Blue-State Socialism: You Wanted It, Now You Get It … Good And Hard
Faced with the failure of their policies, far-left and outright socialist Democrats in blue-state America are doubling down. Whether it’s New York, California or midwestern leftist havens Minnesota and Illinois, the socialist model will bring only more failure and misery to its citizens. And, because they voted for it, they’ll get what they deserve.
We’re not gloating here. The Democratic Party was once a serious political group that based its popularity on appealing to centrist blue-collar working class Americans and moderate urban liberals. The extreme left was largely, though not entirely, marginalized.
Today, that’s sadly no longer true. Take California.
Los Angeles is run by Mayor Karen Bass, an unabashed follower of deceased Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, while California governor and presidential-wannabe Gavin Newsom and the California state legislature are both far left.
They’ve distinguished themselves by their inept response to last winter’s wildfires and this summer’s riots, which required federal intervention in the form of National Guard troops.
Under its leftist leadership, California is losing hundreds of thousands of its most productive citizens, not to mention hundreds of its most innovative firms. All are fed up with the state’s insane DEI culture, heavy regulations, and super-high taxes.
But the real topic du jour is in New York City, The Democratic mayoral primary just delivered a radical democratic socialist, the global-intifada supporting Zohran Mamdani as the desired candidate. It wasn’t as if New Yorkers didn’t have a choice: Mamdani handily defeated the seasoned, centrist alternative, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in what Politico called a “stunning primary.”
Here’s how The Spectator described it: “Under Zohran’s New York, we’re looking at government-owned grocery stores, free public transit and permanent political handcuffs on the NYPD. Prostitution? He’s on record supporting full decriminalization. At this point, it wouldn’t be surprising if the next proposal is for city-run brothels.”
Then there are higher taxes (on the rich) and stiff rent controls on more than a million units in the city.
OK, but how bad is Mamdani, really? The leading newspaper in Chicago, another disastrously run city with a leftist government in a state headed by a trust-fund billionaire extremist, is warning New York about what it’s in for: “A familiar dilemma: a moderate, business-friendly Democrat versus a democratic socialist. New Yorkers, take it from Chicago — we’ve seen this movie before, and the ending isn’t pretty.”
The New York Post adds that Mamdani’s proposed taxes on “the rich” will make the city’s business exodus grow. The paper notes that “millionaires already pay 41% of the state’s income taxes, and the city in particular is dependent on the jobs brought by the big corporations Mamdani wants to tax.”
As we noted this week in “There Is No Such Thing As A Free Grocery Store,” Mamdani wants to have government-run supermarkets, in large part because he says private grocers price gouge consumers. This is a vicious, and ignorant, economic myth: supermarkets make a razor-thin profit margin of 2.2%, 1.6% after taxes.
“Food deserts” happen when police are defunded and shoplifters are no longer prosecuted by the law, making it impossible for stores to earn profits. Mamdani will soon be running a bunch of money-losing supermarkets, draining millions of dollars tax revenue from the city’s coffers to cover their losses.
In case you have doubts, here’s Mamdani’s own to-do list:
Memo to New York businesses and people fleeing expropriative taxes: There’s still plenty of room in Florida, Texas and other business-friendly states. Move while you can.
Because there’s a simple equation for all this: More businesses leaving equals fewer jobs and lower pay. Just like Los Angeles and Chicago and a range of other blue zones, New York is trading prosperity for decay, decline and disaster as its tax revenues shrivel, its grandiose plans collapse, and even leftist New Yorkers shriek, “Enough!”
A broader question is what does this all mean for the Democratic Party? It is already hemorrhaging young male and minority voters, tired of the Dems’ failed ideas and their racial condescension.
While New York might go socialist, it will be a disaster. Guaranteed. Mamdani’s list above is composed of proposals that have never worked anywhere they’ve been tried.
But, as we’ve asked before, what of the future for the Democratic Party?
It too will be a disaster, its strength increasingly limited to big Eastern and Western coastal enclaves (see map above), and a handful of Midwestern states now largely run by leftists in centrists’ clothing. Yes, we’re looking at you, Minnesota governor and failed vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, another progressive presidential wannabe.
As more and more Americans remove their children from failing Democrat-union and progressive-run woke schools and universities, and the aging Baby-Boomer “Big Chill” cohort of lefties shrink as a share of the voting public, the kindling for the Democrats’ eventual takeover disappears.
Without America-hating and self-loathing young supporters and aging ’60s-era voters to feed on, the Democrats are in very big trouble. They’ll have to rely on illegal votes and help from China.
The Blue States face an especially severe demographic meltdown, especially with their fanatical focus on abortion as an issue, even as U.S. fertility reaches record lows. That means the future for the Democrats looks grim indeed, unless they radically change direction (and, no, that doesn’t mean admit more illegals and allow them to vote).
And what, we ask, are the chances of that?
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