Socialism

The DSA and the Democrats' Retreat Into Economic Fantasyland

The party's new crop of Mamdani-backed socialists are just the latest sign of a long slide into economic radicalism. 

Peter Suderman | 6.25.2026 10:00 AM

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Of the trio of candidates who swept to victory in New York this week with the backing of Mayor Zohran Mamdani—all of whom are or have been associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—none has generated more attention than Darializa Avila Chevalier.

Chevalier, who has never held office before, is a 32-year-old community organizer who this week won a Democratic primary in New York against incumbent Adriano Espaillat. Like many DSA-affiliated up-and-comers, Chevalier has a long history of incendiary social media posts. As Reason's Liz Wolfe noted yesterday, she's called former President Joe Biden a "rapist" and a "war criminal." She once posted "fuck Kamala Harris." Remember, she just won a Democratic primary. 

She also described the United States as a "fucking disgrace," though it's apparently not quite so disgraceful that she doesn't want to take the title and salary of U.S. congressional representative. As center-left writer Jeff Maurer wrote, it will be extraordinarily easy for Republicans to portray her as a radical, anti-America lunatic "because she is a radical, anti-America lunatic." 

But Chevalier is not just an unusually unhinged, radically anti-American social media leftist; she's also a committed economic socialist who supports creating a four-day, 32-hour work week with no pay reduction, free government-sponsored childcare, free pre-kindergarten, Medicare for All, and a federal rent control system, presumably because rent regulations have worked so well in New York. Somewhat confusingly, she also supports both a universal basic income and a federal jobs guarantee, which raises the question: Why would you need a federally guaranteed job if you have a federally guaranteed income? 

In any case, after reading several academic studies, conversing with some economists and pollsters, and trying to assess her policy agenda neutrally, I have concluded that she is, in technical terms, cuckoo bananas. 

OK, OK, you got me. I didn't actually do all that. But her policy agenda is so wildly fanciful, so disconnected with economic reality, and so out of touch with American politics that I hardly needed to. It's self-evidently absurd. The same........

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