House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries backed 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette in her Colorado Democratic primary. When a 29-year-old candidate endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America beat DeGette by nearly nine points, Jeffries took to social media to congratulate the winner, as if the endorsement of the loser never happened.
The speed of the about-face tells you everything about where power is moving inside the Democratic Party and how little its leaders are willing to do about it.
Melat Kiros, the DSA-backed challenger, took more than 50 percent of the vote Tuesday night. DeGette, 68, who had held the seat for 15 terms, managed just 41.7 percent. By Wednesday, Jeffries posted his congratulations, pivoting from the candidate he had supported to the one who ran against everything his leadership was supposed to represent.
"Congratulations to Melat Kiros on your hard-fought primary win. We will take back the majority in November. And House Democrats will aggressively tackle the affordability crisis, fix our broken healthcare system and end the culture of corruption in Washington!"
Note what is missing from that statement: any mention of DeGette's three decades of service. Any acknowledgment that Jeffries had backed her. Any hint that the party's top House leader just watched his own endorsed candidate get swept aside by a self-described socialist running on a platform of purging corporate PAC money from the caucus.
If Jeffries hoped his congratulatory post would buy goodwill, Kiros was not selling. She told Politico after her win that she would not support Jeffries as party leader if elected to Congress.
Her post-victory message was blunt. Kiros framed her campaign as a direct challenge to the Democratic establishment, the same establishment Jeffries leads.
"For decades Democrats have failed to meaningfully deliver for working families. It's not about popular support, it's about political will, and that means we have to vote out any of the incumbents that are standing in our way by taking that kind of corporate PAC money."
That is not the language of a team player grateful for the party leader's kind words. It is the language of someone who views Jeffries and his allies as obstacles to be removed. And Jeffries responded by congratulating her anyway.
The pattern has become familiar. DSA-backed candidates challenge Democratic incumbents. Party leaders back the incumbents. The incumbents lose. And then the leaders rush to embrace the victors, as though nothing happened. Kiros's toppling of DeGette is only the latest example of a socialist insurgency spreading through Democratic primaries.
The tension is not new. After a string of DSA-backed candidates won primaries in New York, 13 moderate Democrats published an open letter drawing a line, or trying to.
"We are capitalists and not socialists."
That letter, signed in the wake of the New York results, was supposed to signal that the party's center would hold. But the center keeps losing primaries, and the leaders who claim to represent it keep folding the moment the votes are counted.
The dynamic puts Jeffries in an increasingly awkward position. He leads a caucus that includes members who openly reject his leadership. He endorses incumbents who then lose to candidates who campaign against him by name. And when those candidates win, he congratulates them and pretends the whole thing is part of a unified march toward a House majority.
Many of the DSA-backed winners have signaled they would oppose both Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as party leaders. Jeffries himself acknowledged after socialist-backed candidates toppled Democratic incumbents in New York that there was work to do, a diplomatic understatement for a leader watching his own coalition fracture beneath him.
What makes Jeffries's quick pivot so telling is how little leverage he retains. A party leader who endorses a candidate, watches that candidate lose badly, and then immediately congratulates the winner is not leading. He is following.
DeGette held her seat for 15 terms. She was a fixture. And she lost to a 29-year-old DSA candidate by a margin that was not particularly close. That result did not happen in a vacuum.
Kiros ran explicitly against the kind of politics DeGette represented, long tenure, corporate PAC fundraising, and alignment with party leadership. Voters in that Colorado district chose the challenger's message over the incumbent's record, and they did so decisively.
Progressive primary wins in New York have already fueled talk of leadership challenges at the highest levels of the Democratic Party. The Colorado result adds another data point to a trend that moderate Democrats have so far been unable to reverse.
Meanwhile, the DSA wing has made no secret of its ambitions. These candidates are not running to join the existing Democratic caucus and play nice. They are running to remake it. Kiros's refusal to support Jeffries as leader is not an outlier, it is the standard position for DSA-aligned candidates who view the current party structure as part of the problem they were elected to fix.
Jeffries's social media post tried to paper over the contradiction. He congratulated Kiros. He mentioned the affordability crisis, healthcare, and corruption. He said nothing about socialism, nothing about the DSA, and nothing about the fact that the woman he was congratulating had just defeated the woman he endorsed.
That silence speaks volumes. A leader confident in his position would not need to pretend that a DSA victory over his own endorsed candidate was just another primary result.
DSA activists have directed "you're next" threats at Jeffries himself, making clear that the socialist insurgency views his leadership as a target, not an ally. His response has been to congratulate the insurgents when they win.
The 13 moderate Democrats who declared themselves capitalists and not socialists had the right instinct. But declarations mean nothing when the party's own leader validates every socialist primary victory with a congratulatory post and a pledge of unity.
Some Democrats have already called publicly for Jeffries and Schumer to step aside in favor of new leadership. If the current trajectory holds, more DSA primary wins, more establishment losses, more congratulatory posts from leaders who backed the losers, that call will only grow louder.
For conservative voters and anyone watching from outside the Democratic tent, the Kiros-DeGette result and Jeffries's reaction offer a clear picture. The Democratic Party's left flank is gaining ground in primaries. Its leadership lacks the will or the ability to stop it. And when the left wins, the leaders fall in line.
Kiros won more than 50 percent of the vote against a 15-term incumbent. She told reporters she wants to remove incumbents who take corporate PAC money. She said she would not back Jeffries as leader. And Jeffries congratulated her.
That is not party management. That is a party leader watching his own coalition get remade around him and choosing to applaud rather than resist.
When the people tearing down your house get a standing ovation from the homeowner, the house is already gone.
