By Craig J. DeLuz
For more than a decade, the Democratic Party has been fighting a quiet, internal civil war. Last month’s Democratic primary elections in New York proved to be the largest battle in that war to date, revealing something about the party’s direction — and what it means for Black Americans. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an avowed democratic socialist, orchestrated a decisive victory that ousted two sitting congressmen, including Adriano Espaillat, who chaired the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and represented working-class communities. Darializa Avila Chevalier beat Espaillat in the 13th District; Brad Lander swept aside incumbent Dan Goldman in the 10th. Even House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who campaigned against the Mamdani slate, lost.
New York was not an isolated event. In May, Chris Rabb won the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s 3rd District, a deep-blue Philadelphia seat with no serious Republican opposition, all but guaranteeing him a seat in Congress. Days after New York’s results, 29-year-old Melat Kiros ousted 26-year incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado’s 1st District primary, positioning her to become the first Gen Z woman in Congress. Add in state and local wins — Gabriel Sanchez in the Georgia legislature and Bobby Nichols on Tempe, Arizona’s city council, among others — and DSA-backed candidates have now won at least 35 of roughly 150 primaries they’ve contested this cycle, putting the caucus on track to grow from two members of Congress to at least five.
This was not a grassroots uprising of the working poor. It was a coordinated operation by educated, ideologically committed activists who found a weakened party offering little resistance. For Black Americans, the takeover carries particular weight: it’s the triumph of a narrative pushed to Black communities for nearly a century — that capitalism works for others but not for us, and only redistribution and socialism can bring prosperity. They’re offering solutions to problems that wouldn’t exist if their previous solutions had worked.
Who’s behind it
Democratic socialism’s base is mostly educated professionals whose material interests align with government expansion: government workers, non-profit employees, activists whose careers depend on the problems they claim to solve, and young people without accumulated wealth. What unites them isn’t poverty but access to education, political networks, and employment insulated from market competition.
That matters for Blacks because the narrative is both powerful and misleading. Black communities have been taught that capitalism is inherently hostile to Black prosperity. Yet Black Wall Street in Tulsa demonstrated that Black entrepreneurs could build extraordinary wealth under segregation through property ownership and enterprise — dollars circulated within the community 19 times before leaving, creating a self-sustaining economy of remarkable prosperity. History shows Black people can prosper under capitalism. The prevailing narrative insists otherwise. Which claim needs more evidence: the one backed by actual Black millionaires who built actual wealth, or the one asserted by academics who’ve never built anything?
These groups have a direct material stake in government growth. More spending means more jobs for people with their credentials; a community organizer’s income depends on problems persisting, not resolving. They invoke the suffering of the poor while occupying secure, well-credentialed positions themselves — demanding sacrifice while ensuring it falls on someone else.
Why it’s misguided
The socialist pitch confuses identifying a problem with solving it. But what we actually know: free-market capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system in history, and countries with the highest living standards have market economies and rule of law. For Black Americans specifically: between 1940 and 1960, the share of Black families in poverty fell 40 percentage points; a pace never matched before or since, driven by education, migration to opportunity, and business and property ownership, not government programs.
Then came the Great Society. After the 1960s expansion of poverty programs, poverty fell more slowly and dependency rose. The fastest Black economic advancement came through markets and self-reliance; the era of greatest government intervention brought slower progress. Yet the prescription never changes: more government, more intervention.
Socialist policies tend to harm the poor most. Rent controls don’t create affordable housing — they shrink supply, and New York’s controls discourage building, leaving poor people competing for fewer apartments while the connected benefit. Government workers and activists benefit most from expansion — not the poor, and every regulation that bankrupts a small business is a win for larger firms that can afford compliance staff.
The revealing pattern
From Mamdani’s slate in New York to Rabb in Philadelphia to Kiros in Denver, the pattern repeats: educated progressives in upscale areas, insulated from economic consequences, unseating incumbents who represented working and lower-middle-class communities. That tells you who actually wants socialism: not those suffering poverty, but those secure enough to afford the ideology.
The mistake of democratic socialism is assuming the answer to real inequality is more power for government officials. History says otherwise: reducing poverty requires growth, competitive markets, stable property rights, and rule of law. These guarantee nothing, but they’re the only policies that reliably raise living standards.
Here’s the cruel irony: if activists, organizers, and government workers actually solved Black poverty, they’d work themselves out of jobs. So there exists, consciously or not, an incentive to maintain poverty as a permanent condition requiring permanent, credentialed solutions. The poor remain. The activists remain. The government remains, and grows. Meanwhile, Black Wall Street — proof that Black entrepreneurs built extraordinary wealth through capitalism — becomes a footnote instead of a blueprint. That is the pattern worth recognizing, and the part worth rejecting.
Craig J. DeLuz is the author of Uncommon Sense: On the Present State of American Government, and the Return to First Principles. He has more than 30 years of experience in public policy and advocacy, and hosts a daily news and commentary show called “The RUNDOWN.” He can be followed on X at @CraigDeLuz.
