The Democrats’ phoney populism is fooling no one

It’s no secret that the Democrats have long been losing the support of the working class to Donald Trump and the Republicans. To counter Trump’s populist appeal, voices within the Democrats say they need to offer their own version – namely, an ‘economic populism’ aimed at working people.

Those Democrats are all pointing to Zohran Mamdani’s victory earlier this month in the New York City mayoral primary – a win that puts him in prime position to become the next mayor in November’s election. Mamdani’s campaign brought economics to the forefront, prioritising issues around affordability. He offered radical-sounding answers to cost-of-living concerns, including free bus rides, rent controls, childcare and government-run grocery stores. At the same time, he sought to downplay his woke cultural views on race, gender and Israel.

Will Mamdani’s brand of economic populism succeed in bringing back the working class to the Democrats? In a word, no. For one thing, Mamdani, who claimed to speak for poor and working-class New Yorkers, failed to win much support from those very voters in his primary. Mamdani’s opponent, former governor of New York state Andrew Cuomo, beat him by 19 points with those earning under $50,000 annually. Cuomo also won over NYC’s predominantly black neighbourhoods. In contrast, Mamdani’s support was strongest among higher earners and those with a university degree, especially the white millennials of Brooklyn and Queens. Far from reversing Trump’s gains among workers, Mamdani reinforced the Democrats’ position as the party of the university-educated elite.

There are two main reasons why the Democrats’ push on economic populism won’t work. One, because their version of economic ‘populism’ isn’t actually popular with workers. Two, because a focus on economics won’t overcome the Democrats’ association with the woke cultural views that most Americans reject.

Mamdani’s ‘socialist’ economic policies essentially amount to welfarism and redistribution: offering more generous state-provided resources, to be paid for by higher taxes on the wealthy. Apparently, he believes the wealthy are incapable of moving out of New York, and so will provide an endless source of tax revenue.

Mamdani has an upper-class person’s understanding of what workers want. While ‘free stuff’ might have some appeal, working-class Americans have traditionally thought of welfare as something for the poor and unemployed, not for hard-working people like themselves. As the old saying goes, these voters want a hand up, not a handout. They want good jobs, but also autonomy, so they do not have to depend on the state. The American Dream is not ‘I hope to get by on state freebies’. For many American workers, it’s owning a home, driving their own car or truck, and securing even greater opportunities for their children.

When hardscrabble New Yorkers hear something is ‘free’, they immediately know there’s a catch. So it is with many of Mamdani’s proposals. They know from experience that when the government runs something, there’s a good chance the service will be sub-standard – whether it’s the Department of Motor Vehicles or one of Mamdani’s grocery stores. Freezes on rent sound great, but the freezes only apply to those who already have rent-stabilised apartments. Nor will they address the lack of new housing supply, which is the real cause of the high rents. Riding a bus for free won’t really be a benefit if buses become hangouts for the homeless, as they have in other cities that have adopted this idea.

Moreover, this strategy rests on the fantasy that voters will be so mesmerised by the promise of free stuff that they will overlook the Democrats’ unpopular political and cultural views. Voters’ preference for Trump over Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election was influenced as much by issues like immigration, crime and trans ideology as it was the economy and inflation. These so-called culture-war issues are not peripheral – they affect voters’ lives just as much as jobs and pay. To rephrase James Carville’s famous saying, ‘It’s the culture, stupid’.

Consider Mamdani’s views on crime. Crime in the streets and subways of New York is a major problem for ordinary people. Although he says he no longer calls for ‘defunding the police’, he has proposed an equally hare-brained scheme instead: creating a new bureaucracy of social workers, the Department of Community Safety, who will be sent to crime-ridden neighbourhoods to ‘prevent violence before it happens’. Lower-income workers, who are more likely to be the victims of crime, tend to oppose such elite posturing. It was no surprise that voters who rated crime as a top issue voted for Cuomo, not Mamdani.

Or consider Mamdani’s full support for transgender treatments for young people. He proposes spending $65million in taxpayer funds on surgeries and drugs for people who identify as trans, including minors. He also promises to investigate private medical institutions that deny transgender treatments to young people. The Democrats’ trans zealotry is no trivial matter for working-class families. Most Americans do not want their daughters to have to compete against boys in sports. They do not want their kids to be indoctrinated in gender ideology while at school. And nor do they want their kids undergoing extreme, irreversible and unnecessary procedures. Sorry Zohran, but offering free bus rides isn’t going to win over parents who are afraid you’re trying to trans their kids.

Democrats may try to downplay or hide their cultural views, but people can see right through that. Especially in the case of Mamdani, who is like a Republican caricature of a woke Democrat. With his refusal to condemn calls to ‘globalise the intifada’, he appears as if he has just stepped away from a Columbia University occupation. And when he proposes to raise property taxes on ‘richer and whiter neighbourhoods’, Mamdani reminds us how divisive and vindictive the Democrats’ racial politics can be.

The Democrats’ bleeding of working-class support is a far more fundamental problem than the party cares to admit. Workers’ shift to Trump and the Republicans reflects a deeper issue – that workers believe the Democrats are hostile towards them and their way of life. Worse, many believe that Democrats look down on the working class as dumb and bigoted. It is telling that when Democrats criticise the elite, they attack ‘billionaires’. But when workers criticise the elite, it is the upper-middle class of professionals, bureaucrats and others in Democrat-controlled institutions who they have in mind.

It will take great self-reflection and a philosophical u-turn for the Democrats to win back working-class trust. An agenda of economic welfarism and woke politics, like Mamdani’s, will only drive the party further away from workers. Mamdani may have enough support in New York City, where millennial hipsters are overrepresented. But he and his ilk are not the answer to the Democrats’ troubles across the country.

Sean Collins is a writer based in New York. Visit his blog, The American Situation.