For years, we’ve watched the Democrats drift further and further to the left, but the election of Zohran Mamdani, an avowed Democratic Socialist, as mayor of New York City marked a full-blown lurch. Jersey City, N.J., has a Democratic Socialist in a mayoral runoff, and a radical candidate for mayor of Athens, Ga., featured a member of the Democratic Socialists of America as a speaker at his campaign launch.
Socialism is in the air on the left, but are all the Democrats on board? Not so fast.
Philip Levine, the former mayor of Miami Beach and a former candidate for governor of Florida, is one of those Democrats who sees the danger of Democratic Socialism, and he’s sounding a warning. He wrote an op-ed in the Miami Herald advocating for what he calls “Democratic capitalism.”
Levine contrasts two scenes from Wednesday, Nov. 5, the day after Mamdani won the election. One was New York City, where New Yorkers reacted to the election of a literal socialist. The other was Miami, where a sold-out crowd attended what Levine called “a high-octane pep rally for the American Dream.”
Never mind that Miami’s mayor is a Republican or that Florida is remarkably red. Levine thinks that the scene in Miami is one that Democrats ought to get behind.
He writes:
One city was watching a democratic socialist sunrise, the other was hosting a revival tent for capitalism. But for my fellow Democrats, it signaled something deeper: A time for choosing.
Do we want to side with the dreamers building businesses in Miami, or the activists trying to bulldoze them in New York?
Do we want to be the party of prosperity, or the party that punishes it?
Those should be easy questions to answer, but Democrats are frozen — including in Florida.
Levine points out that Florida was once a Democratic bastion — he says it was “blue, although, to be fair, when Dems ruled the Sunshine State, they were much more conservative Democrats. As the Democrats went further left, Florida went further right.
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“Whether it is entirely because of Republican policies or not, the reality is that Florida, and Miami in particular, have now become what New York City used to be — the capital of capitalism and the epicenter of the American Dream,” Levine writes.
But when he states what makes Florida so attractive to business, he highlights Republican — or at least conservative — initiatives: “No state income tax. Sensible regulations. Streets that feel safe. Schools that still teach citizenship rather than cynicism. And a government that answers its phone instead of sending you a link to a form.”
Levine admits that today’s Democrats have abandoned anything that would ensure prosperity for individuals and families. He proposes an alternative that he calls “Democratic capitalism”:
In order for Democrats to win again in Florida and nationwide, they can’t do what Mamdani is doing in New York. They need to embrace free enterprise and fair enterprise. They need to become a party that enables success for all, not that promises transfers from rich to poor.
They need to develop and preach democratic capitalism: a message that rewards innovation, celebrates hard work and widens the ladder so more people can climb it. A message that balances fairness with freedom, equity with excellence, and compassion with common sense.
Bless his heart. Levine thinks Democrats could embrace capitalism again. Not with this generation of woke doctrinaires. He might as well go ahead and join the Republican Party if he wants to be part of a party that promotes free enterprise.
If you’ve been watching the Democrats sprint left like they’re late for a Bernie Sanders book signing, you’re not alone. New York just elected an actual Democratic Socialist as mayor, Jersey City’s flirting with one, and Athens, Ga., tried to get in on the act with a campaign launch that looked like a DSA chapter meeting.
But here’s the twist: one Democrat — Philip Levine of Miami Beach — is standing on the shoreline waving his arms and hollering, “Y’all have lost your minds.” Levine is warning his party that if they don’t rediscover capitalism, they’re headed straight for the rocks.
And bless his heart, he actually thinks today’s Democrats might listen.
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