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Democratic socialism prevails in the country. All three far-left candidates, endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, won their primary races. The elections in Washington, DC thrust another self-described “democratic socialist” into the national spotlight.
What does it mean when our nation’s capital and the Empire City vote for democratic socialist candidates? The most obvious 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 jolts Democrats, party divided over path forward
Seattle has a history of radical politics. Self-proclaimed socialist Kshama Sawant, now running for Congress, has been engaged in the politics of jealousy and movement in 2020, from the disastrous Occupy movement to the deadly Seattle-based Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.
New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has called for free transportation, public grocery stores, aggressive interference in private property and real estate, and even taxes on some universities to subsidize others, as well as a massive increase in the number of government employees.
The Free Press reports that New York City’s new army of social activists and campaigners, Organize NYC, is created 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 on some “volunteers.”
Democratic socialists are the heirs of an earlier generation of progressive activists—a generation that believed 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, stifling initiative, innovation, competition and market incentives.
Today’s democratic socialists look at the sclerotic processes, weak growth and bureaucratic dysfunction and blame wealth creators, innovators, asset owners and businesses. They have it backward. The first culprit is bad policy.
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The democratic socialist recipe is always the same: more government, more taxes, less freedom, less opportunity. That’s why major corporations have been moving out of California, New York and Washington state for lands of opportunity like Texas and Florida.
Now another major American city stands on the brink of so-called democratic socialism. Whatever 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.
