Organizing as a socialist in the United States in 2025, you’ll find that people don’t hate your ideas. Why would working people reject the appeal of leading better, more comfortable lives? Who doesn’t want more leisure, democracy, ease, and lives we can afford?

The real difficulty is getting people to believe that any of that is possible. Thus, when Zohran Mamdani ran for mayor, many people (including myself) were skeptical that he could win. Once it became clear that he could, and even after he did, many doubted that he could deliver on his affordability platform of free buses, a rent freeze, expanded social housing, and universal free childcare.

Adding to that problem, a chorus of elite pundits insisted that he couldn’t. The childcare plank came in for special derision because of its hefty price tag. Atlantic writer Annie Lowrey called the whole platform “impractical at best”; of free childcare specifically, she wrote that it would require “a mammoth tax hike that Albany would need to approve, which it has shown no interest in doing.”