“The chickens are coming home to roost,” one young Democratic operative ruefully told me Wednesday, as we surveyed the wreckage that remained after a raft of far-left House candidates won stunning primary-night victories.

Indeed, Tuesday’s Democratic Socialist romp can’t be blamed on outside factors like inflation or Israel or the national party’s mad obsession with countering President Donald Trump’s every move.

No, it’s the result of 15 years of New York Democrats’ single-party rule — and the monstrous ego of Andrew Cuomo. 

The former governor’s utterly narcissistic presidential ambitions launched New York down a progressive road to perdition. 

Starting with relatively mild policies like marriage equality, Cuomo made concession after concession to thwart leftist challengers — from authorizing “bail reforms” that released hordes of repeat offenders, to onerous climate laws that hiked utility bills, to anti-landlord measures that worsened the housing crisis.

Meanwhile, the state Democratic Party developed sclerosis as establishment leaders grew lazy, fat, comfortable and corrupt. 

The stunning 2018 defeat of Queens powerbroker Rep. Joe Crowley by lefty ex-waitress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should have clued them in to the Democratic Socialists of America’s viral plot to remake Cuomo’s party.

But they let it slide — and even now, Democrats are demonstrating an alarming capitulation to political extremism.

A clueless Gov. Kathy Hochul was in Erie County on primary day, too busy dedicating the Buffalo Bills’ new state-subsidized football stadium to campaign with her downstate allies and keep them from getting their butts kicked by her bestie, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and his DSA.

Her out-of-touch naivety is typical of what passes for the party’s leadership today.

Hochul spent the past six months cozying up to Mamdani and using the state budget — and her taxing authority — to bail out his massive deficit spending.

The Buffalo Gal is not a left-wing radical, but something far worse: a craven politician whose only goal is getting safely re-elected without Mamdani & Co. mounting a challenge from her left flank.

“New York is no longer blue, it’s red and green,” a veteran Democratic consultant grumbled to me in disgust.

Mission accomplished, Kathy.

Her primary-prevention strategy only cost regular Democrats three House seats, eight Assembly seats and four State senate seats, including the ouster of six incumbents.

Despite this bloodbath, one high-level local party leader spoke to me optimistically of his belief that Democrats can “work together” with DSA.

Several other Democrats told me they think the party can negotiate an accommodation with the Israel-hating socialists.

Are they so deluded — or so terrified — that they’ll pretend not to have heard the roomful of radicals’ chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” at the NYC-DSA victory party?

Or shut their ears to the mob’s “You’re next!” shouts upon seeing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on the TV screen?

Listen up, establishment Democrats: Mamdani and the DSA don’t want to “work together.”

They want no part of your big tent.

They want to burn it to the ground — preferably with you inside.

As an ex-Democratic lawmaker, I’m angry that party leaders think they can build a united front with these reds.

The DSA isn’t consensus-driven; it’s steeped in an ideological warfare mindset where it’s their way or the graveyard. 

Like the Soviet Union’s kulaks a century ago, New York’s Democratic moderates and liberals will be purged.

The shocking defenestration of Espaillat and Goldman will be used to bully surviving Dems into falling in line with the new DSA order — lest they, too, be taken out in the next election cycle. 

New York Democrats can and must fight back.

They’re facing an existential crisis — and the worst thing they can do is succumb to the radicals inside their tent. 

I believe a politics of resentment and scapegoating fueled the rise of Trump and his America First movement, and that something very similar is animating Mamdani and the DSA.

Such divisiveness was anathema to the Democratic Party that drew me in 40 years ago.

It was obscene of Jeffries and other DC Dems to brush aside concerns about Mamdani and his socialist comrades and point to Trump as a bigger threat.

The DSA’s dangerous messaging on criminal justice, wealth redistribution, climate change and foreign policy will do this nation serious harm. 

Democrats need new, nimble thinking to address these issues and thus reconnect to a distressed electorate. 

A rotten, corrupt establishment paved the way for Tuesday’s disaster — one that will ripple far beyond city limits.

Unless New York Democrats reverse course, and soon, voters will make Hochul pay for her cowardice and appeasement in November.

As of now, this Democrat plans on joining them.

Michael Benjamin is a member of the New York Post Editorial Board.