Progressive wing tests Florida Democrats in Senate primary

Florida Democrats keep having this argument with themselves every cycle, and every cycle they lose the state a little more. Now it's a Senate primary where the progressive wing wants another shot at proving the model that's worked in a handful of safe blue House districts can somehow translate to a state Trump carried twice. It can't, and most of the party's own strategists know it, but that hasn't stopped the primary from turning into a proxy fight anyway.

Here's what's funny about it. The same national progressive infrastructure that keeps notching wins in Brooklyn or Chicago treats Florida like a lab experiment rather than a place with its own political culture. Miami-Dade has moved right. The I-4 corridor is not fertile ground for a candidate who sounds like she's auditioning for a podcast in Portland. Democrats there have spent a decade watching Cuban and Venezuelan voters, working-class Hispanics, and plenty of retirees drift away, and the response from the activist class is to nominate someone even further from where those voters actually live.

We're not saying moderate Democrats have some brilliant answer either. Florida's bench is thin because the state party has been in decline for years and everybody knows it. But if the progressive candidate wins this primary, Republicans should be thrilled, not worried. It hands the general election a candidate built for a general electorate that doesn't exist in Florida anymore. Watching Democrats debate purity while the state keeps trending away from them isn't a tragedy for us. It's just August.