Political Whisperer
By Robert Hornak
Ever since AOC won her Queens-Bronx congressional seat in 2018, the Democratic Socialists of America have been slowly winning legislative seats in NYC (including Zohran Mamdani’s Assembly seat). They have been methodically growing their power and influence in New York.
Then Mamdani won the mayoral primary in 2025, beating the candidate of the establishment, Andrew Cuomo. Emboldened by this huge win, the DSA kicked into overdrive, hoping to replicate what they had done in NYC in left-leaning cities and states across the country.
Not only are they running socialist candidates in races all across the country, but they have even gone so far as to put out a platform, with an agenda that reveals their real intentions.
Of course, the big question is what would this mean if they actually won?
Well, they make it sound like utopia, of course. Your job is no longer something you need to survive, it’s something you can do at your leisure to make you feel happy. And forget having to pay bills. Their credo starts with this really wonderful sounding explanation:
“You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right. Your retirement is publicly funded. Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities.”
What could possibly be wrong with that? Well, there will be a trade-off. There always is. It’s not possible for everyone to get everything they want. And the trade-off is your freedom. It’s that simple.
Sure, the government can take over medical care. But we know from experience that it doesn’t work out well for anyone with a serious illness. Every country with socialized healthcare is forced to ration that care and wait times for appointments with any specialist can be many months. Time that someone with cancer or other life-threatening illnesses can’t afford.
We also know the economics don’t work. In 2014 Vermont, the state Bernie Sanders represents, explored adopting a single payer healthcare program. But they were forced to shelve it due to the extreme cost. They determined that in addition to cutting payments to providers, they would have to increase state taxes by 160% and risk providing worse healthcare at a higher cost.
The estimates for a nation single payer program today are between $25 and $35 TRILLION over the next ten years. Plus, the US health insurance industry employs around 700,000 people who all contribute to the tax base. In NY, that’s 27,000 people earning a good living just employed by the insurance sector. Those jobs all go away.
And free rent. That means the government will provide your housing. And we know, again, from history that government housing is not extravagant. You only need the basics to be secure. And in NYC, public housing now doesn’t even offer real security since NYC is the worst slum landlord in existence. Surely the DSA will do better providing all these services than everyone else in history who tried this and failed.
It’s true, capitalism has its problems. But it is the foundation upon which America was created and built. Literally.
The first publicly owned companies, called Joint Stock Companies when they were created, were the East India companies. They were created as a way for people to invest in exploration of the new world that would minimize risk and maximize the opportunity for profit. The first stock exchange was set up in Amsterdam in 1602 so that shares in these companies could easily be traded.
The NYSE was founded in 1792, coming into existence simultaneously with the founding of America. This classless merit-based form of governance based entirely on a system that rewards risk-taking was what made America the wildly successful, life-altering society that it has become. More innovation that improves life and longevity for humanity has come from the US than any other nation in history.
Ultimately, this is the trade-off. America is the goose that lays the golden egg. If we kill the goose – which is surely what the DSA intends to do – the engine that powers our entire economy will come crashing down, leaving us with neither wealth nor security. Without the capitalist system that built America, we cease to exist. That’s the real cost.
Robert Hornak is a veteran political consultant who has previously worked for the NYC office of the Republican Assembly Leader and served as Executive Director of the Queens Republican Party. He can be reached at rahornak@gmail.com and @roberthornak on X.
