Adriano Espaillat has represented the residents of New York City’s Harlem and northwest Bronx since 2017, and had been involved in local politics in that area since 1997. But that legacy ended this June, when Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Florida-born doctoral student and Columbia University graduate, defeated him in the Democratic primary. 

Roberto Suro, a professor emeritus of journalism and public policy at USC and the former director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said Chevalier “did best among young white gentrifiers.” The New York Times reported that she led the vote in younger, college-educated and higher-income areas. 

With the recent nominations of several leftist candidates — including, of course, our beloved mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani — we are noticing a shift away from the Democratic establishment that has for so long defined what blue means. 

However, those on the far left of the spectrum, who often vote for these candidates, are overwhelmingly young, online, white and religiously unaffiliated. The goals of the Democratic Socialists of America are to empower the working class, but only the young and privileged are voting for them in large numbers. 

Mamdani and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed did bring in a great deal of immigrant and working-class voters — one reason being that Mamdani’s opponents were incredibly weak — but the resounding evidence, race after race, shows that the voters in the primaries consistently represented the demographics of leftward progressives. 

The issue isn’t these voters; the issue is that educated leftist culture continuously mistakes its own language and priorities for universal working-class politics. 

Morris Levy, an associate professor of political science and international relations at USC, explained that the extensive terminology and linguistic hygiene within these far-left spaces fall flat across much of the working class. He said many of these groups “haven’t had as much exposure to that ideology, and frankly, also have less time in their lives to give to sorting out the particulars of what’s going on systemically.”  

In Musa al-Gharbi’s book “We Have Never Been Woke,” which inspired this column, Gharbi writes that only when the young, wealthy, white population of this country is downtrodden and frustrated is change made, and often that change only really relieves their own guilt. 

The clearest example of this lies in the college protests that flooded the nation during the Vietnam War. It was after the draft included college students that campus unrest grew, and only after the draft ended that it subsided. 

Kamy Akhavan, managing director of the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future, noted that young, wealthy, white Americans are certain that the United States is on the wrong track. In general, of young people polled by the Harvard Youth Poll, only 15% believe the country is heading in the right direction. 

And by no means are they wrong to feel this way. To want better for your country and for yourself is essential to the progress of democracy and politics. I voted for Mamdani and have advocated for the success of all of the aforementioned candidates. But it is impossible to ignore the lack of support across my parents’ generation. 

Mateo Schehtman, a junior studying philosophy, politics and law and a member of USC’s Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter, referenced a generational divide across many immigrant communities. He said that for first-generation immigrants like his parents, “there’s obviously a sense of gratitude, and that sense of gratitude turns into this increased level of patriotism and increased level of a resistance to change.” 

Younger Americans, however, “don’t see the current direction of the country as one that’s hopeful or beneficial to them,” he said. 

The language of socialism doesn’t scare me as a political science student. My knowledge of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying for Espaillat — and a great deal of history between the U.S. and Israel — increases my support for Chevalier, and my identity as a brown woman with an affinity for politics allows representatives like Nithya Raman, Mamdani and El-Sayed to heal a childhood longing to see myself on the podium. But as a child of immigrants, it is impossible for me not to view these individuals’ voter bases as flawed. 

When it is only through privilege that these views can be found and voted for, the movement will never grow. It is time for the left to drop the big words and the constant focus on the far away. It is time to hone in on that passion and give them the country they came here for, not one that only pleases the few. 

Anahita Saxena is a junior majoring in political science and journalism who writes about politics, identity politics and the internal issues of the Democratic Party in her column, “Chai Socialist,” which runs every other Monday.