Two incumbent Democratic members of Congress in New York were defeated in Tuesday’s primaries by Mamdani-backed challengers running on platforms that include abolishing ICE, nationalizing major corporations, eliminating private health insurance, and in the case of Darisa Ayala-Chevalier, who defeated Latino Caucus chair Adriano Espaillat, opposing all deportation categorically including of immigrants convicted of violent crimes. Chevalier argued in a pre-election debate that deporting a convicted criminal who entered the country illegally constitutes double jeopardy based on where someone was born and that equality demands identical treatment regardless of citizenship status. Brad Lander, who defeated Dan Goldman in another district, ran on a platform of abolishing ICE, fighting what he called Trump’s fascism, and standing against billionaires, crypto bros, and AI oligarchs.
Stephen Moore, economist and author of The Trump Economic Miracle, joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to assess what these results mean for the Democratic Party and the country.
Moore said the results are genuinely frightening and represent a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party by radical socialists. He compiled a list of policy positions now being advanced by the winning faction: abolishing the United States Senate on the grounds that small states should not have equal representation, defunding the Pentagon entirely rather than merely trimming its budget, offering universal amnesty for all immigration with no legal distinction between legal and illegal entry, providing free public transportation and free housing for all, transferring ownership of major corporations to the public sector, and cutting police budgets annually to zero. He said these are not fringe positions being whispered in academic seminars but the explicit platforms of candidates who are winning Democratic primaries across the country.
He said the pattern is now visible in multiple major American cities simultaneously. New York City, Seattle, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and Chicago are all governed or about to be governed by radical leftists whose policies are destroying the cities they control. He said Washington DC, where he lives, just elected what he described as a Brandon Johnson equivalent as mayor, and his own property taxes in Montgomery County, Maryland, one of the most politically progressive jurisdictions in the country, have become so punishing that he and his wife may have to leave a home they love despite being financially comfortable.
Moore made a prediction he acknowledged would have been laughable three months ago: if the Democratic presidential nomination were decided today through primaries, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be the nominee. He said she will clearly be one of the top three contenders for 2028 and could win, given the revolutionary momentum now propelling the party’s leftward lurch. He said the Democratic Party that Bill Clinton led, with its emphasis on balanced budgets and pragmatic centrism, would laugh Clinton out of the room today.
He expressed particular alarm at the demographic composition of the victory celebrations, noting that the crowds at these Marxist candidates’ election night parties consisted substantially of young suburban white voters, not merely a narrow radical fringe turning out in low-participation primaries. He said the audience for this revolutionary politics is more complicated and potentially broader than people on the right want to believe, and traced much of it to an education system that is producing graduates, particularly from elite universities like Columbia where Chevalier was educated, who have been thoroughly radicalized.
His most pointed criticism was directed at the absence of any meaningful Democratic opposition to the takeover. He asked where the rational Democrats are who should be rising up against what he called lunatics and deranged individuals. He said Rahm Emanuel is essentially the only national Democrat willing to push back publicly, which he described as an indication of how dire the situation has become when Rahm Emanuel represents the voice of reason in his own party.
On a more positive note, Moore said a property tax revolt that began in Florida under Ron DeSantis is now spreading to approximately ten states, all Republican-governed, that are discussing not merely reducing but potentially eliminating property taxes entirely. He noted Florida has already gone roughly halfway toward that goal while simultaneously operating without a state income tax and still providing better services than states like Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York that impose sky-high income taxes. He said the momentum for property tax relief is driven by the same economic pressure he feels personally: assessments and rates climbing simultaneously to the point that middle-class and even financially comfortable homeowners are being pushed out of homes they have lived in for years.