THE DEMOCRATIC DEBATE IS OVER. THE LEFT WON. When a political party loses a big election, it usually goes into a period of introspection. What went wrong? How can it be fixed?
When Democrats lost the 2024 election, some argued the party had gone too far left, that it needed to move toward the center. Others said no, the party had not gone far enough to the left, and that it needed to move past progressivism toward outright socialism.
A debate ensued. Now, with Tuesday’s elections in New York City, the argument is settled. The socialists won, and the Democratic Party is headed further left.
Lots of press accounts are calling New York’s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani a “kingmaker.” They’re right. Mamdani, who did not exactly win his own office in a landslide — he won last year with 50.8% of the vote — risked his political capital to support three far-left challengers to established Democrats. The challengers won.
There was Darializa Avila Chevalier, a graduate student who believes in open borders, no prisons, and free everything (including her favorite, Free Palestine). Avila Chevalier took down five-term Democratic incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who wields quite a bit of power as chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
There was Brad Lander, first an opponent and then a key ally of Mamdani, who took down two-term incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman. And then there was Claire Valdez, a state assemblywoman who won the nomination for a seat opened by the retirement of 17-term incumbent Rep. Nydia Velazquez. That race was remarkable because Velazquez was adamantly opposed to Mamdani’s candidate and felt that Mamdani had betrayed her in the election — and she still lost.
One key thing to remember here is that these are not some sort of old-fashioned conservative Democrats losing to younger players. These are progressive Democrats who are not far enough to the left for Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America. A party in which Espaillat, whose voting record scored 99 out of 100 from the group “ProgressivePunch,” is thought to be too centrist in a party that has moved wildly left. And now, the battle of Democrats vs. socialists is spreading resentment and bad feelings throughout the party.
The victories in New York establish once and for all that the real energy in the Democratic Party is in the socialist wing. That is horrifying those Democrats who hoped to move the party more toward the center after it lost the White House, the House, and the Senate in 2024. “The DSA, led by Mamdani, has proven it can prevail in districts like those [in New York City], which are an average of D+36,” posted Matt Bennett of the centrist group Third Way. “But it cannot win in purple or red places.”
“It’s a dangerous delusion to think that kind of politics can work in the districts we need to regain the majority,” Bennett wrote. “The average red-to-blue district was Trump+8. That’s 44 points to the right of those DSA strongholds.”
Bennett is right, of course. And now, the job of every Republican candidate in the country will be to tie his Democratic opponent to Avila Chevalier and her DSA colleagues. Make that opponent distance himself or herself from the left-wingers in the Democratic Party. That still might not be enough to win elections in a tough year for Republicans. But the rise of the Mamdani socialists in New York at least gives the GOP some hope.