On Tuesday, March 17, all 50 states finally announced positive cases of the coronavirus. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned that, without interventions, unemployment could reach as high as 20%, numbers not seen since the Great Depression. The number of coronavirus cases nationwide soared. Joe Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

And in Illinois’s third congressional district, Marie Newman won her primary.

The victory marked an important one for progressives who have struggled in down-ballot races in recent months, despite the popularity of the movement’s signature policies like “Medicare for All.” The Chicago-area entrepreneur’s victory against eight-term congressman Dan Lipinski, one of two remaining anti-choice Democrats in the House, gives progressives a much-needed boost as they stare down the final months of a presidential primary led by a centrist front-runner backed by the Democratic establishment. Though experts say the win, which narrowly eluded Newman when she first challenged Lipinski for the seat in 2018, is not altogether surprising.

According to Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, “Lipinksi seemed like he would be among the most vulnerable House members in this cycle. He did little to deal with his vulnerability. It is not surprising at all that he lost.”

But other candidates generating excitement on the left, like young immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros, also lost close primary races. At this point in the 2020 cycle, the tough reality for progressives is that if another blue wave does come crashing down, they may not be riding it.

2018 made people hope otherwise. A viral video from that June showed a visibly shocked 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez clasping her hand over her mouth, eyes wide in surprise as she watched her primary results come in. “I won!” she says in disbelief, capturing the monumental shift at play as a woman of color, Democratic Socialist, and first-time candidate for office triumphed over Representative Joe Crowley, a top Democrat with a two-decade record in the House of Representatives.

A few months later, Ayanna Pressley, then a member of the Boston City Council, defeated 10-term incumbent Michael Capuano. A video of her own emotionally charged reaction to her upset victory also swiftly went viral. Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University, points out these two members of the foursome now known as “The Squad” were very different candidates in terms of the political experience they brought to their respective races. But their victories share something crucial. “The incumbents win about 95% of the time,” said Walsh. “To challenge from within your own party is really hard, and the reason that we all know those two names is because those were the only two that were successful at doing that.”

The 2018 class may have been the most diverse and most female in history, but a lot of the Democrats who flipped seats to turn the House blue were moderates.

Still, as the nation heads into the general election, a number of progressive candidates are trying to triumph in the primaries, or to find their own as they prepare to take on Republican incumbents, or replace outgoing Democrats. Walsh refers to this trend as “the AOC effect.”

Along with Newman in Illinois, Georgette Gómez, the first Latina elected to the San Diego City Council, will take on former Hillary Clinton advisor Sara Jacobs to represent California’s 53rd district, after both Democrats finished in the top two in their primary. Stephanie Taylor, cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), a grassroots organization that supports progressive candidates at the federal, state, and local levels, told Teen Vogue that Gómez stood out in her successful endorsement interview. “She talked [...] a lot about how important it was to her on the San Diego City Council as the first queer Latina member to be in a position that she could fight against the border wall. [She also talked about] how she had the privilege of documents that her parents didn’t, and that [it] made her both appreciate the power of the government and also to see how hard it was for people [...] who struggled against it and who struggled against the system.”