While this is welcome news for progressives, a closer look at early primaries reveals a mildly amusing but troubling parallel story: crypto interests, A.I. industry players like OpenAI and Palantir, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) sought to defeat bold economic-populist progressives not by attacking their ideas—but rather, by mimicking them to confuse voters.
That matters enormously because the candidates Democrats send into battle this fall will determine whether Congress serves as a strong check on President Donald Trump and the powerful interests that already have too much influence in Washington or largely go along with those policies. Furthermore, the kind of subterfuge we saw in Illinois could hurt Democratic chances of winning the White House in 2028—raising voter hopes that Democrats will challenge corporate power, only to spawn disillusionment when milquetoast imposters fail to do the job.
The New York Times reported of one outcome that “a moderate former congresswoman defeated a left-wing rival.” That would be news to voters in Illinois’ 8th congressional district, where A.I. industry titans funded an innocuous-sounding Think Big PAC to propel former House member Melissa Bean, once dubbed “Wall Street’s favorite Democrat,” with over $1 million of ads claiming that Bean challenged Wall Street banks, championed Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and fought to expand health care access—a stark departure from her actual reputation before she was ousted from Congress in 2010. The fundraising avalanche helped her win with just 31.8 percent of the vote, as more progressive rivals split the remaining vote and lacked comparable resources on the airwaves.
Of course, money does not always dictate the outcome. In Illinois’s 9th congressional district, an AIPAC-funded group called Elect Chicago Women spent nearly $6 million trying to defeat progressives Daniel Biss (endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and Senator Elizabeth Warren) and Kat Abughazaleh (endorsed by Justice Democrats and Democratic Socialist voices).
In total, four House races and one Senate race were contested by dark money interests. AIPAC lost two of four races where they spent at least $22 million. Crypto interests also lost two of four races where they spent millions, while the OpenAI/Palantir-supported PAC lost one out of two it contested. Progressives definitively won one Senate primary (Stratton) and one House contest (Biss)—and Democratic legislator La Shawn Ford defeated both AIPAC and crypto money in another House primary, for Illinois’s 7th district.
An A.I. industry group called the Jobs and Democracy PAC spent over $1.6 million to help incumbent Representative Valerie Foushee narrowly fend off a progressive challenger. Ads praised Foushee for fighting to “make the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share,” taking on ICE, and protecting the very manufacturing jobs that could soon be replaced by A.I.
While she is not typically associated with those priorities, the pressure of a competitive primary appeared to shape the campaign’s message—and ads run on her behalf echoed progressive themes.
The real debate inside the Democratic Party is not whether progressive economic policies or standing up to Trump’s corruption appeals to voters. It is whether candidates who genuinely believe in those ideas can compete against industries willing to spend millions to steal their message, all while backing candidates who will never actually challenge power.
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