If you’re reading this, you already know: democracy depends on an informed, engaged public. Our mission at The American Prospect is to cut through the noise, counter cynicism, and empower people to take action – and that only happens with readers like you.

Right now, we’re in the middle of our fall fundraising campaign, and we need your help to reach our goal. Independent journalism is one of the strongest defenses against authoritarianism, and we need your support to keep it alive. 

This fall, we set an ambitious fundraising goal so we can expand our capacity to report on the ideas, politics, and power dynamics that shape our world – at a time when this work is needed most. Your contribution, no matter the size, directly supports our vital reporting and helps us continue fighting for the informed democracy we all depend on.

Meyerson on TAP

The Rift in American Socialism

Realists (Mamdani, AOC) seek immersion in mass politics; fundamentalists oppose it. 

As Election Day draws near in New York City, entire genres of attack-pieces against Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani have emerged. Today’s New York Times, for instance, contains a long analysis of just how much some of Mamdani’s proposals will cost, though equivalent dollar estimates of how much they will boost the city’s economy are nowhere to be found. The piece sets the cost of universal child care at an annual $6 billion, to be paid for through a 2 percent increase—roughly, from 11 to 13 percent—on that portion of individual yearly incomes that exceed $1 million, and a hike to corporate taxes as well. As to the benefits the city will reap from universal child care—higher labor force participation from parents of toddlers, the savings those parents will realize from not having to pay astronomical child care costs that they can then devote to housing and other necessities, and the long-term benefits to the prospects (including economic prospects) of children who receive educational and other head-starts in their most impressionable years—I’ve barely seen a word. 

But the most prevalent genre of Mamdani hit pieces is the attack on many of the positions taken by the Democratic Socialists of America, to which Mamdani belongs and whose New York members have been racking up record levels of door-knocking, precinct walking, and phone banking in support of his campaign. The stated or implied assumptions in these pieces is that Mamdani will carry out even the most utopian or dystopian platform planks that DSA, or some branch of DSA, has supported. 

One such piece was an op-ed that ran in the print edition of today’s Washington Post, which linked Mamdani’s “possible election” to the most outré and sectarian positions that DSA or some of its subsets have taken. I don’t deny that some of those positions are surely outré; some of them align less with democratic socialism than with authoritarian socialism—the reason why I left the organization last year after nearly half-a-century of membership, much of it in leadership positions.

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

On the Prospect website

Click to Share This Newsletter

The American Prospect, Inc., 1225 I Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC xxxxxx, United States
Copyright (c) 2025 The American Prospect. All rights reserved.

To manage your newsletter preferences, use our preference management page.

To unsubscribe from all American Prospect emails, including newsletters, follow this link to unsubscribe.