More significantly, this contest foreshadows the difficultly that establishment-aligned Democratic leaders like Senator Chuck Schumer may have with their restive base should the party’s most powerful force for unity, its loathing of President Trump, be eliminated by the time the 2022 midterms roll around.
The ascendant left could prove especially formidable if, as in Kentucky and New York this year, they keep rallying behind nonwhite insurgents who are able to build coalitions between liberal whites and racial minority groups.
“You’re going to see young people, people of color, working-class people participating in the Democratic Party in a way that we have not seen for a very, very long time,” predicted Senator Bernie Sanders, who, along with Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, has gotten behind Mr. Booker . “That is not going to be able to be controlled by the Democratic establishment.”
Kentucky, then, amounts to something of a dry run for the left, a test of whether grass-roots energy can overcome fearsome fund-raising, and whether Mr. Schumer’s ability to keep coronating candidates from Washington can be sustained should Democrats take full control of the government, and liberals grow frustrated with the glacial pace of the upper chamber.
Harry Reid, the former Senate Democratic leader who is not taking sides in the Kentucky race but who called Mr. Booker “a terrific candidate,” said Mr. Schumer would face considerable pressure to eliminate the 60-vote threshold in order to pass the sort of sweeping legislation many in the party are demanding.
“It’s not a question of if the filibuster is going to go away, it’s only a question of when it’s going to go away,” Mr. Reid said.
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