Democratic Socialists Aren’t Taking Over America

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty. June 24, 2026, 4:55 PM ET Share Save Candidates endorsed by New York City’s democratic-socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, swept the city’s primary elections yesterday, provoking alarm in both conservative and centrist circles over the future of the Democratic Party. The right-wing New York Post dubbed the winners, Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, the “hateful slate.” The Free Press quoted a supporter of one of the defeated candidates warning that it “doesn’t feel safe to be Jewish anymore,” notwithstanding the fact that one of those winners, Lander, is Jewish and a self-described liberal Zionist. New York Attorney General Letitia James told CNN , “All of us are a little frustrated with the Democratic Party. But you don’t blow it up. That’s what MAGA has done.”