The contrast between this and the “Fighting Oligarchy” message could hardly be starker. Where Sanders and AOC have been crisscrossing the country promoting the message that Trump should be rejected because he’s a servant of wealthy and powerful “titans of industry,” Harris wants to appeal to the oligarchs themselves to save us from the “communist” Trump.

California governor Gavin Newsom recently took a similar line. In his appearance on the Pivot podcast, Newsom responded to host Kara Swisher’s question about Mamdani by bringing up Trump’s deal with Intel, whereby the government agreed to buy almost 10 percent of the company’s stock.

Mamdani and Trump, the governor suggested, weren’t so different. Newsom said it “sounds like Trump’s been paying a lot of attention to” Mamdani, given Trump’s “desire to socialize great American companies.” Just like Mamdani wants to start a few municipally owned grocery stores in New York, Trump wants to do something similar, Newsom contended, through public ownership of a slice of Intel. According to Newsom, it’s “just perverse” that someone like Mamdani could be “shaping the Democratic Party in the context of the socialist brand” when Democrats should be pointing out every day that Trump “is the leading nationalist and socialist of our time.”