Democratic Socialism is Coming to Your Neighborhood

Zohran Mamdani is going to be the next mayor of New York City, after possibly one of the most consequential elections in city history, that saw over two million voters in this off year election – around twice the number that voted four years ago.

Now, the just under 50% that voted against him are bracing to see what happens next, to see if he becomes the existential threat to NYC’s economy and western values that so many believe he will be.

Here is what we know for sure. Mamdani will become the most powerful elected socialist in the country, and he plans to use that power to grow his movement based on communist principles (that he has espoused for years) and opposition to Israel.

At a rally of around 3,000 people during the campaign Mamdani said he is leading a “movement that won the battle over the soul of the Democratic Party” and that “We are not afraid of our own ideas. For too long we have tried not to lose. Now it is time that we win.”

Of course, by winning he only means to double down on the failed policies that Democrats have given NYC for decades, policies that he says were only half measures. Apparently, we have only experienced half the failure he has in mind.

His campaign is boasting 100,000 people who signed up to volunteer for his campaign, an impressive achievement that the DSA, which currently has around 12,000 members in NYC (80,000 nationally), is planning to work on recruiting into their movement along with the advocacy group Our Time for an Affordable NY, which is essentially nothing more than arm of the DSA.

According to prominent Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, “Anyone who thinks the DSA is out to help the Democratic Party needs to see a psychiatrist,” and continued that the DSA is “about killing the Democratic Party and making it into a DSA operation. The Democratic Party is like a dead carcass. There’s nothing there.”

We will know very quickly if Sheinkopf is right as the DSA prepares to challenge a number of elected Democrats in primaries next year. They already have their sights set on NYC Congressmen Hakeem Jeffries and Dan Goldman and will likely go after a number of state legislative seats as well.

They already hold a handful of city council and state legislative seats in northwest Queens and downtown Brooklyn. They could add substantially to those numbers, and should they win both congressional primaries, they would triple the DSA delegation in DC from the city, giving AOC – who helped launch this movement with her shocking primary win in 2018 – more allies to push the DSA’s agenda nationally.

The big question then becomes; can the DSA be stopped? And while it’s too early to predict the ultimate outcome, a lot is now riding on Mamdani’s success or failure in the next four years. When you win making big promises, you are expected to deliver in a big way.

Will Mamdani make rents more affordable in a way that matters, or will this just be more of the same failure, like when de Blasio froze the rent on regulated apartments three times, but it didn’t make anything better. Can he deliver on free buses, and how does that make them faster (won’t more riders make them slower)?

The DSA is banking on Mamdani’s success, but there’s plenty of reason to believe that, even should he get a large part of his agenda enacted, which is far from likely, he is also unlikely to achieve the results promised, which ultimately is what really matters. Affordability is surely going to be a major issue in NYC for years to come, and promises of free buses and childcare, or rent freezes (for a few, increases for the rest) and discounted food, won’t be the success they hope for.

And as their followers are disappointed, things will change. But in the meantime, they will elect many candidates locally, making the same hollow promises, and pushing socialist/communist policies across NYC while bringing a reckoning for the Democratic establishment, the real target for the DSA.