socialists have gained electoral strength.
Progressive challengers have defeated entrenched incumbents.
Figures such as Piker now have access to candidates and audiences that would have been difficult to imagine a decade ago.
Centrist and pro-Israel Democrats are increasingly willing to say publicly that some of those alliances could drive them away from their own nominees.
Those are real signs of conflict.
But the evidence does not yet support the conclusion that the conflict is over.
Moderates are still winning primaries.
DSA does not control the Democratic Party’s national institutions.
Not every progressive nominee is a democratic socialist.
AOC has not announced a challenge to Schumer.
And mainstream news organizations are covering the ideological divide even if Epstein believes they are understating its severity.
The Democratic coalition is changing.
Change is not the same thing as capture.
So Epstein’s declaration settles one issue: prominent Democrats and former Democratic insiders increasingly believe the party’s fight over socialism, Israel and political extremism is serious enough to threaten long-standing alliances.
The primary results give that warning substance.
What they do not settle is who has won the fight.
The socialist left has momentum.
The establishment still has power.
Moderates still have voters.
And general elections will now test whether candidates who can defeat Democratic incumbents can also build broader coalitions outside Democratic primaries.
For Democrats, that is the question that matters more than whether the conflict is called “tension,” a “civil war” or a “takeover.”
If the party’s factions can fight in primaries and reunite in November, the coalition remains intact even as its center of gravity shifts.
If ideological boundaries begin sending longtime Democrats into the Republican column, the rupture becomes something larger.
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Epstein says that moment has already arrived.
