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Democratic socialism is sweeping the nation. All three far-left candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their primaries. The elections in Washington, DC brought another self-described “democratic socialist” into the national spotlight.
What does it mean when our nation’s capital and Empire City vote for democratic socialist candidates? The clearest answer is to look at what democratic socialists elsewhere have claimed (and done).
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, a self-described democratic socialist, has advocated for defunding the police and led campaigns targeting private property owners.
MAMDANI’S POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE SHAKES DEMOCRATS AND DIVIDES THE PARTY ON THE WAY FORWARD
Seattle has a history of revolutionary politics. Self-proclaimed socialist Kshama Sawant, now a congressional candidate, is associated with the politics of envy and unrest, 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 radical 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 pollsters, Organize NYC, appears designed not only to “serve the people” but to defend the mayor’s agenda and build a political constituency, right down to the red “socialism” bracelets sported by some “volunteers.”
Democratic socialists are the heirs of an earlier generation of progressive agents: a generation convinced that 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 bureaucracy and irresponsible bureaucracy, while stifling initiative, innovation, competition, and market incentives.
Today’s democratic socialists look at sclerotic processes, weak growth and bureaucratic dysfunction and blame wealth creators, innovators, owners and businesses. They have it backwards. The first blame is bad policy.
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The democratic socialist recipe is always the same: more government, more taxes, less freedom, less opportunities. There is a reason why large corporations continue to leave California, New York and Washington state for opportunity countries like 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 freedom, opportunity, strong families, civil society, a vibrant private sector, and limited government.