This is a look at the ongoing fight inside the Democratic party, framed as bad for establishment Democrats who are dodging blame for their own losses.

• Congressman Adam Smith blames the party's left flank — open borders, "defund the police," identity politics — for handing Trump his 2024 win.
• The pushback: establishment Democrats caused their own problems by running Biden despite his obvious decline, then swapping in Kamala Harris who campaigned alongside neocon Liz Cheney.
• Left-aligned candidates keep beating incumbent Democrats, but only in deep-blue districts where corporate Democrats have angered their own voters.
• Smith gets caught as a hypocrite: he co-sponsored a 2018 bill titled "abolish ICE," the exact culture-war branding he now says sank the party.
• The core complaint is that mainstream Democrats fight Trump with hearings and tweets instead of actually blocking his policies, and voters see through it.

Outlook: Expect the establishment-vs-left split to keep driving primary upsets in blue districts heading into the midterms.