Democratic socialism is rising in America’s cities. Don’t ignore the warning

Democratic socialism is sweeping the nation. All three of the far-left candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their primary races. Elections in Washington, DC vaulted another self-described “democratic socialist” into the national spotlight.

What does it mean when our nation’s capital and the Empire City vote in democratic socialist candidates? The clearest answer is to look at what democratic socialists elsewhere have claimed — and done.

Seattle’s mayor, Katie Wilson, is a self-described democratic socialist who has argued for defunding the police and led campaigns targeting private property owners.

MAMDANI’S POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE ROCKS DEMOCRATS, DIVIDING PARTY ON PATH FORWARD

Seattle has a history of revolutionary politics. Self-proclaimed socialist Kshama Sawant, now running for Congress, is associated with the politics of envy and agitation, from the destructive Occupy Movement to the deadly Seattle-based Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in 2020.

New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has called for a sweeping increase in government workers, along with free transportation, state-run grocery stores, aggressive interventions in private property and real estate, and even taxes on some universities to subsidize others.

The Free Press reports that New York City’s new legion of social workers and canvassers, Organize NYC, appears designed not merely to “serve the people,” but to defend the mayor’s agenda and build a political constituency — right down to the red “socialism” bracelets on some “volunteers.”

Democratic socialists are the heirs of an earlier generation of progressive operatives — a generation convinced it could impose a utopian “Great Society” through state power.

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Their ideological descendants can see the symptoms of those failures, but not the causes. The old progressives failed because they buried society under red tape and unaccountable bureaucracy while smothering initiative, innovation, competition, and market incentives.

Today’s democratic socialists look at sclerotic processes, weak growth, and bureaucratic dysfunction and blame wealth creators, innovators, property owners, and businesses. They have it backward. The first culprit is bad policy.

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The democratic socialist prescription is always the same: more government, more taxes, less freedom, less opportunity. There is a reason major corporations continue to exit California, New York, and Washington state for lands of opportunity such as Texas and Florida.

Now another major American city stands on the brink of so-called democratic socialism. Whatever the party label, Americans need leaders who believe in the American Dream — individual liberty, opportunity, strong families, civil society, a vibrant private sector, and limited government.