Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) almost looks like a centrist now. That would have been a strange thing to say eight years ago, when she knocked off Rep. Joe Crowley, then the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House, and became the face of a new left flank that made party leaders nervous. She and the rest of the “Squad” were supposed to be the ceiling, the outer edge of what the activist base would tolerate, and Democratic leadership spent the next several years assuring anyone who would listen that the fever would break on its own, but it didn’t. If anything, the crop of candidates the party is nominating in 2026 makes Ocasio-Cortez, who still holds the same views that once alarmed her colleagues, look like someone who long ago made her peace with the establishment.Take Darializa Avila Chevalier, for example, who defeated five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) in the June Democratic primary in New York’s 13th Congressional District. In a series of now-deleted social media posts from 2020, she called Joe Biden a “rapist” and a “war criminal,” described the United States as a “f***ing disgrace,” and reposted a message declaring that “Israel doesn’t exist.” She has voiced support for abolishing the police, borders, and prisons and for seizing property from landlords. Pressed four separate times during an interview about whether someone convicted of murder should go to prison, she declined to say yes, offering instead that the circumstances allowing a murder to happen were themselves a reflection of unjust systems. Bill Maher called her “patient zero” of the “woke mind virus,” which is the kind of line that writes itself when a candidate takes a knee, figuratively at least, at the mention of the congressional oath of office. She is now the Democratic nominee for a safe seat, and barring something entirely out of the ordinary, she will be sworn into Congress next year.Chevalier was not a fluke, and she was not alone. She was one of three candidates backed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani who won primaries in the city that same week. Two of them, including Chevalier, are card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America. A week later in Colorado, Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old first-time candidate, ousted 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) in a Denver district that Kamala Harris carried by 56 points in 2024. In Michigan, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow suspended her Senate campaign, which leaves the Aug. 4 primary a two-way race between Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), the choice of the party establishment, and Abdul El Sayed, a former Wayne County health director endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has led in several recent polls. In Wisconsin, state Rep. Francesca Hong is climbing in the race to replace retiring Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI). “It’s a great day to be a democratic socialist,” Hong posted after the New York results came in. “Wisconsin is next!”