Democrats Have a “DINO” Problem

The Democrat establishment is rightly at DEFCON 1 – and the threat isn’t from Republicans, but rather a growing band of openly socialist candidates promising to wreck the party from the inside and build something far more radical in its place. These are the DINOs – Democrats-in-Name-Only.

While this internal crisis for Democrats has been brewing for some time, it burst out into the open in dramatic fashion last week as a slate of three socialist candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani swept high-profile Democrat primary races in the Big Apple. As the Associated Press reported, Mamdani-backed candidates defeated establishment Democrats in three contests, including two against sitting Democrat congressmen, Adriano Espaillat – the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus – and Dan Goldman.

It is highly unusual for a sitting caucus chair and five-term incumbent to lose in a party primary. It is even rarer for a local government official – like the mayor of America’s largest city – to endorse primary challengers to sitting members of his own party.

But the worst part for Democrats is that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, another native New Yorker, campaigned enthusiastically for the incumbents who lost. The races were not only an indictment of Jeffries’s leadership, but also a show of force by Mamdani and his socialist allies about how weak the Democrat “establishment” has become.

Republicans, of course, have long had their problems with RINOs – Republicans-in-Name-Only. But what Democrats are dealing with is a different animal entirely. While the RINOs have been able to sabotage conservative policies from time to time, they remain the outlier. The DINOs, however, are leading a full-scale mutiny to tear down what’s left of the Democrat Party – and they’re winning.

Consider how powerful the socialist wing of the party has become in just the past few years. In 2019, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and the “Squad” were just four noisy but relatively powerless backbench House members, while Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was largely isolated in the Senate. Now, Ocasio-Cortez is a serious potential contender for the Democrat presidential ticket in 2028, and there could be more than a dozen democratic socialists in Congress following this November’s elections.

The socialists aren’t being subtle about how they’re using the Democrat Party as a Trojan horse to advance their own policy goals. As New York City DSA Co-Chair Gustavo Gordillo explained, “We’re on the Democratic Party ballot line. We contest the primaries, and when they’re in the legislature, they’re part of the Democratic Party caucus, but we don’t agree with the way the Democratic Party establishment organizes or runs its party apparatus.”

That’s a coded way of saying that the socialists don’t view themselves as Democrats – the Democrat Party is just a convenient vehicle for them to amass power. In truth, the DSA and its adherents hate the Democrats just as much as the Republicans, because the Democrat Party is part of the American system that they want to destroy. Their goals and aspirations are truly revolutionary and thus exist outside the existing structure of American politics.

The financial picture alone underscores how much the Democrat establishment has lost control of the party – and the faith of donors. The Republican National Committee is debt-free and sitting on roughly $117 million. The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, has a measly $14 million cash on hand against some $18 million in debt. For a national party committee heading into a midterm, that is a flashing red warning sign.

Democrats also have glaringly incompetent leadership, and no one seems to care. DNC Chairman Ken Martin commissioned a report to explain the Democrat Party’s 2024 loss, spent months running from it, and finally released a product he all but disowned. “I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards,” Martin wrote in his own disclaimer. But calls for Martin to resign were lackluster at best. It’s as if even the Democrat Party power brokers believe the party apparatus is too broken or inept to bother fixing.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is not faring much better. It sparked rare intraparty infighting this spring by endorsing candidates in contested primaries through its “Red to Blue” program, as Axios reported – another unusual move. But many of its endorsees lost anyway to socialist or far-left candidates.

In Maine, progressive Matt Dunlap beat the DCCC’s choice, state Senator Joe Baldacci, after running ads branding him a “puppet” of Democrat Party bosses. In California’s 22nd Congressional District, DCCC endorsee Jasmeet Bains also lost to progressive Randy Villegas.

The Senate side looks no better. In Maine, oyster farmer Graham Platner forced the establishment pick, Gov. Janet Mills, out of the race. Platner, who once called himself a “communist,” is now mired in a sea of scandals stemming from old internet posts.

Meanwhile, in Michigan, progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed is leading the Democrat Senate primary against establishment favorite Haley Stevens, who has the backing of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. In a move that underscores just how much Democrat leadership has lost the confidence of its rank-and-file members, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) broke with Schumer to endorse El-Sayed, an enthusiastic advocate of socialized healthcare.

Of course, none of this means that Democrats are doomed in November. They remain well-positioned to retake the House and have an outside shot at the Senate. Under the right conditions, the party could still be rewarded at the ballot box while it fractures internally.

For Republicans, however, the DINOs are an opening to expose how truly radical the Democrat Party has become. This is not the party of Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, or even Barack Obama. It is a party of socialists agitating for nothing less than the full-scale destruction of Western civilization. No, that’s not hyperbole – that’s a direct quote from Darializa Avila Chevalier, one of Mamdani’s endorsements and now the Democrat nominee in New York’s 13th Congressional District.

What Republicans must make voters understand is that Democrats are asking voters to return them to power while their own party is being pulled left by candidates who want to abolish ICE, impose government-run health care, raise taxes, and treat law enforcement as the enemy.

The real danger is that the broader American public doesn’t fully understand what’s at stake. For years, Democrat leaders and the corporate media insinuated that the radical left was a fringe nuisance, not the party’s future. Now, those same voices have been silenced and sidelined as Mamdani and his socialist allies seize control.

Sarah Katherine Sisk is a proud Hillsdale College alumna and a master’s student in economics at George Mason University. You can follow her on X @SKSisk76.