Intro

Yesterday, the progressives made their voices very loud. Zohran Mamdani is all but guaranteed to be the Democratic nominee for the 2025 New York City mayoral election. Many Democrats are hailing this as the start of the Democratic Tea Party. What does that actually mean, and do Democrats actually want that to happen?

The Tea Party

The origins of the Tea Party movement start during the 2008 election, specifically in 2007. Ron Paul starts the Tea Party with his massive fundraising event in mid-December 2007, and it was in response to the failing Bush-era policy and Bush’s low popularity. However, the real Tea Party started after Obama was elected and predominantly against him, in which very libertarian ideas, especially on fiscal matters, became very popular. The starting point was the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan, in which the U.S. government was going to refinance mortgages. After this, the fiscal libertarianism that was a key aspect of the Tea Party exploded, with national protests, and it only went to the next level as Obamacare was introduced and passed. The Tea Party absolutely exploded in the GOP primaries in the following years. In the 2010 midterms, around 138 congressional candidates called themselves Tea Party candidates, and nine Senate candidates from the GOP were considered Tea Party. The Tea Party primaried out several notable senators and congressmen, and swept congressional seats, while winning about half of the Senate races they were involved in. In 2012, the Tea Party did slightly worse than in 2010, but that was predominantly due to Obama running for reelection, and thus higher Democratic turnout. In 2014, the Tea Party continued to rack up large victories. Yet to this day, the Tea Party is sparsely influential. So the Tea Party went from dominating midterms to not gaining any long-term influence that matters, yet even this fate seems out of the hands of the Democratic Tea Party revolution that may happen.

Why Did the Tea Party Do Well?

Well, first off, the Tea Party did well as the Bush-era GOP flopped and failed to stop the economic policies of Obama. The Tea Party did serious numbers on the GOP establishment across the nation. The Tea Party also managed to get help from an unexpected source, Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi today is known for her total control over the Democratic Caucus. How did that happen? Well, through the Obama years, Pelosi generally left conservative Democrats, known as Blue Dogs, out to dry. If you look at most of the GOP gains during the 2010, 2012, and 2014 years, especially in the House, it is predominantly rural areas. The same happened in the Senate, except for 2012. So the Tea Party success can also be attributed to the Democrats changing their priority on who needs to be elected. The Tea Party also had great success thanks to lower polarization, in which massive swings were more normalized in politics. The combined factors, along with massive fiscal support from outside large spending, led to the Tea Party doing well. Now the question is, what similarities would a Democratic Tea Party have?

Would the Democrats Succeed in a Tea Party Movement?

The Democratic Party shares some similarities to the GOP circa Bush era: a high level of unpopularity amongst its key bases. This would suggest that establishment Democrats might have to worry about primary challenges from the left. An issue, however, is that the Democrats are generally more united than Bush-era Republicans were; the voting records of the Democratic Caucus are all basically identical. However, the Democratic Tea Party will lack support from the GOP. The GOP really doesn’t have many individuals it wants to purge; most primary targets are in much redder districts, unlike the Tea Party years, in which the Democrats had a very large amount of representatives in red areas that needed to go. This means that the Democratic Tea Party would be more worried about primarying out people, and that is an easy pitfall for them to fall into. The Republican Tea Party primaried out several people who would have won their general election; most people agree primaries cost the GOP four Senate races in 2010 alone. The Democratic Tea Party would probably lead more of the deep-blue Democrats to go further left, but it will not result in the same sweeps that happened in the Tea Party era.

Now, this progressive Tea Party 100% can lead the GOP to winning swing seats. For example, in the Michigan Senate race, there is a clear candidate who would perfectly represent the progressive Tea Party sweep but would be a terrible candidate for the general election. Now, the Tea Party of 2010, 2012, and 2014 was also based on changing the primary base and involving people who typically sat out of elections. A Democratic Tea Party would rely very heavily on white champagne socialists, which are a very high-turnout group, but also a group that isn’t attracting new voters. It is relying on current high-turnout voters, which can be a problem for general elections for the Democrats.

Misunderstanding the Tea Party

Another issue seems to be that the Democrats are celebrating a failed movement. The Tea Party essentially has no long-term success. To this day, while a large portion of Tea Party politicians remain, their ideology has clearly gone to MAGA, which has become the prominent idea of the GOP. The Tea Party even failed to win the 2012 presidential nomination, and that was peak Tea Party. The Tea Party entered 2016 as the future and was left behind. If Democrats do attempt to replicate the Tea Party, it would result in a more progressive establishment that is more reliant on high-turnout voters, who were only very powerful when polarization was lower. Not to mention, due to general unity in the Democratic Party, this would lead to Democrats in redder areas being forced to go along with an agenda that hasn’t proven to be nationally viable. The Democrats will attempt to ride this wave to a more progressive agenda, but if President Trump can do well economically, the progressive ideas will continue to be unpopular, and the children of the Democratic Tea Party will remain popular internally until the party switches, which will likely happen after 2028.