Is Socialism as Popular as the Media Think?

David Harsanyi on Aug 22, 2025

"Democratic socialists" have been getting the teenage-idol treatment from giddy reporters and editors at legacy media outlets for years.

Their newest crush, as New Yorkers already know, is jihadi-apologist and Marxist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.

In a 4,500-word cover story headlined "The Meaning of Zohran Mamdani," Time magazine paints a caricature of a well-meaning, authentic and not-really-so-radical go-getter. An "ideologue interested in creative solutions" is how Time puts it.

Sure, Mamdani might support genocidal rhetoric, but the Jewish community will be pleased to learn that he "often talked about the problem of antisemitism and the need for anti-hate-crime funding."

Is Mamdani, as many would have it, a generational talent whose campaign should be mimicked nationally by Democrats?

Yes, the resentful young have convinced themselves they're living in the worst era ever to have befallen man. "People our age have never experienced American prosperity in our adult lives -- which is why so many millennials are embracing democratic socialism," is how Harvard-educated writer Charlotte Alter once put it in a Time cover piece on a previous darling, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

But George Will recently argued that a Mamdani win would be beneficial in reminding the nation of "socialism's many harms." Collectivist ideas always fail, yet they never die.

Sen. Bernie Sanders championed Hugo Chavez in the 2000s -- and even after Venezuelans predictably began foraging for food, Sanders, one of the most popular politicians in the country, was still championing the same system. So it's not as if we don't have the lessons already.

Indeed, we've been having the same debates in perpetuity. The zero-sum fallacy that capitalism is inherently evil and rigged has been hammered into our conscience for centuries. We've convinced millions of Americans that a gaggle of rich people can trigger economic havoc for profit, control the economy to undermine the working class, and push commodity prices higher to reap the profits.

It is a tragedy that Democrats continue to stagger leftward on all fronts to mollify and placate their activist class. And it's not merely economics. The modern "democratic" socialist comes with a slew of positions that not only undermine quality of life but clash with the moral outlook of normies: the pro-terrorist, pro-identitarian rhetoric; the championing of criminality and illegal immigration; the anti-modernity climate hysteria; and the deranged social science quackery on gender -- just for starters.

So I wonder how popular socialism really is.

Right now, there is no real evidence that a socialist outlook plays in most places. It barely plays in cities. If NYC's Democrats didn't split the vote between Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and perhaps found themselves a candidate who hadn't already tarnished themselves with scandal, Mamdani would likely lose.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, former Chicago Mayor and would-be 2028 presidential hopeful Rahm Emanuel pushed back on hard-left ideas, contending Democrats should run on centrist slogans, such as "build, baby, build."

How Democrats plan on doing this without rolling back the climate hysteria that undermines growth and squanders billions on half-baked energy plans is going to be interesting. But he has a point. Centrist Democrats are poised to win entire purple states like Virginia, showing far wider appeal than Mamdani -- but they can barely get any attention.

One of the most popular governors in the country right now is Kentucky's Andy Beshear, a Democrat in a state with a Republican-controlled legislature that Trump won by over a 30-point margin. Why isn't he the way forward for Democrats? Other governors in the top 10 have similar dispositions, including North Carolina's Josh Stein and Pennsylvania's Josh Shapiro, both in states Trump won. All of them take moderated left-of-center positions without a full-throated embrace of anti-market, anti-Western, racialist positions that are in vogue in cities.

No GQ covers for them.

The Democrats have become a party of the rich and the dependent poor -- because the rich can afford socialism and the poor marginally benefit.

Since the market-fueled gentrification of the '90s, cities have become increasingly progressive and correspondingly more expensive and poorly run.

California, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York have seen significant net outward migration since then, while market-driven states with lower regulations and taxes like Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas have seen significant increases in newcomers. This is before New York City installed a socialist mayor.

How popular is socialism? Far too popular. But not as popular as Democrats and the media would have us believe. At least, not yet.

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David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books -- the most recent, "The Rise of Blue Anon," available now. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on X @davidharsanyi.