Bernie's revolution gets a test run for 2028 in Michigan and Wisconsin

LA CROSSE, Wis. — Progressive insurgents Francesca Hong and Abdul El-Sayed want to shake up the next race for the White House — a notion that will likely petrify many top Democrats.Why it matters: They aren't running for president — they're vying for statewide office this year in presidential battlegrounds, and their campaigns are closely watched tests of the Bernie Sanders–style populism they want their party to embrace in 2028.It's a question that has haunted Democrats for a decade: Is America ready for a full-on left turn in politics, like what Sanders pitched when he ran for president in 2016?The prospect worries many old-guard Democrats who fear Hong and El-Sayed can't win a November general election.Driving the news: Hong, a self-described democratic socialist running for Wisconsin governor, is leading the polls for Tuesday's primary by double digits, as the party establishment tries to stop her. She told Axios during a get-out-the-vote tour that a win in November could boost progressive presidential hopefuls in the future."A victory for our campaign is a victory for working-class people in Wisconsin and across the country — and it could signal to many candidates that we have common issues that we can be fighting for," Hong said.El-Sayed, Michigan's new Democratic nominee for Senate, went further in a Politico interview, prodding prospective 2028 candidates to embrace Medicare for All and other pieces of his populist agenda."If not, I'm going to dog you up and down the state," he warned with a brash smile.Zoom in: Progressives have long argued that Democrats twice lost the White House to Donald Trump not because voters see them as too far left, as many moderates believe, but because they're viewed as champions of a broken status quo.We're beginning to get a glimpse of what testing that theory looks like — and how Republicans are adopting their own strategies in return.To put the challenge into context: No progressive as closely aligned with Sanders as El-Sayed has won a battleground Senate race — and the U.S. has never elected a socialist governor.There was something of a split screen this week in the way many Democratic insiders were responding to El-Sayed — whom many party leaders are slowly growing more comfortable with — and Hong, whom even several leading progressives are keeping at arm's length.El-Sayed, a former public health official who campaigned on abolishing ICE and expanding Medicare to all Americans, signaled a willingness to reassure general election voters about his views on immigration while also maintaining the pugilistic tone that helped him win a hard-fought primary."We can have a secure border, we can enforce immigration policy, but we can do it without shooting people in the face or the back of the head," he said at a rally Friday.El-Sayed embraces the left but eschews the "democratic socialist" label, even though several leading progressives who support him describe themselves that way.Many party bigwigs — mindful of