Progressives are still largely underfunded compared to competitors and if you look at the money they get, a lot of it is not from the districts they’re running in. Omar, AOC, etc., won as much on demographics as they did on policy. For progressives to win, they need someone popular within those communities to run as a progressive. But most people of color and most people in their 40s grew up in an era where they had to play the party game to rise up and have been cultivating networks for a while. The progressive movement was dead for 30 years until 2016. They are on year 4 versus a Democratic Party infrastructure that has been built since the late 80s. They simply are not yet mature enough to challenge them. They do well with young people because we have not cultivated a connection to the party infrastructure but for older people of color - supporting who you know has been ingrained for decades. For the progressive movement to work, they would need popular people in the Democratic Party to tack left - people who are already well-connected. It’s almost impossible. Being able to get out the vote and mobilize voters is institutional and the progressive movement won’t really be able to compete everywhere for like 10 to 20 years.
Sanders does better with white voters because they don’t connect to the democratic establishment as a tool for survival. They don’t see them as their protection from their big bad republicans. In political science terms, black people are referred to as a “captured electorate.” Sanders and progressives are asking black people to move away from their safety net. Lastly, there are no progressives in the media.
