Shouts over two blue-state victories hide a sound Democrats want to ignore: canaries’ silence. Immediately following gubernatorial wins in Virginia and New Jersey, Representatives Jared Golden (D-ME) and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced forthcoming retirements. A continent, political spectrum, and decades apart, their departures spring from the same cause: Democrats’ rising radical Left.
On November 4, Democrats won races in Virginia and New Jersey, which had not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 2004 and 1988, respectively. In 2025’s races, Democrats did more than hold serve. But not much more.
Donald Trump won 46.1 percent of Virginia’s vote in 2024 and averaged 45 percent over the last three presidential elections; Republican 2025 gubernatorial nominee, Winsome Earle-Sears, won 42.6 percent—Republican nominees for lieutenant governor and attorney general both outperformed Trump’s three-election average in the state. Donald Trump won 45.9 percent of New Jersey’s vote in 2024 and averaged 41.8 percent over the last three presidential elections; 2025 Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli won 43 percent.
The Virginia and New Jersey elections were off-year elections, and the party holding the White House historically does poorly in these. Additionally, Virginia’s 147,000 federal civilian employees were ensnared in a month-long government shutdown.
Still, give Democrats their due. Virginia and New Jersey were wins for a party in sore need of them. You can understand Democrats’ boasting… and ignoring New York’s mayoral race and the retirement of two crucial House members.
Rep. Jared Golden represents light-blue Maine’s second congressional district. Only in his fourth term, he is a rare moderate in today’s Democratic Party. He has bucked his party’s leadership on occasion and represents a district that Trump won in each of the last three elections. Golden did not endorse any candidate for president last year.
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Rep. Nancy Pelosi is the opposite of Golden in every way. She represents a safe San Francisco district in deep-blue California and has long been the quintessential liberal. She has been in Congress for decades, was the first woman Speaker of the House, and even after, has remained a formidable force—commonly acknowledged as a principal player in reshaping Democrats’ 2024 ticket.
Yet dissimilar as Golden and Pelosi are, both are retiring for the same reason. On the same day Democrats won in Virginia and New Jersey, the party’s far-left lurch surged even further. Far more significant for—and indicative of—the party was democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win in New York City.
A year ago, Democrats were expected to win Virginia and New Jersey’s gubernatorial races; pre-election polls showed it, and final results did not diverge far from Trump’s presidential performances. In contrast, Mamdani’s win is unprecedented: the largest and furthest left victory in U.S. history. In a stunning sequence, he beat the incumbent Democratic mayor in the primary election and a former Democratic governor in the general election.
The long-term signal was as clear as the leftist surge’s acceleration.
Golden couldn’t or didn’t want to hang on. His was a lone, lonely voice of moderation crying out in the desert. In response, he could face a potential far-left challenger in a primary and another bruising battle in the election.
For Pelosi, it was not a potential challenger who awaited but a real one—a former AOC staffer who was running to her left and against her longevity. AOC had done likewise to former Rep. Joe Crowley in New York. And won.
Could Pelosi have won? Perhaps. But Crowley, Adams, and Cuomo did not. While on November 4, Democratic mayors in Minneapolis and Seattle were also being taken to the limit by democratic socialist challengers.
If you know what to listen for, the party’s long-term signal is more telling than Democrats’ shrill, short-term shouts. It is the sound of silence coming from canaries in the Democrats’ coalmine.
Mr. Young is the author of “Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left.”
Editor’s Note: After more than 40 days of screwing Americans, a few Dems have finally caved. The Schumer Shutdown was never about principle—just inflicting pain for political points.
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