Ayanna Pressley  destroyed 20+ year Congressman Michael Capuano in the Massachusetts primary yesterday:

Ayanna Pressley didn’t just beat Rep. Michael Capuano, she buried the incumbent Democrat by double digits in the district he has represented for more than 20 years.

With more than 100,000 primary ballots counted in the state’s deep-blue 7th District, the 44-year-old Boston city councilor received 58.6 percent of the vote. Capuano, meanwhile, took home 41.4 percent of the vote. The 66-year-old congressman barely even carried his hometown of Somerville, which had propelled him into Congress two decades earlier.

“If you’re serious about running a grassroots campaign, you don’t just pick and choose where you think you can run a strong race or where you think you have a base of support,” Alex Goldstein, a senior adviser to the Pressley campaign, said Wednesday. “You try to change the map everywhere.”

………

Before the election, Pressley spoke of the need to expand the electorate. As NBC News reported, the 102,067 total votes cast in Tuesday’s election dwarfed — and sometimes more than doubled — the turnout in Capuano’s previous uncontested primaries. Even in 2006, when Gov. Deval Patrick, a Milton resident, was on the primary ballot, the turnout reached only 85,051. 

It is said that Democrats hate their base, and Republicans fear their base.

If the pressure is kept up, and progressives are not convinced to keep their powder dry, we’re going to see some well deserved fear in the party establishment.