US Democrats cannot afford to ignore Mamdani and the socialist movement any longer

SOMETHING seismic happened in New York on Tuesday (Jun 23), and it did not register on any geological instrument. It was felt in ballot boxes across Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Upper Manhattan, and its tremors will be felt all the way in Washington.

Democratic primary voters in New York City delivered a clean sweep to Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), electing a slate of left-wing House candidates over two sitting members of Congress.

The results were not close. They were not flukes. They were a verdict. 

The rise of the democratic socialists

For most of the 20th century, the word “socialist” functioned in American politics less as a policy designation than as a political weapon. To be labelled one was, for most candidates, a career-ending event.

One of the more consequential political developments of the past decade is that the term has shed much of its toxicity, and the movement it names now claims elected officials, a mass membership organisation and measurable influence over a major party’s platform.

The contemporary democratic socialist movement in the US did not emerge from nowhere.

Its immediate catalyst was the 2008 financial crisis, which exposed fault lines in the prevailing consensus around deregulated markets and austerity.

The bailout of financial institutions, while millions of Americans lost their homes and jobs, produced a durable anger that neither party fully absorbed.

The Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 gave that frustration a language – the 1 per cent versus the 99 per cent – but no lasting organisational form.

What it did produce, was a generation of political activists primed for a more radical critique of economic inequality. 

When Bernie Sanders entered the 2016 Democratic presidential primary as an avowed democratic socialist, he inherited that energy and channelled it into an electoral vehicle.

His campaign raised more than US$200 million, largely through small-dollar donations, won 23 states and introduced policy proposals, such as Medicare for All, tuition-free public college, a US$15 minimum wage, that had been considered fringe positions just years earlier.

The political heir to the Sanders moment was not simply his 2020 campaign, but a broader ecosystem of organisations and candidates.

The DSA, founded in 1982 and largely dormant for decades, recorded a surge in its membership from roughly 6,000 in 2016 to more than 90,000 by 2019.

That organisational infrastructure helped elect candidates at every level of government, most visibly Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose upset of a senior House Democrat in the 2018 primary election became a symbol of the movement’s electoral viability.

Changing of the guard

More recently, Mamdani’s slate of progressive candidates, which included DSA members, swept the congressional primaries on Jun 23, ousting two sitting congressmen backed by establishment Democrats. 

Brad Lander defeated two-term incumbent Dan Goldman. Community organiser Darializa Avila Chevalier triumphed over five-term Representative Adriano Espaillat, the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

And Claire Valdez, a DSA member and state assembly member, easily bested the candidate handpicked by the retiring Nydia Velazquez.

Three races. Three wins. Zero ambiguity. What makes these results so extraordinary is not just the margin of the victories, but the scale of the resistance they overcame. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries campaigned aggressively against Mamdani’s candidates – and lost.

That is not a footnote. That is the most powerful House Democrat in America, a fellow New Yorker no less, expending his credibility on a battle for the soul of his party, and coming up short. It is a remarkable humbling.

The deeper story here is about what Mamdani has built, and how quickly.

Just six months into office, the 34-year-old democratic socialist’s political strength is surging.

Once demonised by leaders of both parties, he has earned praise from both US President Donald Trump and former Democratic critics such as New York Governor Kathy Hochul. 

That is a genuinely unusual political coalition for a man who calls himself a socialist.

It suggests something that strategists in Washington have yet to fully reckon with: The appeal of Mamdani and his movement is not purely ideological. It is emotional. It is about anger, dignity and the sense that someone is finally fighting.

Mamdani ran on promises to confront economic inequality and cost-of-living issues, vowing rent freezes, affordable housing construction, free bus service, free childcare, city-owned grocery stores to address high food costs and tax hikes on the wealthy. 

These are not abstract policy positions. They are direct responses to the daily indignities of living in one of the most expensive cities on earth.

And they resonated, not just with lifelong leftists, but with working-class voters who might once have been reliable establishment Democrats.

Political scientists have described the contests as Mamdani’s biggest trial since winning the mayoralty, because they would show whether voters were embracing a broader ideological movement or had simply elected a uniquely effective individual candidate.

The primaries answered that question. This is a movement. 

Pressing question for Democrats

For the national Democratic Party, the question now is painful and urgent: What do you do when the energy, the organising and the wins are on the left flank you have been quietly trying to suppress? 

Establishment Democratic leaders have mostly offered tepid endorsements of Mamdani, or none at all, and moderate Democrats have been trying to distance themselves from his proposals.

Neither of the state’s Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, gave him their endorsement. That strategy of cautious distance is looking increasingly untenable. 

Republicans, of course, are already gleeful. The National Republican Congressional Committee declared that “the Democrat Party has surrendered to radical socialist Zohran Mamdani and the far-left mob”. 

Some analysts warn that this gives Republicans potent attack material against Democrats in battleground states, comparing it to the damage done by the “defund the police” movement.

That concern is legitimate and should not be dismissed. The general election map does not look like Brooklyn.

But, there is a counter-argument that Mamdani’s camp makes with increasing confidence, and now with receipts.

Sanders’ adviser Faiz Shakir noted that the senator mentions Mamdani in almost every speech, as he tours the nation rallying voters ahead of the midterms, and that “the crowd just goes nuts”. 

The case is simple: A demoralised, directionless party loses too. The Democrats have been searching for a message since 2016. Mamdani has one, and it is working.

As Claire Valdez said in her victory speech, “Tonight, we haven’t just won an election.

“We have declared that this movement is durable, that it is growing, and that it will not stop until working people are no longer asked to just build the table, no longer just offered a seat at the table, but will run the table.”

The Democratic establishment would be wise to stop pretending they did not hear that. The socialist wave did not crest last night. It is still rising.