While the media has mainly focused on the performance of the far right in Tuesday’s Republican primaries, there was also plenty of news on the Left. The lesson from this week’s Democratic primaries was that despite the ambient feeling of demoralization, the Left is still organizing and winning in the electoral arena.

Pennsylvania was the biggest story. One big triumph was Summer Lee, a thirty-four-year-old black state representative in Pittsburgh, who defeated a huge amount of money, some from Republicans and from AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), to win her primary for a seat in the House of Representatives. Endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, she will become the newest member of the Squad if she wins the general election in November (which she is expected to do).

Another triumph was the sound drubbing of the Joe Manchin–backed centrist idol Conor Lamb in a Senate primary. Lamb’s victorious opponent, John Fetterman, fifty-two, a real Gen X character — tattooed, head-shaved and informally attired, and rejecting conventional political labels — isn’t a socialist or even a self-identified progressive. But as a supporter of marijuana legalization, Medicare for All, taxing the rich, and a higher minimum wage — and a backer of Bernie Sanders for president — he’d be better than the vast majority who currently serve in that white supremacist, undemocratic excrescence known as the US Senate.