A Democratic Socialists of America member ousted Alexander Vindman in Florida's Democratic Senate primary by double digits, the latest in a string of 2026 losses for Democrats who built their careers on opposing Trump.
State Rep. Angie Nixon, running on a shoestring budget, beat the retired lieutenant colonel 56% to 44% on Tuesday despite being outspent by a staggering margin. Vindman poured roughly $16 million into the race. Nixon raised less than $1 million. The money gap meant nothing. Fox News reported that Nixon won by a double-digit margin, continuing a pattern that has now claimed some of the Democratic Party's most prominent anti-Trump voices.
Vindman gained national prominence nearly a decade ago as a key witness against President Trump during the first impeachment trial. He was a National Security Council official at the time and made resisting Trump a central plank of his Senate bid. Florida's Democratic primary voters were not persuaded.
The Florida result did not happen in isolation. Across the country this primary season, Democrats who rose to prominence by opposing Trump have fallen one after another, and not to Republicans. They lost to challengers from their own party's left flank or simply failed to generate enthusiasm.
Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado, a manager of the 2021 Trump impeachment, lost her primary to a far-left challenger. Rep. Dan Goldman of New York, another high-profile Trump antagonist, suffered the same fate. Reps. Shri Thanedar of Michigan and Al Green of Texas, both of whom led impeachment pushes, lost to younger challengers. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, who sat on key committees handling the second impeachment, fell short in a Senate bid.
George Conway, the Lincoln Project co-founder and longtime Trump critic, watched his congressional run fizzle. Former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, honored for his actions during the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, lost a Maryland congressional race for the second straight cycle. And billionaire Tom Steyer, who helped bankroll the resistance during Trump's first term, unsuccessfully ran for California governor.
Rep. Eric Swalwell, another 2021 impeachment manager, dropped his gubernatorial bid and left Congress amid mounting sexual assault and harassment allegations, which he has denied.
That is not a coincidence. It is a pattern, and Democratic strategists on both sides of their party's internal divide are trying to explain it.
Shannon Jackson, a longtime progressive strategist best known for his leadership roles in Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, did not hold back. Jackson, now a top consultant for Rep. Ro Khanna of California, widely considered a potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender, told Fox News Digital that the old playbook has expired.
"They've stood up to Trump, but the fact is it's not enough anymore. We need to recognize why Trump won, we need to recognize the failings of the Democratic Party and the Democratic leaders who have gotten us to this point, and we need to improve upon it."
Jackson framed the primary results not as isolated upsets but as something larger. He described "an entire wave that's coming across the country", a progressive movement that has outgrown the resistance-era brand of opposition politics. The socialist primary sweep in New York earlier this cycle offered an early signal of that same current.
Ben Rhodes, a veteran Democratic commentator who served as a leading official in the Obama administration, has made a similar argument repeatedly. Rhodes has emphasized that Democrats must articulate how they will address voters' economic concerns and daily frustrations, not simply run against one man.
The Tuesday results in Florida were not a clean sweep for the socialist left. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat, crushed a DSA-backed challenger in his own primary. And longtime Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee chair, won renomination in a dramatically redrawn district against four candidates, including a socialist endorsed by DSA.
Maria Cardona, a DNC committee member and longtime Democratic strategist, pushed back on the narrative that resistance-era Democrats are simply finished. She told Fox News Digital that voters care about results, not labels.
"Voters want someone who is going to fight for them. Whether or not you call yourself establishment, a moderate, a progressive, or DSA, voters don't care. Voters want to see you fighting for them."
Cardona pointed to Wasserman Schultz as a counterexample, a longtime incumbent who survived because she "has delivered for her community and is still seen as a fighter." She also cited Abdul El-Sayed, a newer figure, as someone who won by connecting with voters on practical terms. Sen. John Fetterman has offered a blunter diagnosis of his party's socialist drift, warning that the trend carries real electoral risk in general elections.
But Cardona's argument carries an uncomfortable implication for Democrats like Vindman. If the test is delivering tangible results, then a candidate whose primary credential is testifying against a president nearly a decade ago does not pass it. Vindman outspent Nixon by roughly 16-to-1 and still lost by 12 points. Voters were not buying what he was selling.
Nixon's primary victory may prove to be the high point of her campaign. The New York Post reported that she will face Republican incumbent Sen. Ashley Moody in November and already trails by 8 points in polling. A DSA-backed candidate running statewide in Florida faces long odds, and the primary result hands Republicans a straightforward contrast to draw for general-election voters.
Sen. Rick Scott, the Florida Republican, seized on the broader pattern, claiming that moderate Democrats are too frightened to stand up to the progressive wing of their own party. The primary results give that argument fresh ammunition.
The Democratic establishment managed to hold ground in Wisconsin, where it narrowly defeated a socialist challenger in a razor-thin governor's primary. But that was the exception, not the rule. Across multiple states, Florida, New York, Colorado, Michigan, Texas, Illinois, the pattern held: Democrats who built their brands around impeachment and resistance lost to candidates who promised something different.
AP News noted that the results reflect deep divisions between progressive and moderate factions, with no clear winning strategy emerging for Democrats heading into November. Elijah Manley, a DSA-endorsed candidate who ran in the Wasserman Schultz race, put it plainly: voters "have looked at the Democratic establishment for the past four years, even 10 years, and it's something that just isn't working for them."
Breitbart reported that Vindman had repeatedly called President Trump a "Russian asset" and described the MAGA movement as a "nihilistic cult bent on establishing dictatorship." That language may have energized cable-news audiences, but it did not move primary voters in Florida, even Democratic ones.
Meanwhile, the 2028 Democratic presidential conversation is already shifting. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has surged past Gavin Newsom in early nomination odds, a sign that the party's energy continues to move leftward even as its general-election prospects in swing states remain uncertain.
The 2026 primary season has delivered a verdict that Democratic leaders will have to reckon with. Resistance to Trump launched careers, filled fundraising coffers, and earned cable-news bookings. But nearly a decade later, Democratic voters in state after state have signaled that opposition alone is not a platform. The candidates who treated it as one, Vindman, DeGette, Goldman, Thanedar, Green, Krishnamoorthi, Conway, Dunn, are now former candidates.
Jackson, the Sanders veteran, framed the shift as a progressive wave. Cardona, the DNC insider, framed it as a demand for fighters who deliver. Both descriptions point to the same uncomfortable reality for the Democratic establishment: voters want answers to their problems, not reruns of impeachment hearings.
Just The News reported that Trump himself weighed in on Truth Social after the results, calling Vindman a "treasonous creep" and demanding prosecution. Whatever one makes of that rhetoric, the political fact underneath it is hard to dispute: the man Democrats spent years trying to remove is in the White House, and the witnesses they celebrated are losing elections to socialists.
When your own base tells you that a DSA member with less than a million dollars is a better bet than a $16 million impeachment hero, the message is not subtle. Democrats can keep running against Trump, or they can figure out what they are running for. So far, their voters have made the choice for them.
