Whatever good favor the Democratic Party was able to build during the election cycle might have already been squandered. 

Following Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral race, many on the left and moderates alike celebrated like their team won the Super Bowl, myself included. After years of maligned leadership and heartbreaking losses to Republicans, the Democrats came back to win it all.

That type of thinking should be kosher for a week or two; in the context of today, it’s beneficial to celebrate when moderately good things happen. 

But on the same token, this mentality must be dropped for long-term societal progress. Politics is not a team sport. And previous instances show that simply electing more figures, such as Mamdani, isn’t a viable plan of action.

This brings us back to the squandering of good favor the Democrats recently engaged in. 

After holding out on a spending bill that would’ve doubled the healthcare premiums of millions of Americans, creating the longest government shutdown in history in the process, eight senators on Team Blue caved to the demands of the Republicans and voted for the funding.

I know what you’re all saying: each of those eight senators were moderate, and the quick fix is just ridding them through the primaries. 

While this is a valid counter, it ignores an underlying reality.

John Fetterman, one of the eight and perhaps the most centrist in the Senate today, did not originally hold the views he espouses today. In fact, he ran one of the more progressive campaigns of any candidate during the 2022 election cycle, leading to a victory despite having a stroke months before the election.

But as time has gone on, Fetterman has completely abandoned the platform he ran on. He was one of the first “left-wing grifters” of our time. 

Another example of this is unfolding in real time with Graham Plattner, a “progressive” running in the democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat in Maine. Not only did Plattner do mercenary work for Blackwater, a Private Military Corporation responsible for the Nissour Square Massacre in Iraq, but he was also recently exposed for receiving a nazi tattoo during his service in the Marine Corps.

Simply relying on progressives to win everywhere runs the risk of more figures such as these two rising to office. And the same form of capitulation that has been taking place for decades.

But I know what you’re saying again: these are simply edge cases, and the vast majority of elected progressives have lived up to their end of the bargain.

This is not necessarily true either.  For example, take the two most visible figures in American leftism, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

These individuals have significantly altered the course of American history through their normalization of left-wing politics, doing their part to remove the stigma associated with the word socialism. They’ve convinced millions, including myself, that a better future, one focused on the needs of working-class people, is possible. 

Despite the long-standing impact they’ve made, many of their stances on key issues still fall into the moderate Democrat worldview. They’ve both been inconsistent with their anti-zionism, Sanders is staunchly against open borders and AOC has completely abandoned her fiery antagonism to the Democratic establishment that got her elected in the first place.

Even the current darling of the political world, Zohran Mamdani, has exhibited these tendencies to a certain extent. He’s moderated his stance on the police force; he’s keeping a member of the billionaire Tisch family as police commissioner; he caved on his stance regarding the use of “globalize the intifada.”

In the short term, it’s okay to support these progressive Democrats; they are objectively the best option in America’s current duopoly. 

But one fact must not be left out, and that is the Democratic Party, much like the Republican Party, is and always will be rooted in neoliberal capitalism. It was founded by the same white property owners who formed this country, and will always remain beholden to those interests, one way or another.

The long-term solution to the decreased standard of living and growing fascism in the United States won’t come through our two-party system. 

A true, working-class-formed and working-class-operated alternative is the solution. And while there’s no clear answer to how that party may be created, we must educate in our communities and workplaces to grow the desire.