It’s a trying time for radicals. Dismissed, disrespected, and largely shut out of power and mainstream intellectual organs, their ability to influence change and shift the national conversation is limited. The opposition, after decades of political dominance, appears to still reign supreme. Meanwhile, the party nominally meant to be their standard bearer has abandoned its traditional principles for the sake of electability.

This could describe the Left circa 2015. But it could also just as well describe the Right anywhere in the three decades before around 1960.

The resurgence of the radical Left in recent years has occasioned a head-on collision between left-wing activists and what’s come to be derisively known as the “Democratic establishment,” particularly since Bernie Sanders’s presidential run. From the 2016 primary to today, the party leadership and its activist base have been engaged in what at times seems like non-stop, open warfare. And while it might be too soon to say the Left is winning the battle, cases like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent thumping of Democratic speaker-in-waiting Joe Crowley and Ben Jealous’s victory in the Maryland Democratic primary show that it’s got momentum.