Mamdani’s Democratic Party

The big news in this weeks primary elections was aptly captured by The Wall Street Journal : “Mamdani Deepens His Influence – and the Divide – in the Democratic Party – New York City mayor strengthens party sway nationwide by backing three primary winners in Congressional races.” The article went on to quote a Democratic strategist: “Mayor Mamdani didn’t just pick winners. He made winners.”

The greatest danger to America today is not China, Russia, or Iran (although all pose important threats), but rather what has become the full-fledged socialist takeover of the Democratic Party by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Mamdani, AOC, and others. Remarkably, even as Tuesday’s elections anointed Mamdani as a new Kingmaker, I had a chance encounter with someone who has actually experienced the realities of socialism first hand.

The day after the elections, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a couple of items. Walking in, a stocky man with a heavy accent gently teased me about my LA Dodgers baseball cap. After explaining that my daughter lives in LA, I asked where he was from. “Havana”, he replied, before going on to tell me he had escaped Cuba 36 years ago. When asked if he still had family there and if things were as bad as we hear, he responded, “Yes, and they’re worse! 23 hours a day of no electricity. No jobs, no money – I try and send money and food, but have a hard time reaching them on the phone to see if it’s even getting through.”

As our brief encounter came to a close I patted him on the shoulder, told him how happy I was that he had made it out and is now here, and wished him and his family the best. Walking away, much like Florida’s summer humidity weighs on unprepared visitors, the tragic irony of the circumstances sapped my spirits: even as the real world consequences of Marxist ideology play out just off our southern border, Mamdani has marshaled the same blend of revolutionary zeal and utopian promises that once elevated Fidel Castro to power. Perhaps most distressing of all, American voters are falling prey to it!

To understand the modern origins of how this happened, we need to go back to when Castro’s revolutionary spirit also took root in America.

As young campus radicals fought for free speech, civil rights and women’s rights during the 1960s, they actually helped push America into a much better version of itself. Looking back, a unifying theme of much of the ‘60s activism was the belief in the preeminence of the individual over the repressive power of the state, as captured so beautifully by Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

This was not a call to tear down America, but rather a call for us to live up to Thomas Jefferson’s founding vision, as King’s speech revealed: “It is a dream deeply rooted in the American Dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.”

From the early fights for Civil and women’s rights through similar efforts on behalf of gay Americans, the ‘60s revolutionaries continued to lead us in a better direction. But as time went on the far left transmogrified into a very different version of the early ideals expressed by Dr. King; instead of fighting for free speech they imposed cancel culture on dissenting voices; they replaced King’s dream of racial equality with political privilege based not on the content of individual character but rather on the color of our skin; and they turned what was once a movement for sexual freedom into an effort to preempt individual parent’s rights over issues as important as child sexuality.

As the radical left aged and gradually took control of our educational system, traditional media, and the Democratic party, they created narratives of colonialism, supremacy, and exploitation that made it clear their true intention was no longer (if it ever had been) to help America fulfill the Western ideals that first lifted the great masses up from the ash heap of history. Instead, it became more and more clear their agenda had evolved into overthrowing Western values in pursuit of an empowered state that is little more than a thinly veiled return to the pre-enlightenment systems of political privilege that hoisted humanity onto an ash heap in the first place.

In addition to this gross disfiguration of the principles that at least seemed to guide their early activism, the young radical left was disastrously wrong about economics from the very beginning. In the mid-1960s, Lyndon Banes Johnson’s (LBJ) Great Society Programs were an attempt to push the country in a more socialist direction. These programs failed miserably in their stated mission to eradicate poverty. In addition, the vast increase in spending, combined with LBJ’s escalation of the Viet Nam War, led to deficits that the Federal Reserve financed with loose monetary policies. This gave rise to the Stagflation (anemic economic growth combined with high inflation) that turned the 1970s into the worst economic period since the Great Depression.

Fortunately, Ronald Reagan’s free market reforms in the early 1980s kicked off an economic boom that, aided by Bill Clinton’s fiscal prudence in the ‘90s, extended for nearly two decades. Nevertheless, even as Reagan’s free market success pushed socialism into the dark alleys of Democratic politics, the far left remained active in filling the halls of academia with their narratives of supremacy, exploitation, and class warfare.

Beginning in the late ‘90s, housing policy mistakes initiated by Clinton and continued by George W. Bush, along with the Federal Reserve’s misguided efforts to steer the economy, created the housing bubble that led to the financial crisis (see my book for a more complete explanation). Just as had previously happened with the Great Depression of the ‘30s and the Great Inflation of the ‘70s, the far left failed to acknowledge that the real underlying cause of the Great Financial Crisis was government failure. In fact, they used the crisis to dress up and reintroduce their latent socialism to a public long blinded by misleading educational narratives, thereby enabling the rise of the socialist wing of the Democratic Party.

And so, even as Cuba lies trapped in the abysmal reality of socialism, a young Marxist-inspired revolutionary - blinded by political greed to the realities of his empty promises - follows in Castro’s footsteps as he tries to lead America down a well documented, if conveniently ignored, road to ruin.

Today we face important challenges, but none that are greater than those we have overcome time and again throughout our storied history. Here’s to hoping your day is as bright as America’s future.

- Todd, June 28, 2026

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