Faulty reasoning signals

• Confirmation Bias - 11.4% (72 hits)
• Anchoring Bias - 5.9% (37 hits)
• Availability Heuristic - 3.8% (24 hits)
• Representativeness Heuristic - 8.9% (56 hits)
• Hindsight Bias - 18.5% (117 hits)
• Overconfidence Bias - 0%
• Framing Effect - 17.6% (111 hits)
• Loss Aversion - 0%
• Status Quo Bias - 0%
• Sunk Cost Effect - 0%
• Optimism Bias - 6.8% (43 hits)
• Pessimism Bias - 7.4% (47 hits)

Article text

Claire Valdez Is Making All the Right Enemies

Claire Valdez must be doing something right.

The veteran union organizer and New York State Assembly member is a leading contender in the Democratic primary for the open House seat in New York’s Seventh Congressional District—a multiracial, multiethnic New York City constituency that regularly gives Democratic nominees 65 percent of the vote or more.

It’s not the kind of race where Republicans are particularly competitive, or where they show much interest in what Democratic candidates have to say.

And yet, the Republican National Committee’s research department has made attacking Valdez a priority.

On Monday, the RNC took to Elon Musk’s X platform to post a video of Valdez declaring, “I’m a union organizer and a proud democratic socialist”—and then rip into her for celebrating the fact that members of Democratic Socialists of America, including her top political ally, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, are winning major races in New York and across the country.

Later, Republicans posted another video of Valdez speaking to a New York City Democratic Socialists event and announced: “New York Democrat Socialist Congressional candidate Claire Valdez lays out her radical agenda: ‘So, are we ready to free Palestine, are we ready to Abolish ICE[, ]are we ready to win Medicare for all, housing for all, and unions for all?’”

Presumably, that message from the party of Donald Trump was supposed to scare voters away from backing Valdez in her June 23 primary contest with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso—or, if she’s nominated, in November, But it is hard to see the logic of the GOP strategy.

Look at the polls.

People in New York and nationwide actually like human rights.

They don’t want immigrants to be targeted by ICE.

They know that major steps must be taken to deliver quality healthcare and housing.

And they love strong unions.

Perhaps those are radical ideas.

But they are also radically popular—so much so that Justice Democrats, the group that helped elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Summer Lee to the US House and that now hopes to elect Valdez, reposted the RNC’s fearmongering with a reminder that the candidate’s platform is “just that good.”

Valdez also boosted the RNC message, gleefully adding, “I’m ready!”

The bizarre thing about this and other conservative attacks on democratic socialists who are mounting serious campaigns this year—including Wisconsin State Representative Francesca Hong, who is a top contender for the Democratic nomination for governor in her state; Pennsylvania State Representative Chris Rabb, who has already secured the Democratic nomination for an open Philadelphia congressional seat; and Valdez—is that they keep making democratic socialism look better.

Especially to Democratic primary voters, as the latest New York Times/Siena Poll finds that 49 percent of Democratic voters have a favorable view of socialism, while just 22 percent have an unfavorable view.

The RNC is unironically criticizing candidates who are talking about winning elections on programs that emphasize economic, social, and racial justice, saving the planet, promoting international human rights, and reordering budget priorities to cut military spending and meet the needs of the American people.

Just as President Franklin Roosevelt once proposed an “economic bill of rights” for the United States, so Sanders and Mamdani and Valdez speak of economic rights today.

And, no matter how much the Republican National Committee rages about the candidacy of a democratic socialist in New York City, voters are listening with interest and enthusiasm.

“I think [Mamdani’s 2025 mayoral race] demonstrated that there is a broad constituency that is maybe open, more than we previously thought, to a democratic socialist vision for an affordable New York, for a just and equitable society, in which people’s real material needs are foregrounded against corporate interests,” explains Valdez.

“And that is very obviously inspiring to me.”