Zohran Mamdani and Abigail Spanberger Getty Images Ashland, Virginia —

Only a party going through the Democrats’ identity and existential crises could, nine months into Donald Trump’s second presidency, have Zohran Mamdani and Abigail Spanberger as its front-runners in two of Tuesday’s biggest races .

Spanberger is a 46-year-old former CIA officer, the daughter of a nurse and a cop, who sounded the alarm in Congress and now on the campaign trail about what she sees as her party’s excesses. Mamdani is a 34-year-old democratic socialist, the Uganda-born son of a university professor and filmmaker, who sprung to stardom with a focus on cost of living conveyed in buzzy, multilingual videos pushing for government to pay for more.

This isn’t a sitcom pitch: It reflects a party

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