Photo: WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 29: Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council, arrives at a closed session before the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees October 29, 2019 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. Vindman was on Capitol Hill to testify to the committees for the ongoing impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
From the moment he won the presidency in 2016, the Democrat Party has bet everything on making blind hatred of and opposition to Donald Trump its guiding light. But that strategy may have died in unexpected and dramatic fashion on Tuesday night.
In one of the most shocking results in recent political history, far-left State Rep. Angie Nixon defeated establishment favorite Alex Vindman in the Florida Democrat Senate primary. Nixon won with 56.1 percent of the vote and will take on Republican Ashley Moody in the November general election. Governor Ron DeSantis appointed Moody to replace Senator Marco Rubio when Rubio became Trump’s Secretary of State. The winner will still have to run for a full term in 2028.
Reliable polling in the race was scarce, but Vindman was heavily favored to advance to the general election. Americans will no doubt remember that Vindman was the star witness in Democrats’ first impeachment effort against President Trump and has since used that as a springboard to launch his political career – despite claiming that his testimony against Trump had nothing to do with politics. For his efforts, Vindman quickly became a saint-like figure on the left, right up there with Dr. Fauci, Liz Cheney, and anyone else who devoted themselves to the liberal crusade to “get Trump.”
Vindman’s twin brother, Eugene, had already successfully leveraged his brother’s fame into political success in 2024, winning a U.S. House seat in Virginia. Alex decided to try his luck down in Florida, moving to the Sunshine State in 2023 and launching his Senate campaign earlier this year.
The endorsements and campaign cash came quickly for Vindman. He received support from key Democrats like Sens. Mark Kelly (AZ), Jack Reed (RI), and Tammy Duckworth (IL), as well as Florida state Senate Democrat Leader Lori Berman. Even more astonishingly, Vindman raised more than $16 million, compared to less than $1 million for Nixon.
Vindman had national name ID, the full backing of the Democrat establishment, and a better than 16-to-1 fundraising advantage. Yet it was Nixon who emerged victorious – a dream outcome for Moody and Republicans, who are now heavily favored to retain the seat.
Mainstream coverage has focused on this result as yet another major victory for the socialist wing of the Democrat Party over the establishment – and indeed, it is. Nixon joined the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) during her campaign and had endorsements from far-left progressive Reps. Maxwell Frost (FL), Ilhan Omar (MN), Rashida Tlaib (MI) and Ayanna Pressley (MA). She unabashedly embraces the socialist label, and her campaign website proudly states that she supports “Medicare for All, Free Childcare, Free Paid Family and Sick Leave, A National Rent Freeze, and Moratoriums on Evictions.”
The mainstream coverage is also correct that Nixon’s victory is an embarrassing defeat for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, adding to an already disastrous primary season for the embattled 75-year-old. Schumer had not directly endorsed Vindman, but he had offered praise for him. After several of Schumer’s other picks, including Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan and Janet Mills in Maine, also lost Senate primaries, his grip on power is now seriously in question.
But what the mainstream coverage has largely missed is that Vindman’s defeat was also a stinging rebuke of Democrats’ blinding and all-consuming hatred of Donald Trump.
For more than a decade, Democrats have defined themselves not through their policies or their vision for the country, but through their reactionary opposition to the 45th and 47th president. Nobody embodies this more than Alex Vindman, the man who became the face of Democrats’ first impeachment effort.
Vindman’s defeat perhaps reveals that the socialist surge this year is about more than just economic anxieties. It is, at least in part, a revolt by the Democrat Party base against leadership that is more concerned with turning every race into a referendum on Trump rather than a debate over ideas and a vision for the future of the country. What we may be seeing is a clear message from many Democrat primary voters that sticking it to Trump is no longer their top priority.
If that is indeed the case, it should be seen as a major victory for Trump. The Democrat Party pulled out all the stops to impeach Trump, impoverish him, and even throw him in prison. They called him a Nazi, compared him to Hitler, and demonized him to the point where a deranged leftist came within millimeters of assassinating him.
But in the end, the only result may be that the Democrat Party establishment tanked its credibility, lost its identity, and created space for a socialist insurgency that has now cast the liberal movement into all-out civil war.
To be sure, neither Nixon nor any of the other progressive victors from this primary season is any friend to Trump. She’s just as afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome as virtually everyone else on the left. But the fact remains that Vindman made his campaign almost singularly focused on opposition to the president – a strategy which, in his defense, was seemingly foolproof in Democrat primaries since 2016 – and he lost.
Perhaps Nixon will shock the establishment again and win this November, although Moody poses a much stiffer test than Vindman. Regardless, it seems that simply competing for who can be the most rabidly anti-Trump is no longer the surest path to victory in today’s Democrat Party. Even progressive voters know that’s no way to govern.
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