Mamdani cites Hayek critique, Vance dismisses Friedman as irrelevant

Wall Street Journal chief economics commentator Greg Ip argues that populist Republicans led by Vice President JD Vance and Democratic socialists led by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani have begun converging on shared positions, drifting away from the traditional centers of their own parties.

The thesis draws on dueling June 30 statements from both figures. Mamdani, the Democratic socialist mayor of New York City, recalled economist Friedrich Hayek’s put-down of socialists and said socialists would now solve capitalists’ “years of mismanagement,” according to Ip. The same day, Vance dismissed economist Milton Friedman as irrelevant “in a world where globalized liberalism has become the sort of status quo of American elites,” Ip reports.

Ip frames the convergence as the ascendance of what he calls the “Horseshoe party,” invoking the political-science theory that the far left and far right bend toward each other. The label is shorthand for what Ip describes as a shared disdain for free markets and globalization and a shared embrace of big, coercive government. Both movements, in his reading, treat ordinary voters as pitted against global elites — including their own party establishments.

There is no formal classification for far right and far left, Ip notes. An individual could have views plucked from either, both or in between. Still, convergence is visible in the strange alliances forming across the country, Ip argues.

The rise of the Horseshoe party is the mirror image of the shrinking political center, Ip writes. Republicans and Democrats long differed on how much to tax, spend and regulate, but generally agreed on the big things such as capitalism and openness to trade; stable political and economic institutions; and support for democracies abroad, including Israel. That began to change in 2016, Ip argues, with Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party. Sanders’s presidential runs in 2016 and 2020 dragged Democrats leftward and laid the foundation for this year’s socialist insurgency, Ip writes. The two trajectories are mirror images that have drained support from the political center.

Piper Sandler policy analyst Andy Laperriere told the Journal that “Trump has re-educated, or mis-educated a lot of Republican voters into thinking everything is rigged. It’s how Bernie Sanders thinks about the economy. The foreigners, the big companies, the system, whatever, is ripping us off.” In a recent Piper Sandler report, Laperriere noted that several policies that originated on the left now command considerable Republican backing — limiting drug-price increases to the rate of inflation, banning large investors from buying single-family homes, raising the federal minimum wage to $15, and capping credit-card interest rates at 10% — each drawing support from around 70% or more of voters in polls Ip cites.

The two leading figures are both New York-born octogenarians who formed their political views decades ago, Ip notes. Sanders proposed nationalizing oil companies in the 1970s and now proposes 50% state ownership of AI companies; Trump once called for seizing Middle Eastern oil or being paid to defend it and recently asserted control over a portion of Venezuela’s reserves, while taking stakes in numerous companies and discussing similar moves in AI, according to Ip.

Both men originally cared more about economics than cultural issues, Ip argues. Sanders opposed a 2007 immigration-reform bill as a threat to worker wages; Trump in 2012 claimed Republican Mitt Romney’s tough stance on immigration had cost Romney that year’s presidential election. That they have since reversed positions on immigration and other cultural questions says less about them, Ip writes, than about the movements they lead — movements in which immigration and diversity, equity and inclusion policies now animate Trump supporters more than tariffs do.

Vance has pushed further than Trump on questions of American identity. In his recently published book “Communion,” Vance argues that as Christianity has declined, economics has filled the moral vacuum — a development he describes as “inherently opposed to the Christian way, which demands more focus on people,” Ip reports. In early 2025, Vance told a conservative audience that “we cannot rebuild Western civilization, we cannot rebuild the United States of America or Europe, by letting millions and millions of unvetted illegal migrants come into our country.”

Socialism is, at its core, about state control of the economy, Ip notes. There are elements of that in the platforms of Sanders and Mamdani, such as replacing private insurance with Medicare-for-all and government-run grocery stores.

Yet it is identity and other noneconomic issues that most divide the far left from the center left, Ip writes. Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan captured the Democratic nomination for the state’s U.S. Senate seat by attacking her moderate opponent’s tough-on-the-border positions, an episode that illustrates Ip’s argument that identity rather than economics is what most divides the far left from the center left.

The article also highlights an unusual overlap on Israel and Gaza. In one 2025 poll, 62% of Mamdani supporters called support for Palestinians important to their vote, Ip reports. Some progressive Democrats’ skepticism of Israel has echoes on the right, including from podcast host Tucker Carlson and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ip notes.

For all their overlap, the far left and far right will not form a single party, Ip argues. They agree that identity matters but disagree on why, and many of their policies are unpopular outside their bases: support for Trump’s handling of the economy and immigration has fallen outside his core base, while progressive positions such as abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement alienate independent voters.

They are ascendant today, Ip writes, because voters are disillusioned with the mainstream parties, particularly over the cost of living. The Horseshoe party will never command a majority, in his reading, but it can be disruptive enough to deny a majority to the political center.

Greg Ip is the Wall Street Journal’s chief economics commentator.