自美国中期选举结束以来的几天里，许多评论员认为，“蓝色海啸”标志着民众对美国总统唐纳德·特朗普的拒绝，而非对民主党的新欢。他们警告说，如果民主党未能兑现承诺，在下一个选举周期中很可能面临同类反现任者愤怒，这一警告是对的。
In the days since the midterm elections in the United States, many commentators have argued that the “blue tsunami” signalled a popular rejection of US President Donald Trump, but not a new love for Democrats. They are right to warn that if the Democratic Party fails to deliver, it will likely face the same kind of anti-incumbent anger in the next election cycle.
我个人曾写下大量文字，论证民主党老派对新自由主义的拥抱，是造成危机局面、进而使特朗普得以崛起掌权的很大一部分原因，且在过去十年里严重削弱了他们阻止他的能力。
I have personally spilled loads of ink arguing that the Democratic old guard’s embrace of neoliberalism is a huge part of what created the crisis conditions that enabled Trump’s rise to power in the first place, and has severely hampered their ability to stop him over the past decade.
但本次选举周期在显著方面有所不同。用通俗的话说，民主党开始“少烂一点” —— 并非所有人，但有很大一部分人。而这种最近展示出的“少烂一点”，正是目前让我至少抱有一丝希望的原因，即该党或许真能设法不辜负这一历史性机遇。
But this election cycle was different in remarkable ways. To put it in plain terms, the Democrats started “sucking less” — not all of them, but a lot of them. And this recent demonstration of “sucking less” is what is presently providing me with at least an ounce of hope that the party might actually manage not to blow this historic opportunity.
民主党是如何“少烂一点”的？首先，涌现出大量进步派经济民粹主义候选人，他们明确挑战强势企业，清晰地将自己定位为工人阶级的斗士。民主党内部的经济民粹主义叛军在本周期取得了显著进展。
How did the Democrats “suck less”? First off, there was a proliferation of progressive economic populist candidates who explicitly took on powerful corporations and positioned themselves clearly as fighters for working-class people. The economic populist insurgency within the Democratic Party gained significant ground in this cycle.
有人可能会问，为何花了这么久？首先，很容易忘记，共和党内部的选举叛军比民主党内部的叛军早了八年发动，而这一先发优势影响深远。
Some might wonder, what took so long? For one, it’s easy to forget that the electoral insurgency within the GOP had an eight-year head start on the insurgency within the Democratic Party — and that head start has been enormously consequential.
2008年金融崩盘之后，具有讽刺意味的是，保守派反建制力量率先通过“茶党”捕获了民粹主义势头。在“自由工场”等组织的帮助下，这种能量迅速被引导进共和党初选竞争。到2014年，茶党活动人士已击败共和党众议院议长埃里克·坎托，为特朗普铺平了道路。
In the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, it was, ironically, conservative anti-establishment energy that first captured populist momentum through the Tea Party. With the help of organisations such as FreedomWorks, that energy was quickly channelled into Republican Party primary contests. By 2014, Tea Party activists had unseated GOP House Speaker Eric Cantor and set the stage for Trump.
“茶党”运动兴起近三年后，“占领华尔街”运动成为左翼在民粹主义时代的开篇之战。通过将一场广受欢迎的阶级冲突框架化为“99%对1%”，并点名道姓地指认“华尔街和大银行”等大众公敌，“占领华尔街”运动极大地改变了国人对失控不平等之祸害的“常识性”认知。
Nearly three years after the Tea Party kicked off, Occupy Wall Street was the left’s opening salvo in the populist era. By framing a popular class conflict (the 99% vs the 1%) and naming popular villains (Wall Street and big banks), Occupy dramatically changed the national “common sense” about the evils of runaway inequality.
但这场草根运动对选举领域深恶痛绝。伯尼·桑德斯参议员2016年的总统竞选将“占领华尔街”的核心信息带入选战版图，直到2018年中期选举——亚历山德里娅·奥卡西奥-科尔特斯（AOC）当选众议员、“小分队”成形——左翼的选举叛乱能力才追上了右翼在2009年已达到的水平。
But the grassroots movement was allergic to the electoral realm. Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run brought Occupy’s core message onto electoral terrain, but it wasn’t until the 2018 midterms — with the election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and “the Squad” — that the left’s capacity for electoral insurgency caught up with where the right already was in 2009.
从那时起，独立进步组织如“正义民主党人”、劳工家庭党、美国民主社会主义者、日出运动，以及无数地方和州级组织（例如我家乡宾夕法尼亚州的“宾州挺身而出”和“宾州联合”）一直在建设招募和扶持工人阶级勇士参选的能力。
Since then, independent progressive organisations such as Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, Democratic Socialists of America, the Sunrise Movement, and countless local and statewide organisations (for example, PA Stands Up and PA United in my home state of Pennsylvania) have been developing their capacity for recruiting and supporting working-class champions to run for office.
这是一个深远的发展。十余年来，这股独立草根组织的地下涌流断断续续地打破了民主党建制派对候选人招募的近乎垄断地位。2026年中期选举显示，推动工人阶级勇士竞逐国会席位的能力显著增强。
This has been a profound development. Over the course of a decade now, in fits and starts, this groundswell of independent grassroots organising has broken the Democratic Party establishment’s virtual monopoly on candidate recruitment. The 2026 midterms demonstrated a significant increase in capacity to run working-class champions for Congress.
在不减损这种长期组织投入重要性的前提下，很明显，2026年也出现了以工人阶级勇士自居的候选人有机涌现的现象。这种有机涌现非偶然发生：它是关于何种竞选信息能制胜的常识性观念发生深刻转变的结果。
And without diminishing the importance of this long-term organisational investment, it is clear that 2026 also saw an organic proliferation of candidates who ran as champions of the working class. This organic proliferation didn’t happen by chance: It was the result of a profound shift in common-sense notions of what constitutes a winning message.
在过去十年里，国会和竞选活动中越来越多的声音接过了伯尼最初推广的信息，主张同样的改革和彻底变革，从通过“全民医保”、让住房和托儿服务负担得起，到管控人工智能（AI）和向富人征税。但要打入2026年周期民主党的主流，需要多种事件的交汇。
Over the past decade, a growing chorus of voices in Congress and on the campaign trail has taken up the message Bernie originally popularised, arguing for the same reforms and overhauls, from passing Medicare for All and making housing and childcare affordable, to reining in artificial intelligence (AI) and taxing the rich. But it took a confluence of events to finally start to break into the mainstream of the Democratic Party in the 2026 cycle.
一个关键事件，遗憾的是特朗普赢得第二个任期。特朗普第二次获胜的一个重要后果，是中位数民主党选民对党领导层信心的丧失。从2016年到2024年的结果及后果轨迹突然拨开迷雾，暴露了一个令人信服的叙事：党领导层在赢得选举方面资格存疑、失职渎职。
One key event, unfortunately, was Trump winning a second term. An important casualty of Trump’s second victory was the median Democratic voter’s faith in party leadership. The arc of results and consequences from 2016 to 2024 suddenly cleared the fog, exposing a damning narrative about the party leadership’s negligent qualifications when it came to winning elections.
他们告诉我们的所有关于伯尼“过于左倾”的说法，所有关于“当选能力”的智慧，全是废话。2024年工薪阶层选民流失的加速及其向黑人和拉美裔选民的惊人蔓延，暴露了民主党领袖舒默备受推崇的富裕郊区摇摆选民策略的彻底破产。
All that stuff they told us about Bernie being “too far left”, all their wisdom about “electability” was nonsense. The acceleration of the party’s already severe bleed of working-class voters in 2024 and its alarming spread to Black and Latino voters exposed the utter bankruptcy of Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s lauded affluent suburban swing voter strategy.
幸运的是，下一个关键事件更令人振奋。2025年，在进步派希望跌至最低点之际，民主社会主义者佐赫兰·马姆达尼突然横空出世，发起了美国历史上最引人入胜、最鼓舞人心的市长竞选之一，赢得了纽约市市长民主党提名，继而赢得大选。
The next key event was more uplifting, thankfully. In 2025, in a moment when progressive hopes were at their lowest ebb, suddenly Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani showed up out of nowhere with one of the most captivating and inspiring mayoral campaigns in US history, winning the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City, and then the election.
马姆达尼令人难以置信的信息纪律围绕一个词展开：负担得起。在党领导层信誉扫地、基本缺席的情况下，马姆达尼有效地填补了领导力和愿景的真空。与此同时，伯尼和AOC奔走全国，以“反寡头”巡回演讲填满体育场、激活基本盘。
Mamdani’s incredible message discipline centred around one word: affordability. With a discredited party leadership, mostly missing in action, Mamdani effectively filled a leadership and vision vacuum. Meanwhile, Bernie and AOC were crisscrossing the country, filling stadiums and energising the base with their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.
在2026年中期选举季来临之际，经济民粹主义已成为唯一的选项，也是唯一看似真正有机会获胜的选项。突然间，大量民主党候选人和现任官员开始谈论可负担性和工人阶级。
On the eve of the 2026 midterm season, economic populism had become the only thing on offer, the only thing that seemed to credibly have a chance. Suddenly, a whole lot of Democratic candidates and officeholders were talking about affordability and the working class.
党领导层在2026年做对的为数不多的事情之一，就是没有阻挠这种日益增长的民粹主义信息和势头。因此，尽管舒默和众议院少数党领袖哈基姆·杰弗里斯依然不受欢迎，但党内基层的一场运动和一批新的经济民粹主义候选人，还是设法打造出了一个连贯且引人入胜的叙事。
One of the few things party leadership did right in 2026 was not derailing this growing populist message and momentum. So while Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries remain unpopular, a movement among the rank-and-file and a new crop of economic populist candidates managed to land a coherent and compelling narrative.
一位正统马克思主义者可能会认为，过去十年民主党未能与工人阶级选民建立联系的解释很简单：它不想咬喂养它的手，换句话说，就是不想得罪提供数百万竞选捐款的亿万富翁和大公司。
An orthodox Marxist might argue that the explanation for the Democratic Party’s failure over the past decade to connect to working-class voters is straightforward: It doesn’t want to bite the hand that feeds it, in other words, billionaires and powerful corporations that provide millions in campaign contributions.
虽然大笔资金无疑提供了巨大的激励，但我采取的观点更接近社会学家马克斯·韦伯的视角，即政治阶层拥有重要程度的“相对自主性”。大多数政治操盘手真心想赢得选举，但他们关于如何获胜的想法，受制于并被他们所处的精英文化环境所扭曲。
While big money undoubtedly provides significant incentives, I take a perspective more like sociologist Max Weber’s, where the political class has an important degree of “relative autonomy”. Most political operatives genuinely want to win elections, but their ideas about how to do so are constrained and distorted by the elite cultural milieu in which they are embedded.
自特朗普首次获胜以来，整整花了10年时间，经济民粹主义才终于打入自由派顾问阶层的精英泡沫，或者至少绕过了它，最终接触到民主党内部达到关键数量的候选人和现任官员，他们理解世界已经如何改变，大多数美国人正经历着何种艰难和不安，以及如何赢回工人阶级选民。
It’s taken a full 10 years since Trump’s first victory for economic populism to finally break into the elite bubble of the liberal consultant class, or at least to bypass it and finally approach a critical mass of candidates and officeholders in the Democratic Party who grasp how the world has changed, what hardship and precarity most Americans are experiencing, and how to win working-class voters back.
在2016年竞选总统时，伯尼并非“超前于时代”。他精准地读懂了时代。他超前于的是一个脱离群众的民主党建制派，后者对时代的误读让一位危险的威权伪民粹主义者登上权力巅峰，并让美国在过去十年里陷入了下行螺旋。
In his 2016 run for president, Bernie was not “ahead of his time”. He was reading the times perfectly. What he was ahead of was an out-of-touch Democratic Party establishment, whose misreading of the times enabled a dangerous authoritarian pseudo-populist to ascend to power and set America’s downward spiralling course for a decade now.
周二发生的历史性“蓝色海啸”不仅仅是特朗普失败的结果。2026年中期选举周期还见证了民主党重塑的开端，使其成为一个——正如伯尼坚定不移地敦促我们的那样——为工人阶级而战的政党。
Tuesday’s historic “blue tsunami” was not only the result of Trump’s failures. The 2026 midterm election cycle also saw the start of the remaking of the Democratic Party to be a party that — as Bernie steadfastly exhorts us — fights for the working class.
是的，当然，伯尼在2016年和2020年的大选中很可能会获胜。但更切中今日要害的是：伯尼正在获胜。也就是说，民主党终于转向经济民粹议程，承诺代表美国工人阶级，或许正开始找到其大众之声。
Yes, sure, Bernie probably would have won the general election back in 2016 and 2020. But more to the point today: Bernie is winning. That is to say, by finally moving towards an economic populist agenda and a commitment to America’s working class, the Democratic Party might just be starting to find its popular voice.
周二的结果并不意味着美国选民已向民主党宣誓效忠。但他们给了它另一个机会。一个兑现承诺、改善民生的机会。若能……大干一场，那将是明智且符合选举利益的。
Tuesday’s results do not mean US voters have sworn loyalty to the Democratic Party. But they have given it another chance. A chance to deliver and improve people’s lives. It would be wise and electorally prudent to deliver… bigly.