In an article concerning Maine’s Progressive-Democratic Party nominee for the US Senate, Graham Platner, and whether he should drop out of the fall election contest over an allegation of rape (coming on the heels of a number of women who’ve said he’d been abusive toward them), there is this statement:

Over the last 24 hours, some of Platner’s advisers have been guiding him on what a withdrawal from the race would look like and helping him figure out a way to get a candidate and a selection process he could support, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

[A] candidate and a selection process he [Platner] could support. That’s a pretty definitive statement of the control over the Progressive-Democratic Party that the socialists have, and it demonstrates pretty clearly how socialism has become the center of Party and how Party Establishment has been relegated to Party’s extremist right (even as Party’s Establishment remains plainly Left Wing relative to American politics and voters).

And, just to emphasize that point, which even includes those wanting Platner to drop out, here’s Joseph Geevarghese, who is the Executive Director of Our Revolution, the progressive organization that socialist, but nominally Independent, Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) generated:

To the Democratic establishment: this is not your opening. Mainers did not vote by an overwhelming margin against Janet Mills and the DSCC’s handpicked candidate just to be handed another status-quo candidate.

It’s hard to get any clearer than that.

Update: In the realization, Platner withdrew.

I intend to file my paperwork to withdraw,” he added. “The process needs to assure that what comes next is reflective of the Mainers, who on June 9 turned out and showed that they are desperate for a different kind of politics.

As Dana Loesch put it in her newsletter,

As the truth unraveled so did Platner’s polling. A recent NYT poll showed incumbent Susan Collins leading Platner with working class voters by 21 points, expanded more by narrowing it to white working class voters. Women, Hispanics, and other demos began sliding fast. Democrats couldn’t afford Platner hurting them in the midterms, too.

This is Party.

[T]he Democratic Socialists of America have admitted implementing a long-term strategy to exploit the Democratic Party’s ballot access, alarming establishment figures….

Establishment Progressive-Democrats, who are no longer mainstream Party members, but have been pushed to Party’s fringe right, are upset at these DSA usurpers. Jaime Harrison, Democratic National Committee Chairman from 2021 to 2025:

I say this with no ill will or animosity: if you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination.
Don’t use our resources. Don’t rely on our volunteers. Don’t use our infrastructure. Don’t ask Democrats to invest their time, money, and energy in your campaign. Focus on building the party you actually support.

Umm, they are focused on that. And they’re using the broad access you and yours have been pushing for so many years already: opposition to SAVE America Act, which demands only citizens be allowed to vote and demands presentation of proof of citizenship when registering; moving to let non-citizens vote in local elections; and especially pushing jungle primaries, where party affiliation doesn’t matter, and if no single candidate gets an outright majority, the top two regardless of party go to a runoff.

Or did that broad access only apply when you could use it to upend Republican primaries and to stack national elections in your favor?

New York City DSA Co-Chair Gustavo Gordillo:

We’re on the Democratic Party ballot line. We contest the primaries, and when they’re in the legislature, they’re part of the Democratic Party caucus, but we don’t agree with the way the Democratic Party establishment organizes or runs its party apparatus.

And

We’re using the Democratic Party as a ballot-access vehicle, not because we share its goals […] We build our own organization, get elected under the Democratic label, caucus with Democrats when it’s useful, and push our own agenda from the inside.

Compare that with then-Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Barack Obama saying just before his first election to President that Party was just days away from fundamentally changing America and to then-Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden in his first SOTU speech saying that he wanted to fundamentally change our economy.

Or did that fundamental change only apply if the now fringe right wing of Party could change our nation, and not apply to fundamental change of Party?