Socialists never tire of insisting that they work for the working class, yet their policies and rhetoric increasingly reveal a movement that cannot even define the people it claims to champion.
According to RedState, that disconnect was on full display when New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the privileged son of affluent parents and a prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), struggled to articulate what working class actually means during an interview with New York Times journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro. Garcia-Navarro pressed Mamdani on whether he and the DSA have a clear definition of the working class, given that they constantly invoke the term while campaigning and legislating in its name. The exchange quickly exposed the intellectual fuzziness behind the slogan.
I think if you have to work to pay your bills, I think that that is one definition of being a part of the working class, Mamdani replied, offering a description so broad it would encompass virtually everyone with a job, from janitors to corporate attorneys. Even Garcia-Navarro, hardly a conservative firebrand, appeared taken aback by the vagueness, noting that his answer did not quite ring true to her.
When the reporter pressed further, asking whether someone earning $250,000 a year would qualify as working class under his definition, Mamdani conceded, I havent asked myself where it starts and stops. He then tried to refine his answer, adding, What I would say is those who are working to try and afford the basic dignities of life and arent able to do so, I think that that is also working class. Oftentimes were asked how we divide this country. I think theres only one majority in this country its the working class.
Garcia-Navarro continued to probe, pointing out the obvious tension between Mamdanis rhetoric and his policy agenda, which includes raising taxes on everyone making over a million dollars a year. She asked whether, under his framework, all of those high earners would be considered working class, prompting him into what can only be described as a convoluted attempt to square the circle. At one point, Mamdani effectively acknowledged, I've drawn it at about a million dollars a year, a line that underscores just how elastic and politically convenient his definition has become.
The reporter noted that such a classification might come as a shock to an actual janitor, who would suddenly find himself lumped into the same working class category as a high-powered lawyer. Mamdanis response was to dismiss what he called a fixation on a definition of something, as though precision were a trivial concern rather than the foundation of honest debate. That casual disregard for clear terms is revealing: if everything is relative, then everything is malleable, and words can be reshaped at will to serve whatever narrative the radical left needs at the moment.
This is the same mindset that has allowed progressives to blur once-stable concepts such as biological sex, the structure of the American constitutional republic, and now the working class itself. By pretending that nearly everyone is working class, Mamdani can claim a moral mandate for sweeping redistribution while avoiding the hard questions about who actually pays and who truly needs help. It also helps explain why the socialist base so often appears to be dominated by activists and perpetual students rather than the blue-collar workers they claim to represent.
Garcia-Navarro, to her credit, accused Mamdani of deflecting by speaking in broad strokes about what New Yorkers supposedly want, rather than answering the specific question she posed. Her skepticism suggested that even sympathetic media figures are beginning to notice the gap between socialist rhetoric and reality.
Meanwhile, social media users mocked the notion that New Yorkers pulling in $250,000 a year are part of a downtrodden proletariat struggling for basic dignities of life, joking about the supposed hardships of affording an Equinox membership, daily Sweetgreen salads, an Oura Ring, Hillstone reservations, and the occasional Taskrabbit housekeeper. The satire captured what Mamdanis interview laid bare: a political movement more attuned to the sensibilities of affluent urban progressives than to the concerns of truck drivers, construction workers, or small business owners.
As with so many on the far left, Mamdani is quick to spew a lot, including theatrical threats such as teasing the idea of locking up Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits New York. The gulf between that kind of performative radicalism and the lived experience of ordinary Americans is stark, and the more these self-styled champions of the working class talk, the clearer it becomes that their definitionsand their prioritieshave far more to do with ideological theater than with the real working men and women they claim to defend.
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