A bitter fight inside the Democratic Party is no longer simmering quietly behind closed doors.

It is spilling into primaries, endorsements, city halls and congressional races — and one progressive insider is warning that the party may be sleepwalking into disaster.

India Walton, a Democratic Socialist, party activist and former Buffalo mayoral candidate, says the Democratic establishment is mishandling a generational political shift so badly that it could leave Republicans with a lasting advantage for years to come.

Her warning is blunt.

“If we don’t get it together, we’re left with the Republicans,” Walton said.

To Walton, the crisis is not simply about ideology. It is about survival. She argues that establishment Democrats are so determined to sideline the party’s rising progressive wing that they risk cutting off their own future.

“This is like, you have a nest of birds and, instead of helping to feed them and teach them how to fly, you kick them out of the nest,” she said. “Eventually, you don’t have another generation to take over.”

The analogy captures the fear now spreading through the Democratic left: younger, more progressive voters are showing up, organizing, donating and winning primaries — only to be treated as an embarrassment by the party they are trying to reshape.

That tension exploded after a series of progressive victories in Democratic primaries in New York City, Denver and Philadelphia. Candidates running on left-populist platforms defeated establishment-backed rivals, often despite resistance from local party machines and national figures.

The most prominent example was Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist who went on to become mayor of New York City after a campaign that split the party’s power structure.

Many top Democrats hesitated to embrace him. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did not endorse him. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries backed him only reluctantly, shortly before the election. Yet Mamdani won with more than 50 percent of the vote.

For Walton, that outcome should have been a wake-up call.

Instead, she says, the party establishment treated it like a problem.

The same pattern appeared in Philadelphia, where Democratic Socialist Chris Rabb defeated his nearest competitor by 15 percentage points to become the Democratic candidate for a House seat. Local Democratic leaders, the city’s mayor and the congressional delegation had backed other candidates.

Progressives won anyway.

But rather than see those victories as evidence of energy inside the party, some Democratic leaders have framed the left as a liability.

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel summed up that argument on CNN, saying the socialist wing is focused on turning “blue districts dark blue” instead of helping Democrats win red areas.

“The way you create a majority,” Emanuel said, “is moving red areas to blue, not blue areas to cobalt blue or to midnight blue.”

Walton rejects that logic.

She argues that progressives are not weakening the Democratic Party. They are reaching voters the party has failed to motivate — especially younger people struggling with debt, housing costs, health care insecurity and a future that looks nothing like the American dream promised to previous generations.

“We know that polling tells us that this generation of voters is far more progressive than previous ones,” Walton said. “This is the first generation of voters who get more progressive as they age instead of more conservative.”

To her, the message from younger voters is not mysterious. They want health care for all, student debt relief, affordable housing and economic policies that speak directly to working-class survival.

Instead, she says, establishment Democrats often offer fear of Republicans without a compelling vision of their own.

“The whole strategy is flawed,” Walton said. “They are unable to motivate voters. They’re unable to motivate donors.”

The danger, she warned, is that voters begin to see Democrats and Republicans as two sides of the same system — divided by rhetoric but united by distance from everyday working people.

“People are becoming frustrated and are starting to see Democrats and Republicans as two wings of the same bird,” she said.

That frustration can end in two ways, Walton warned. Voters may back progressive challengers. Or they may simply stop voting.

“Either they’re going to vote for an alternative, if there is one,” she said. “Or they’re not going to vote at all.”

That is the nightmare scenario for Democrats heading into future elections: a demoralized base, an energized Republican Party and a generation of young voters who feel scolded rather than welcomed.

The Democratic National Committee has pushed back against the idea that the party is ignoring progressive victories. A DNC spokesperson pointed to congratulatory messages from Chair Ken Martin to progressive primary winners and examples of the party highlighting Mamdani’s work.

But Walton says gestures are not enough.

She believes the party must stop demonizing the left and start building a coalition around shared economic priorities before it loses the people most hungry for change.

“The Republicans have a plan for their people and they’re implementing it,” Walton said. “They are accomplishing all of the things that they set out to do.”

Her criticism of Democrats was sharper still.

She said the party too often responds by warning voters that they must choose between Republicans and “radical socialists,” instead of recognizing that progressive candidates are winning because their message is resonating.

“What they should be saying is: they’re winning the primaries; that means the messaging is working,” Walton said. “That means we’re seeing higher turnout among younger voters who we’ve been unable to reach.”

For Walton, the solution is not surrendering the party to one faction. It is building a broad coalition that can defeat Republicans while actually improving people’s lives.

But she says that cannot happen while establishment Democrats treat the progressive wing as a threat rather than a future.

The warning is urgent because the stakes are enormous.

If Democrats continue fighting the voters trying to enter their coalition, Walton believes they may not just lose a few primaries.

They may lose a generation.

And if that happens, Republicans may not need to defeat the Democratic Party.

They may simply wait for it to fracture itself.