It wasn’t meant to be like this. Hillary Clinton was supposed to be president. The Democrats were supposed to be competitive in the Senate and the House.
In that scenario, Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist senator from Vermont, might have been in effect sidelined as Democrats hunkered down for four years of a steady, if unspectacular, continuation of Barack Obama’s centrist agenda.
But instead, Donald Trump won the election – with an anti-establishment message that bore some similarities to Sanders’ own government-outsider election bid – and Sanders has found himself promoted from anti-establishment outsider to the Democrats’ leadership bench.
Indeed, some Sanders progressives now see Trump’s victory as a validation of the populist agenda Sanders championed during his campaign.
“Progressives are used to punching up, but here we find ourselves in a real position of credibility and power,” said Raul Grijalva of Arizona, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive caucus.
As the party seeks to rebuild in 2017, caucus members believe the election of the DNC chair is an early test of whether Democrats will embrace economic populism.
Sanders’ first priority is to elect Keith Ellison, the progressive congressman from Minnesota, as DNC chair. Ellison, who is seen as the frontrunner, is being challenged by the labor secretary, Tom Perez, who enters with support from allies of Clinton and the Obama administration.
“We have to do in 2018 what the Tea Party did in 2010,” said Dan Cantor, the founder and executive director of the Working Families party.
Though Sanders has become synonymous with the progressive movement, activists say 2017 won’t hinge on voters feeling the Bern. It will be about empowering the next generation of progressive leaders.