Alan Jones
The June primary elections saw several Democratic Socialist and left populist candidates win sweeping victories in the Democratic primaries and created a shakeup across the political spectrum in the USA. The epicenter of the victory was in New York City with the election of 9 out of 10 Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates. They had been endorsed by the new popular democratic socialist mayor of NYC Zohran Mamdani. The result confirms that the election of Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist and member of DSA last November was not an accident but reflects a deep-going process of political developments that have the potential to change the political map of the US.
Several of the pro-capitalist media had speculated that Mamdani’s electoral victory and historic upset against the Democratic Party conservative political machine was due to his charm and all would soon be “under control.” Mamdani ran an impressive grass roots campaign mobilizing almost 100,000 volunteers around a program to win free childcare for all, rent control and a mass expansion of affordable social housing, free, high-quality mass transit, and taxing the rich to pay for it all which proved immensely popular.
Primary elections
The June 23rd primary results in NYC went beyond all expectations starting with the defeat of the Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso by long-standing DSA and Auto Workers Union (Region 9A) activist Claire Valdez who won 56% of the votes. Reynoso was the candidate handpicked by retiring liberal icon Nydia Velasquez and most important city unions, non-profits and the establishment for the Democratic congressional primary. This was a huge blow to the traditional “progressive” corporate Democratic machines ruling New York City, at the hands of an impressive volunteer base of union & DSA members, activists, volunteers and the endorsement of mayor Mamdani.
But this was only the start of the shakeup that has rattled the corporate liberal establishment. In the Bronx – Upper Manhattan congressional primary a left wing political newcomer and DSA member Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated Congressman Adriano Espalliat, a liberal establishment power broker and current chair of the congressional Hispanic Caucus. Espalliat had relied on his incumbent establishment support as well as ample financing by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He had actively ignored the pro-Gaza movement that erupted in NYC. Chevalier, who was not taken seriously by the incumbent, ran an unapologetic left-wing campaign for Palestinian rights and against Trump’s war in Iran, and won by 2,000 votes. A third victory against the Democratic Party establishment was won by a left liberal -and Mamdani supporter- Brad Ladner against another AIPAC-funded incumbent Congressman, Dan Goldman.
The three congressional primary victories were part of the victories of another six DSA members winning in primaries for the NY State Assembly and NY State Senate. Two more DSA-backed candidates won in Syracuse and Buffalo in the state of New York.
The bad news for the Democratic Party corporate establishment did not end in NY however. In Colorado, a long-standing congresswoman funded by AIPAC and corporate money also lost to a Democratic Socialist candidate in the primary election on June 30th. Serious anxiety has gripped the incumbent mayor of Los Angeles Karen Bass who is facing a tough re-election campaign against an insurgent Democratic Socialist candidate.
Across the country, populist, anti-corporate and DSA candidates have emerged as a new force. This can be seen in a heavily-contested Michigan primary race for the US Senate and the mayoral campaign in Washington DC as well as the last two congressional primaries in California and Maine where populist candidates handily defeated incumbents who were supported by big business and the Democratic corporate establishment.
Reflecting the anxiety of the establishment Democrat congressman Tom Suozzi of Long Island said in an interview to the Wall Street Journal: “The left, the DSA, and the Right, the MAGA movement, they are all very well organized and those of us who oppose those policies are talking to each other at cocktail parties and wringing our hands…I agree that people’s economic anxiety is real and we have to address it – I just happen to disagree with their solutions.”
The Wall Street Journal ran a major article with the headline “Democratic Socialists Are On the Rise – What is their agenda and who are their leaders” and an opinion piece which warned that “The Socialist Threat is Real” drawing the attention of the corporate establishment to the recent developments. Meanwhile, the Trump regime reacted to the election results with hysterical Cold War denunciations: “The Communists are finally making their move!” wrote Trump in Truth Social, “I have been waiting and preparing for this for a long time.” Trump said that the elections were the “greatest threat to our country since its founding 250 years ago.”
The attacks from Trump and the Republicans reflect the fact that they are bracing for a potentially catastrophic mid-term election in November with the president’s approval ratings at record lows due to persistent concerns about the cost of living among millions of working class and middle class families. Trump and MAGA are looking to mobilize the right-wing base among religious conservatives with hysterical attacks about an imaginary “communist takeover”.
A crisis of the Democratic Party establishment
In an insightful article in Labor Politics Eric Blanc commented that the victories of the DSA and left populist candidates has revealed that there is an important shift among young and working class voters who “no longer trust a Democratic establishment (who have shown themselves) unable or unwilling to seriously challenge Trump and an oligarchic status quo. Yet most union leaders haven’t yet followed their lead. And it’s a sign of serious internal decay that these organizations, so powerful on paper, can now deliver so little in the way of actual votes. Far too often, union members have become disconnected from our organizations.”
Blanc correctly exposes the fact that the largest and best-known NYC labor unions (32BJ & 1199 SEIU, public sector AFSCME DC 37, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, the United Federation of Teachers) have chosen time and again to support Democratic establishment pro-corporate candidates in important races: “We saw this same movie play out in early 2025, when most of the city’s union leadership lined up behind Andrew Cuomo — a serial harasser they’d demanded resign four years earlier — and watched Mamdani beat him anyway. Faced with an era of crisis and anger at the status quo, voters of all backgrounds are increasingly tired of old-guard politics, particularly in its corporate Democratic variety. It’s hard to take seriously the shallow identity-based appeals of establishment leaders like Espaillat when they are all too eager to cash donor checks from the real estate interests responsible for pushing working-class communities of color out of the city.”
This crisis is magnified nationally where many labor unions in the US had a hard time convincing their members to vote against Trump and support the corporate Democrats in the 2024 presidential elections. The election results in NYC reveal that the big labor unions and traditional political machines are in a serious crisis as the political landscape in NYC and big cities (where the Democrats tend to dominate nationally) has continued to shift to the left with large sections of young people, minorities and the working class demanding a change for the better in living standards. But while mayor Zohran Mamdani remains enormously popular and the 15,000-strong NYC DSA has shown the capacity to mobilize thousands of door-knocking campaigners and volunteers, Eric Blanc also points out the painful truth that the unions and socialist movement are suffering from a lack of roots in the working class after decades of neoliberal union busting and the destruction of the social fabric of working class communities.
Democratic socialist ideas are very popular and should be used as a platform by DSA and union activists, community organizations and the left in order to deepen and expand socialist roots and to rebuild the labor movement in workplaces and working-class neighborhoods. The electoral victories of DSA and left candidates should go hand in hand with mass-grassroots organizing among working people and especially young black and Latino New Yorkers. The election results are a tremendous opportunity for socialist union oppositions to actively organize to remove and replace the current outdated, conservative and bureaucratic “union leaders” who continue to support the establishment status quo that benefits the capitalist oligarchy against the interests of their members.
It is vital that activists realise how important these new electoral and social trends are for the rebuilding of a mass fighting socialist and labor movement in the US. There are those on the socialist left who directly or indirectly prefer to stand aside and limit themselves to general propaganda criticisms but are unable to translate marxist ideas into concrete proposals that can help the movement succeed. Marxism is not a dogma but a “guide to action” for the movement. At the same time, it is important to avoid the dangers of opportunism (a trend currently dominant in DSA) which largely reduces the role of socialists into simply cheerleading the broader movements or restricts itself to simple electoral campaigns. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels pointed out that (the Communists) “fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.”
The Democratic party establishment and the capitalist class (anchored in real estate and financial oligarchy of Wall Street and the banks) have suffered blows because their system continues to deliver a disaster for the living standards of working people both in NYC and nationally. It is also clear that they are already preparing a new offensive to try to attack, discredit or co-opt the new democratic socialist upsurge, mobilizing hundreds of millions in their media propaganda. The socialist left needs to also build growing institutions of resistance that can prevent the dangers of disillusionment, fight for working people’s needs on wages, housing, education and social justice and build a working class democratic socialist alternative to capitalism
Building a mass socialist movement
During Zohran’s pioneering democratic socialist election last year a number of socialists who were active supporters and campaigners raised the idea that Mamdani could and should transform his huge Get Out The Vote volunteers and canvassers (who reached almost 100,000 at the height of the campaign) into an ongoing organized movement after the election. With tens of thousands of New Yorkers actively organizing our neighbors and co-workers to demand the City Council and the Governor support Zohran’s core policies the democratic machine could be pushed back. Earlier in the year, Eric Blanc also raised the idea that mayor Mamdani should organize his mass volunteer base to collect one million signatures from their co-workers and neighbors for a petition to support his program and to ensure that this mobilized layer remains active in politics.
Such an approach remains valid for the current situations; it would allow the socialist movement to engage its large electoral base of support for the radical program to get organized and take steps towards building the mass pressure that will be needed to win the main demands of the campaign. This would allow NYC-DSA (which currently has about 15,000 paper members in a city of 9 million) to recruit thousands of people involved in the democratic socialist electoral campaigns. To win the key demands of Zohran’s campaign and the other democratic socialist candidates will require building a mass movement including tens of thousands who are not yet socialists or members of DSA. By organizing and activating working people on a wider scale, socialists can help the most serious working-class fighters draw socialist conclusions.
It is crucial that DSA, and the new democratic socialist leaders prepare the wider working class for the fierce opposition NYC billionaires and establishment forces would mount against any reforms that limit their profits and dominance. So far, Zohran Mamadani, -despite encountering fierce resistance from the Democratic establishment to tax the rich etc – has not called for his 100,000 volunteers on the need to stay organized beyond the elections, to join DSA, and build an actual ongoing mass movement in the city.
Without systematically preparing a mass movement base – politically and organizationally – for the inevitable confrontations with the entrenched establishment in City Council, the governor, and Wall Street, the democratic socialist administration risks disarming its own supporters and missing important opportunities.
At this stage, socialists running in the Democratic Party New York primaries is a correct electoral tactic as there is no serious alternative left electoral vehicle. In the past, the Socialist Party and the Communist Party were able to make important electoral and movement gains running as independents which is an important lesson for us today.
But if the socialist project remains buried inside the corporate-controlled political machinery of the Democratic Party – one of the two main parties of US capitalism and imperialism-it faces the danger of pressure to water down the program, to accommodate with “progressive” capitalists, and to subordinate its modest agenda of reforms to the broader goal of “defeating the right,” which inevitably means abandoning an anticapitalist challenge to the system.
Corporate Democrats are not “our Party”
In the past, as a state representative and DSA delegate, Zohran Mamdani supported the idea that “our candidates should all explicitly, publicly, and prominently identify as ‘democratic socialists,’ including on their literature and mailings” and “will downplay their identification as a Democrat as much as possible” pointing in the direction of political independence from the Democratic Party. While that resolution was defeated at the 2022 Convention, it is still very important that the new Democratic Socialists elected do not appear to present the Democrats as “our party.” After his election, Zohran increasingly echoes the mistaken strategic approach of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) and Bernie Sanders who frame their campaigns as a fight to transform the Democrats from a party of big business into a party of working people.
While recognizing that compromises are part of the picture in the current political environment, a principled socialist strategy for the new socialists getting elected is to use their office as a platform to organize the emergent mass electoral base into a politically independent fighting force. This means consistently using speeches, political rallies, conferences, and mass protest actions, including civil disobedience, to focus on raising the level of consciousness and organization of working people. It means making it clear that electing socialists cannot deliver change alone; only a mass movement of organized tenants, workers, unions, socialists and community activists can challenge and defeat the enormous residual political power of the billionaire class and force the establishment to concede the demands working people deserve for affordable social housing, free high quality transit, free childcare for all and taxing the rich and big business. The question is not about if we fight for reforms, but how we fight for them and with what ultimate goal.
The multiple recent democratic socialist and populist victories that followed the Mamdani election are a testament to the power of a class-struggle message that unites working people and have shaken the Democratic party establishment and the ruling class. Despite weaknesses, the socialist electoral victories should be celebrated by socialists and working people across the globe and linked to a mass national solidarity campaign to prepare for the looming fights against Wall Street, the billionaire oligarchs, and the real estate barons in NYC, but also the reactionary Trump administration, and their enablers, the corporate Democrats.
To win the modest reforms Zohran Mamdani and the democratic socialists campaigned on will require confronting a capitalist class that has a political interest in seeing any independent working-class initiative be co-opted, suffocated or crushed before it leads to greater challenges to their power. The preparations for this fight, both political and practical, must be a central task for marxists and the socialist movement.
In this context, the role of socialists and marxists in DSA is not to act as cheerleaders, nor as sectarian critics from the sidelines but to be the most effective and dedicated fighters in the struggle for the reforms, as well as the most consistent advocates for a strategy of mass mobilization and working-class political independence.
We have seen the historic mass events that challenged and defeated Trump and ICE in Minneapolis this year and the multiple millions-strong No Kings protests across the country expressing the mass desire to defeat Trump’s policies of racism, militarism, austerity and attacks on democratic rights. Sixteen years after Occupy Wall Street erupted in NYC and nationally and ignited a decade-long global revolt, there is every reason to be optimistic and look forward to the reemergence of mass struggle and socialist ideas in the US.
