In New York City on Tuesday, candidates who loathe our country and seek to destroy it won key primary elections. Meanwhile, in the rest of the country, global soccer fans attending the World Cup told us repeatedly how awesome our country actually is.I can’t remember being presented with such contrasting views of the United States in the same news cycle. I’m siding with the foreigners visiting our land and enjoying ranch salad dressing — not with the toxic America haters who moved to the Big Apple in the past decade and aim to use it as a political launching pad.I am referring, of course, to the string of victories scored in elections Tuesday by candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America and endorsed by its lodestar, New York City Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani.
These are Darializa Avila Chevalier, who defeated five-term incumbent Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th electoral district, which covers parts of Queens and Brooklyn; Claire Valdez, who won an open seat in New York’s 7th District, also parts of the same two boroughs; and Brad Lander, who won the 10th District in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn by beating incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman by a two-to-one margin.All three will face Republicans now in the general election in November. But with Brooklyn and Manhattan being so deep blue, and Queens only slightly less so, it is hard to see how they can lose.It is the same case with the socialist candidate who won the Democratic primary election for mayor of the nation’s capital last week, Janeese Lewis George, who will now cruise to victory in November in a city that’s never had a Republican elected leader.The DSA has arguably had the best two weeks of its existence and is now completing its takeover of the political structure of a party it dislikes, the Democratic Party, which has not been able to mount a rear-guard defense.How left-wing are these candidates? In the case of Chevalier, it is no exaggeration to say that she wants to dismantle the U.S. and the West. In fact, she is so extreme that it looks at first like cosplay.In 2019, in one of a series of tweets she deleted during her campaign, Chevalier posted, “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me,” followed by a smiley face emoji. This act of derision toward her own country, as abject as it may be, pales in comparison with what else she has said.As a student at Columbia, she was one of the founders of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the coalition of groups that formed a month after the Hamas massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. In other words, this is a group that was created, with foreign influence, just a few days after Israel launched its ground invasion of Gaza, and thus before anyone could claim Israel had gone too far in its own defense.A Croatia fan celebrates a goal at a bar in Boston, Mass, during the World Cup Group L soccer match between England and Croatia, Wednesday, June 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
