Here we go again with the “S” word.

So, here we go. Four of the largest American cities have, or are about to have, open, avowed, loud & proud socialist mayors. Not long ago, those on the Left who harbored socialist predilections, like those who harbor indelicate sexual predilections, went to some trouble to hide them. (You’ll recall that the Grand Poobahs of the Democratic Party pushed Bernie Sanders off their presidential ticket in 2008 because he dared say the “S” word out loud.)

No longer.

In today’s ever-more-radical Democratic Party, being a socialist is a feature, not a bug.

Today, the leading lights of the Democratic Party are unapologetically socialist and the one-time “moderate” leaders of the party – think Pelosi and Schumer (and please note the air quotes around “moderate”) – increasingly find themselves on the outside looking in.

New York led the Dems’ leftward lurch in 2018 by electing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – a.k.a. AOC – to represent New York’s 14^thCongressional District. But she now looks positively Churchillian compared to New York City’s new socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Just this week, Democratic primary voters in New York nominated four more avowed socialists to represent the state in the U.S. Congress. There is little doubt that all four will win in the general election in November.

Moving across the country, Seattle mayor Katie Wilson is an avowed socialist. Los Angeles recently nominated avowed socialist Nithya Raman for mayor. She, too, is expected to win in the general.

The same for Washington, D.C.’s Janeese Lewis George, now the Democratic nominee for mayor, and also expected to easily win in November.

Those of us old enough to remember the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union are shaking our heads in dismay as we realize that we’ve learned nothing from the failures of prior attempts at socialism. The lessons that followed from the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 apparently didn’t stick. Ditto the more recent story of Venezuela.

Socialism succeeds at little other than creating shared unhappiness. To the extent that China’s economy works, it’s because the 1978 reforms of Deng Xiaoping created a socialist/capitalist hybrid that made it possible – on a limited basis — for private citizens to own property (sort of) and accumulate personal wealth (sort of).

Socialists are misguided at best – believing that a small cabal of government “experts” can better direct the economy than millions of free individuals acting independently while risking their own capital.

They’re evil at worst because for socialism to work, it must steal the fruits of labor from the productive to give to the non-productive. That theft ultimately takes place at gunpoint.

But socialism’s dismal and bloody record notwithstanding, according to recent polls, as many as two thirds of Democrats now think it’s a good idea. They conveniently ignore socialism’s indisputable record of mass murder, mass misery and ultimate bankruptcy.

The lesson of 2026 is that the center of gravity in the Democratic Party is now socialist. We’re in uncharted waters. And I’d be a fool if I started predicting how it will all turn out.