Chris Van Hollen says the Democratic Party needs change. Is he the one to lead it?

The Democratic Party is having something of an identity crisis — losing to President Donald Trump twice in three elections will do that.

Should the party embrace anti-establishment figures who espouse progressive policy ideas like Medicare for all and rhetoric about unrigging the economy for the 1%? Or should Democrats try to appeal to moderates who want to return to semi-normalcy in a time of political upheaval?

Although he’s been in Congress since 2002, with key leadership roles throughout his tenure, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, 67, counts himself firmly in the anti-establishment camp.

He has long spoken out against Israel’s actions in Gaza and in favor of Medicare for All. This year, he cosponsored a bill to get rid of income taxes for people making less than $80,500 a year while raising taxes on people making more than $1 million.

In the past, those kinds of policies have left Van Hollen somewhere on the “lonely” fringes of his party, he said in an interview.

But it seems like that could be changing.

A self-proclaimed socialist just beat a resistance-era hero in the Florida’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. Two other candidates who don’t identify as socialists but are aggressively progressive, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, won their Senate primaries, also against well-funded moderates.

Van Hollen traveled earlier this summer to campaign for El-Sayed and Flanagan, people he considers “anti-establishment,” as part of his ongoing effort to remake the party. In El-Sayed’s case, Van Hollen was the first Senate Democrat to back the insurgent candidate. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, endorsed El-Sayed months earlier.

“I do think both those races and others around the country show that there’s a real hunger for candidates who want to shake up a very broken status quo,” Van Hollen said. “I think voters are tired of the finger of the wind politics, right? The folks who constantly are just engaged in political calculation rather than expressing their views.”

In Michigan and Minnesota, Van Hollen spoke of the need to counteract corporate influence in politics and to unrig the economy for working people, seeking to cast his and his allies’ politics in economic terms rather than left-versus-right.

He said he’s unconcerned about whether some of his more polarizing views, like on Gaza or spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), may be seen as too much by certain voters. Van Hollen said he refuses to take money from AIPAC because the group calls for recipients of that money to unconditionally support the government of Israel.

“Voters can decide whether they agree or disagree,” he said. “I think a lot of voters are willing to tolerate a fair amount of disagreement on particular policy issues if they believe that a candidate is being honest with them, leveling with them.”

All of this is part of a series of moves Van Hollen has made to position himself for a starring role in the party’s reinvention. He says he’s “kicking the tires” on a possible 2028 White House bid.

It started when he traveled to El Salvador in an effort to meet with Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland resident who whose deportation made national news. That trip thrust Van Hollen into the national spotlight.

Since then, he’s gone to politick in New Hampshire and Iowa, where last year he told the audience that Democrats needed to ditch their “spineless politics.” He also will travel in September to speak at an event in Wisconsin.

Van Hollen also may be positioning himself for Chuck Schumer’s job as the Democratic leader in the Senate. (Though in an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” he said his focus was “not on majority leader.”)

Late last month, El-Sayed told a crowded room at an event outside Detroit that Van Hollen would be the next majority leader if he had “anything to do about it.”

A few days later on CNN, Van Hollen declined to say whether he would support Schumer to remain as party leader going forward.

Van Hollen and other progressives, including Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, banded together in opposition to Schumer ahead of the primaries, forming a so-called “fight club,” The New York Times reported last year. The Maryland senator’s break from Schumer is especially notable, considering that Van Hollen chaired Senate Democrats’ fundraising committee from 2017-19.

While this sort of factionalism and intraparty fighting is commonplace with Republicans, it’s relatively new for Democrats, according to Melissa Meisels, a political science professor at the University of Michigan.

Trump has endorsed primary opponents for members of his party who have challenged his agenda. If the moderates prevail in the Democratic Party’s existential battle, where would that leave people like Van Hollen?

“Even if leadership isn’t going to informally sanction people,” Meisels said, “obviously it makes interactions with your colleagues unpleasant.”