Democrat Daydreams or Midterm Nightmares?

Some highly publicized radical political daydreams now breathlessly filling news venues could very likely end up as nightmares for Democrats in next year’s crucial midterm elections.

Collectivist, neo-socialist ideas on the political left are nothing new. But as they have done over the past century, leftist-leaning liberals have found a new generation of ambitious mouthpieces to utter their deceptively beguiling messages and stir up the emotions of anxious voters.

Sites of the latest round of this phenomenon include New York City and Minneapolis, two urban centers which in recent years have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats. The mayoral elections in both cities this November now feature individuals openly espousing socialist-Marxist policies.

In both cases, the news-making candidates – Zohran Mamdani in the Big Apple and Omar Fateh in the City of Lakes – are young men with stark differences in religious and cultural traditions from most voters outside their cities. Both are running as Democrats, but both are affiliated with the group known as the “Democratic Socialists of America.”

Although each of them has achieved an early success so far by coming in first in a Democrat primary or by winning a party endorsement in a convention of party activists, it is not yet certain if one or both or either will actually be elected in November.

Both espouse similar urban programs, including rent controls, exorbitant income taxes for those with higher incomes, city-run stores and services usually provided by the private sector, heavy regulation of the local retail and other businesses, and either defunding or reducing funding for fire and police and other urban security services.

Most of these ideas have been put in place in other urban centers, especially on the West Coast (Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles most notably), where they have failed or are failing badly. The underlying collectivist or redistributionist principles of these ideas have been tried in the Soviet Union, communist Eastern Europe, and Cuba, where they were combined with totalitarian rule. There, they not only failed but also brought about mass hardship and suffering.

Milder forms of these policies, described as “social welfare,” were introduced most notably in the democratic Scandinavian and other more industrially developed countries, but have proved to be unsustainable over the long term, and have been, or are being, abandoned.

Despite the temporary introduction of these radical ideas recently in a few cities, the U.S. has no tradition of adopting collectivist or other Marxist programs. Early generations of Americans created the first large democratic capitalist society, which became a model for an industrial economy, an increasingly free society, a popular creative culture, and a positive global resource in peace and war.

As working-class Americans became more and more affluent after World War II, many families moved out of large city centers into the suburbs. Many continued to come to the city centers for work, but resident city populations were less affluent. Before and just after World War II, many big city mayors and other elected officials were Republicans. After Vietnam, Democrats began to dominate urban politics. Today, very few Republicans hold office in large U.S. cities.

The recent pandemic enabled most suburban white-collar urban office employees to work from home. Cities became destinations for refugees, both documented and undocumented. Many cities declared themselves “sanctuaries” and illegal alien, often economically dependent, urban populations swelled.

Widespread failure to stem chronic theft in grocery and other retail stores in city centers and even to prosecute many lawbreakers has understandably and inevitably caused reduced retail services, with many individual businesses leaving altogether. With reduced police forces, most notably following the “Defund the Police” movement in 2020, community security, particularly in downtown areas, was compromised.

The bottom line is that the promised rewards of the collectivist urban policies now being advanced once more by Messrs. Mamdani and Fateh can’t be paid for. The sources of the revenues to pay for them will close or move away.

In the problematic and perilous urban political environment, however, the economic and political fantasy daydreams of collectivists and neo-socialists can easily find supporters.

A group of far-left Democrat members of Congress known as “The Squad” have already been elected and re-elected in some of these cities, including New York and Minneapolis, expressing these ideas.

Outside these urban areas, in the rural, small town, suburban, and exurban communities, however, socialist daydreams are perceived as nightmares.

There could well be more examples of radical Democrats running for office this year and next, but whatever the outcomes of these relatively few races, Democrats face far more serious consequences across the country as conservatives, centrists, independents and, yes, moderate Democrats are motivated to turn out to vote in the 2026 midterm elections to prevent the nightmares underway in urban centers from becoming a waking reality in their own backyards.

Herald Boas is a contributor to AMAC Newsline.