It’s moving ever closer to Party’s grass roots. The face of that core is Progressive-Democratic Party New York City Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and his parallel membership in Democratic Socialists of America. DSA’s core position is
“dismantle and move beyond” America’s capitalist society and create a “wholesale socialist transformation of our national and global economy.”
DSA’s platform is specific, too, including such nakedly socialist things as these:
- city-run grocery stores
- free bus rides
- increased public funding for hormone therapy and surgery for transgender people
- rent freeze, not just rent control
- ending “all misdemeanor offenses”
It’s not just Mamdani, either. The Progressive-Democratic Party selected its own socialist candidate for mayor of Minneapolis, Omar Fateh, who is a carbon copy of Mamdani. It’s true enough that Party then unendorsed (leaving him on the ballot) Fateh, but only on a technicality regarding their convention nominating process and only in response to some opprobrium. But here, Party spoke their truth in selecting Fateh and now only is covering its political behind.
In the end, the two, these most public two, are simply concretizing prior Party commitments: then-Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s brag just prior to his first election that he was just “days away from fundamentally transforming” our nation, and then-Progressive-Democratic Party President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address saying that he intended to “fundamentally change” our nation’s economy.
This is Party initially acting at the national level and now trying to move down into our cities.