It looked like progressive Chris Rabb had a mountain to climb to win the Democratic nomination for a congressional district in Philadelphia.
The mayor and the city’s Democratic Party had endorsed another candidate in this week’s primary. So had members of Pennsylvania’s delegation in the U.S. House. One Rabb rival was backed by millions of dollars. A second benefited from a get-out-the-vote operation run by the influential local building trades unions.
But Rabb finished 15 percentage points ahead of his closest competitor in Tuesday’s election, and the state representative is likely on his way to Washington because no Republican sought the GOP nomination.
Rabb was propelled by a constellation of progressive groups, charting a path to victory partly by assailing his own party as listening more to donors than voters. He credited a grassroots movement inspired by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, alarmed by Republican President Donald Trump and hungry for a government responsive to their needs.
“That was at the heart of why I was running and that is what I built my campaign around and that, I believe, is a chord we struck in this electorate that showed up and came out like gangbusters,” Rabb said in an interview with The Associated Press.
The progressive left counts Rabb’s success as one of its biggest victories of the year and the latest warning sign that Democratic voters see the party’s leadership as weak and feckless in countering Trump. Progressives are also running for House seats in New York, California and Michigan where they are challenging Democratic incumbents or aiming to take on vulnerable Republicans.


The Biden/Harris administration was not center right. Despite polls indicating Americans wanting better border security, Biden let migrants flood across the border. Trump made tougher border security a top issue.
The reason people were flooding across the border is because MAGA was constantly SCREAMING “Biden has open borders!” despite the fact that Biden was following the same policies as any other president, including Republicans.
It was MAGAs that were INVITING people to come to America, and causing the problem they were blaming on Biden.
No, Trump has closed the border. Biden could have done it had he wanted to.
Brother, they haven’t changed any immigration policies since Trump 1, with the exception of enforcement measures. You’ve been lied to, and badly. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. Publicly, on the internet, where everyone can see how much of an idiot you’ve been till now
Why didn’t Biden implement these enforcement measures?
Foul! That’s moving the goalposts. Sorry, brother, but you done committed a crime most egregious. You claimed that Biden open the borders, I refuted that stating that you were lied to and that immigration policy didn’t change under Biden. You either need to prove that policy DID change under Biden, otherwise your foul will be permanent. And we all know what happens to individuals with permanent fouls (hint, it rhymes with pemical pastration)
To the contrary, you said that US immigration policy never changed but enforcement measures did. So, the question, is why didn’t Biden implement enforcement measures to stop the flood of illegal migrants? Trump has been able to stop them; there is no reason Biden couldn’t.
Mon frer, you made the extraordinary claim. You need to supply proof. I won’t count that as strike two (which is good, that one rhymes with pobotomy, and you don’t need any more help in that category)
Proof of what? That Biden allowed illegal migrants to flood across the border?