The phrase “socialism or barbarism,” popularized by the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, is by this point a cliché on parts of the political left. To plenty of liberals, the sentiment is liable to scan as reductive or worse. Politics, they tell us, is in fact defined by endless shades of grey — not some Manichaean struggle between good and bad, left and right, worker and capitalist. There are certainly instances when some version of this is true. People and institutions alike, needless to say, will always be complicated. But there are also formative moments for which the aphorism really does apply in its fullest sense.

To wit: since his ascent in the polls last spring, the coalition opposing Zohran Mamdani has spanned the New York Post to the editorial boards of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. It now also includes the Trump White House and Elon Musk, to say nothing of Bill Ackman, Michael Bloomberg, real estate tycoon Ronald Lauder, and the wider constellation of plutocrats who’ve pumped more than $40 million in outside money into the campaign in addition to the more than $12 million spent by the Cuomo campaign directly.

It has similarly included the official leadership of the Democratic Party, notably Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer (who both hail from New York) and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who — among other things — claimed in a radio interview that the duly elected mayoral nominee for her own party had made “references to global jihad.” It has brought together avowed white supremacists like Stephen Miller and liberal politicians who performatively donned Kente cloths and chanted “Black Lives Matter” in 2020. Needless to say, it has included the likes of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Israel lobby as well.

Call it a “reverse rainbow coalition.” In truth, I doubt there’s ever been such a potent and sweeping metaphor for the moral rot of America’s bipartisan establishment. But — whatever happens tonight — the alternative, represented by Zohran Mamdani’s movement, has successfully stared these forces down with grit and grace. In all my years of immersion in politics, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a joyous example of pluralist universalism in action. From start to finish, Mamdani’s campaign has been both a fiercely disciplined effort in bread-and-butter left populism and a living testament to the boundless cosmopolitanism of New York City and all that makes multiracial democracy so precious and wonderful.

Whatever happens tonight, no one should ever forget that this relentlessly vibrant, positive, and hopeful campaign — in every way a struggle for basic dignity and a soaring affirmation of democracy itself — was ceaselessly denounced by political and media elites from across the spectrum as something sinister, violent, and dangerous.

Sometimes it really is socialism or barbarism.