Far left is the new face of the Democratic Party

If you think America doesn’t permit assisted suicide, you haven’t been watching the New York mayoral election. The city is deliberately killing itself.

The country’s largest city, its financial and media capital, had a choice among three truly dreadful candidates: a deeply-tarnished former governor, a Republican who runs in every election except Homecoming Queen and had no chance of winning this one (but refused to withdraw), and a young socialist with a winning smile, dreamy programs, Islamist allies, and zero administrative experience. Predictably, New York voters chose the absolute worst. Zohran Mamdani won handily.

Now, they’ll have to live with Mamdani’s socialist programs, which fail everywhere and break the bank in the process. The city’s budget is already underwater, drowning in red ink. Mamdani’s proposed programs – Free! Free! Free! – will pour buckets more red ink onto the already-crimson spreadsheet.

Raising taxes, always the left’s panacea, won’t help. Andrew Cuomo did that as governor (among his many failures), predictably driving hundreds of thousands out of the city and the state. The state’s current governor, Kathy Hochul, has already said she won’t bail out the city. Neither will President Trump. Train wreck ahead.

Having voted for this bloody collision between dreams and reality, New Yorkers have entered the Olympic contest for America’s worst mayor. The competition is tough. Far-left leaders in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland have shown just how badly their policies work, yet none is willing to change.

These mayors are all Democrats, and they aren’t outliers in today’s party. No party leaders have denounced them. Some have openly supported them and will be saddled with those endorsements in future elections, after the costly programs fail, crime rises, and taxpayers flee to welcoming jurisdictions. Republicans will make sure national Democrats are tagged with those failures.

The Democrats’ move to the left is not confined to one city or state. It’s a broad movement that could threaten the party’s hold on centrist independents. In city after city, Democratic mayors support open borders, sanctuary city status, lax policing, no cash bail, weak punishment for criminals, onerous regulations and heavy taxes on anyone who can pay them. They are politically indebted to teachers unions, who have saddled taxpayers with expensive K-12 schools (almost $40,000 per student in NYC), eliminated competition and trapped families in these failing institutions, unless they move.

Mamdani checks every box on that list and goes even further. He wants to open city-owned grocery stores for the poor. Those never work. He wants to raise the minimum wage. That will kill small businesses and raises prices for those that survive. He wants free bus rides for everyone. He cannot pay for them and has no way to deal with hordes of homeless riders, looking for a warm place to sleep and inject drugs.

Promoting these policies makes Mamdani, like Chicago’s Brandon Johnson and LA’s Karen Bass, a walking billboard with flashing lights proclaiming, “Move to Florida. Move to Nashville or Charlotte. Move your bank to Dallas. Get the hell out.”

Leadership in the Democratic Party has not resisted this dramatic shift to the left. Their embrace sends message to voters in next year’s midterms, and Republicans will amplify it. The message says, “The far left is the new face of the Democratic Party.” Mamdani is now the most prominent face, followed closely by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The éminence grise is Bernie Sanders.

Their airy promises might win votes in deep blue cities and states, but they are losers in the rest of the country. That’s why Democratic Party spokesmen are already rushing to spin a counter-narrative, “We’re a lot more than Zohran Mamdani. Just look at the moderates we elected in Virginia and New Jersey. We’re a big tent.” The party’s success nationally depends on selling that message.

They add that rising Obamacare premiums are the fault of Republicans, not flaws in the program itself. And, of course, they keep repeating, “Orange Man Bad.”

Those messages have gained traction with voters – they helped Democrats win impressive victories on Tuesday – but the messages are entirely negative. They aren’t accompanied by positive, workable policies. That gap becomes obvious when these Democrats are charged with running cities and states. None are thriving, people are leaving, and voters are switching registration.

Democrats also have a problem with their “big tent” message. It’s hard to sell nationally for several reasons. First, Mamdani’s victory in New York City is by far the biggest story of the off-year election. Important as it is to win the governor’s mansions in Virginia and New Jersey, those will soon become local stories. Not so with Mamdani’s victory. It will remain a major national event, partly because New York is the country’s media capital, partly because Republicans will make sure voters consider Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party.

The Republican message will be simple: “Democrat really means Socialist.” If Mamdani’s programs fail, they will become national news, even if mainstream media try their best to hide them.

Second, what Democratic spokesmen sell as “moderate” winners in NJ and Virginia may not sound so moderate to voters outside the Boston-Washington corridor and the West Coast. That political gap has been especially clear on cultural issues, notably transgender women in girls’ locker rooms and sports.

Third, party primaries make it hard for both Democrats and Republicans to renounce the hardline positions favored by their activist base. Those activists dominate primary elections and fund the campaigns. Unless candidates win those primaries, they’ll never make to it to November. And they won’t win the primaries by taking moderate positions and alienating the base.

This hyper-partisan logic locks in candidates to hardline positions and strenuous resistance to the opposing party, not a search for bipartisan compromise in the general election and afterwards. This obdurate resistance is not the responsibility of one party alone. It comes from both, and for the same reasons. If Trump says you are not fully committed to the MAGA agenda, he’ll back a primary opponent.

The result has been a deepening cleavage between the two parties, reinforced, most recently, by gerrymandering. The new districts leave even fewer contested House seats where candidates win by appealing to moderate, independent voters. The winning strategy is to appeal to the base, win the primary, and push for high partisan turnout in the general election, not tack to the center.

Although the Democratic victories Tuesday night were not unexpected, the results are still ominous for Republicans. The results were expected because the party out of power typically wins the “off year” elections and midterms. If that pattern holds next November, Democrats will retake the House and have a shot at winning the Senate. Gerrymandering might make that task a little harder for Democrats, but not much, especially after Tuesday’s vote to increase Democratic districts in California.

The Republicans’ best chance of staving off defeat will be strong economic growth, low unemployment, and moderate inflation (under 3 percent). They will be helped by the massive surge of inward foreign investment, prompted by Trump’s tariffs. Lower interest rates would also help, unless they are accompanied by higher inflation. If the economy turns down, however, the roof will cave in for Republicans.

They can already feel the roof leaking after Tuesday’s results. They do see one silver lining, though. Zohran Mamdani. Republicans will do everything they can to make him the national face of the Democratic Party. They will include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders on the same poster.

It won’t be too hard for Republicans to promote them since Mamdani is a fresh, new face and the Democrats’ energy is clearly on the left. There is no equally-prominent, charismatic Democrat on the center-left to offset them. There is only an older generation, fading away.

Senior Democrats understand the problem. They know the party’s sharp move to the left doesn’t play well outside deep blue cities and states. Their best response is one they are already touting: “We listen to our voters. What they want in New York is different from what they want in Richmond or Atlanta. We hear them. We’re a big tent party.”

The question for voters is whether they think the Democrats’ tent is filled with lion tamers or clowns.