The knee-jerk analysis of last Tuesday’s off-year elections — other than shock at Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s thin margin in Virginia and awe at Republican Chris Christie’s romp in New Jersey — was that the Democratic Party is experiencing a new progressive dawn. But while this idea might be intuitive, it couldn’t be more wrong.

For those who predict that a rejuvenated liberal wing of the Democratic Party will jockey for power in 2014 and beyond, unabashed left-winger Bill de Blasio’s victory over more “establishment” candidates in the New York City Democratic primary proves their point. And further up the Northeast corridor, the victory of union-backed Martin Walsh over the more stylistically slick John Connolly in the Boston mayoral election was viewed as another data point in the theory of a leftward Democratic shift.

But looking just at de Blasio ignores New York City’s status as one of the most liberal cities in America. Comedian Stephen Colbert wasn’t off the mark when he joked, “New York City is the only place in the world where the lesbian candidate was too conservative” — a reference to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s primary loss to de Blasio. Moreover, we can learn about as much from de Blasio’s massive victory over his underfunded Republican opponent, Joe Lhota (GSB ’76) as we would if the Georgetown basketball squad defeated the Little Sisters of the Poor.

A common narrative has this leftward shift returning Democrats to an equilibrium previously disrupted by President Bill Clinton’s moderate approach. Globally, this would parallel a shift in the United Kingdom, as the Labour Party turns away from the “New Labour” ethos that propelled former Prime Minister Tony Blair to three election victories. Returning to its populist roots and hugging ever tighter to trade unions has been costly for Labour and Blair’s two successors, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband. In 2010, Brown presided over a landslide general election loss from which the party is still reeling.

But as much as liberal Democrats might not want to admit it, Clinton’s movement away from the far left set the stage for Barack Obama. After embracing expansive programs to build on the Great Society for much of the 1980s, Clinton turned the Democrats toward a platform that put more weight on free markets than government programs and made more robust use of military power.

Despite defeating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary, however, Obama has governed in a similar model. Foreign policy — some of it carried out by Secretary Clinton — has turned to the same kind of muscular coalition building that happened under President Clinton. Even the Affordable Care Act follows the Clintonian model, and tax rates are actually lower now than they were in 2000.

That’s why Noam Scheiber’s piece in The New Republic this weekend on Elizabeth Warren was of particular interest. Scheiber made a persuasive case that Warren is well placed to lead a left-wing challenge to Clinton in 2016. It’s certainly possible that she could gain traction — as any opponent could — heading into the next presidential election cycle. But Warren suffers from a more narrow interest — opposition to Wall Street — and a lack of broader ideology. Anger at Wall Street will wane as the economy improves and, in any event, is much less of a politically potent weapon than some seem to believe. That Warren was just barely elected in Massachusetts — arguably the most liberal state in the union — should tell us volumes.

Critically, there is also a great deal of unity within the Democratic Party today. Nearly 80 percent of Democrats approve of Obama, despite mixed views across the entire population. That’s hardly fertile ground on which to spark a revolution. In the era of a solid Democratic south and big city ward bosses, Massachusetts and Manhattan picked our presidents. Today, places like Manassas, Va., are the key players. Democrats there aren’t simply pining for the left wing today — and tomorrow doesn’t look likely either.

Evan Hollander is a senior in the School of Foreign Service. STATE OF PLAY appears every other Friday.