ZOHRAN MAMDANI, NEW YORK ‘KINGMAKER’

All three openly and strongly support socialist ideology and policies. All three advocate DSA “reforms like single-payer Medicare for All, defunding the police/refunding communities, the Green New Deal, and more as a transition to a freer, more just life.”

At a rally for the contenders just before the election, Sanders and Mamdani made it clear that democratic socialism is the future.

“In the last eight months, progressive, democratic socialist candidates all over this country have been winning major victories,” bragged Sanders.

Mamdani demanded that the “Democratic Party must change.”

The trio — Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier — is virtually assured of winning the midterm election, given that these are deep-blue districts wherein Republican candidates rarely run, and barely ever win.

Americans who shrug at the rise of socialism and dismiss it as a poison exclusive to urban enclaves are severely misjudging what is happening.

On the left, the decadelong struggle between Sanders and his American Marxism, aka socialism, against the Democratic Party establishment and its so-called moderate policy platform, aka corporate cronyism, is coming to a climax.

Interestingly, just as President Donald Trump was reorienting the Republican Party in a more economically populist direction back in 2015, Sanders was basically doing the same thing on the Left. The major difference, of course, is that Sanders was not pitching economic populism. He was selling socialism.

As we all know, the establishment squashed Sanders’s socialist quest for the Oval Office in 2016, 2020, and 2024. However, this top-down approach has not worked, ironically.

In the meantime, socialism has metastasized at the local, municipal, and state levels. Socialists run major cities. They are gaining influence on city councils. They are making inroads in state legislatures. They have already won seats in the House of Representatives, with more on the way, and are running for Senate seats this November.

Long story short, the DSA seems apt to challenge the Democratic National Committee for control of the Democratic Party machine.

Plenty of polls demonstrate that voters on the left end of the spectrum prefer socialism. According to one, “more than half of likely Democratic voters prefer socialist-aligned figures like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani to establishment politicians like Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi.”

Of much more concern is that young Americans, on both sides of the political aisle, are amenable to socialism.

Last year, The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports conducted a survey that showed “51% of young Americans who are likely to vote in the next presidential election would like to see a democratic socialist in the Oval Office.” This included “nearly three-in-10 young Americans who voted for President Trump in 2024.”

Consider this tidbit: “Nearly 60 percent of those aged 18 to 24 and well north of 50 percent of those aged 25 to 29 expressed their support that a democratic socialist win the 2028 presidential election, including about a quarter of self-identified Republicans and 42% of moderates.”

As young, disaffected, grievance-ridden Americans embrace socialism as the ultimate solution to the very real problems they face, particularly the affordability crisis, they are also sealing the fate of the American dream.

As we stand a few weeks away from the nation’s 250th Independence Day, we must recognize that today’s youth have absolutely no real clue about the history of socialism, as multiple polls show.

When this utter ignorance of the misery that socialism has wrought is coupled with an even more woeful ignorance of American civics and U.S. history, no wonder so many young people are attracted to the DSA’s imbecilic idea to “collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation.”

Even though young Americans are embracing socialism like never before and ordinary Democratic Party voters are veering more toward DSA-affiliated candidates, many will say that this is just a passing phase. Many will claim these young radicals will become more moderate, maybe even conservative, as they gain life experience and pay taxes.

That may have been the case in the past, but the future could be very different, very soon.

As AI becomes bigger, better, and stronger every day, young Americans are deeply worried about their long-term prospects of gainful employment. To address that, the socialists have planted their flag firmly against AI and data centers. They’ve even filed a bill that would enact a federal moratorium on AI and data center development.

I think the DSA’s anti-AI stance is the Ace card it will play for the next few years.

Promising voters all sorts of free stuff while supposedly shielding them from the creative destruction that will ensue during the AI era is a powerful message.

MAMDANI-ENDORSED SOCIALIST DARIALIZA CHEVALIER PREVIOUSLY POSTED ABOUT USING US FLAG AS A NAPKIN

However, the historic and unparalleled track record of prosperity, abundance, innovation, success, personal fulfillment, and human flourishing that has occurred over the past 250 years in the United States of America, where people have liberty, agency, and are generally left to their own devices while voluntarily transacting in a free-market system, should speak for itself.

The American Way works wonders. Socialism does not work.

Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.