Former U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman appearing at the U.S. House impeachment inquiry hearings against Trump [AP=Yonhap News]

Democratic figures who emerged as "stars of the resistance" during Donald Trump's first term are failing to survive primary elections ahead of the midterms in the second Trump era, the U.S. political outlet Politico reported on the 20th (local time).

According to the report, the latest example of this trend was the upset loss of former Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman to state Representative Angie Nixon, a member of the party's radical left-wing Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), in Florida's Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate on the 18th.

Vindman, who served as the director for European affairs at the National Security Council (NSC) during the first Trump administration, gained national recognition by providing testimony unfavorable to President Trump during the U.S. House impeachment inquiry and subsequent trial from late 2019 to early 2020.

Politico’s analysis suggests that the defeat of Vindman, who ran his campaign with massive political funding raised through that notoriety, illustrates a shifting political landscape among the Democratic base.

Democratic strategist David Axelrod told Politico, "Vindman is a hero, but memories fade, and most people are more focused on the cost of living," adding, "She (Nixon) made those issues her central point."

The "political graveyard" of "anti-Trump fighters" is growing every week, not just for Vindman.

Representative Diana DeGette (D-CO), who served as an impeachment manager during the second impeachment process against President Trump in 2021, lost her midterm primary to challenger Mellat Kiros of the DSA faction.

Another impeachment manager, Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA), entered the California gubernatorial race, but dropped his campaign and resigned from office just before a vote on a motion to expel him from the House after allegations of sexual assault surfaced.

Representative Dan Goldman (D-NY), who served as the lead counsel for the House during the first Trump impeachment trial, also lost his primary, and Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer who received a commendation for clashing with protesters during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, was defeated in his Maryland House primary.

Other losses include billionaire and resistance financier Tom Steyer, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) who served on the House Oversight and Intelligence committees during the 2021 impeachment, and Representatives Shri Thanedar (D-MI) and Al Green (D-TX), who had pushed for Trump's impeachment.

Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for the center-left think tank Third Way, assessed, "'The Resistance' was the mood of the first Trump term, but the nature of the anger has changed now," adding, "Voters are angry about wars, angry about inflation, and angry that the political establishment has failed to deliver anything for them."

A Democratic official analyzed that the common thread among the defeated candidates is that they were "institutionalists" who argued that the current judicial system would hold Trump accountable. Voters, however, lost faith in those institutions after Trump returned to power and were instead more drawn to the messages of candidates who fiercely criticized those very systems.

The analysis suggests that voters in both the Democratic and Republican parties are exhausted by "Trump fatigue."

Mike Madrid, a co-founder of the anti-Trump Republican group The Lincoln Project, noted that some candidates endorsed by Trump also lost their primaries, stating, "For the most part, people are just tired of Trump. They no longer want to deal with the conflict and fatigue associated with Trump—not the anti-Trump model, nor the 'MAGA' model that panders to him," adding, "This is what we call 'Trump fatigue.'"