I will try to keep this very short and simple. New York City Democratic primary was a one off. The rank choice voting was manipulated. The hot weather kept a lot of elderly people from the polls. Now this may be silly excuses. But the real deal is New York City is a center of democrat so called progressive issue and identity politics voters. Then you have all the so-called underserved who will vote for anything that gives them more stuff for free or subsidized. None of this will play out nationally and international Democrats will pay a huge price in the 2026 midterms when this communist in New York City becomes mayor. What I can’t understand yet I really should understand it is why so many Jews in New York City, supported the antisemitic communist.
“ . . . positions of administrative and cultural power” very much include those in the major media. What we can’t say aloud (without being accused of rank racism) is that the effectively ‘all identity group, all the time’ format of news and culture coverage is what the white working class hears and sees - filtering down from the NYT - and this goes a long way explaining why the heartlanders feel they’re being told what and how to think. Wokesters (Trump’s given anti-woke a bad name!) have been pouring out of college into media (and law) for a few decades now, and the media reflect it. One day the definitive book on this will be written.
And you don't even have to go that far to find that increasingly red leaning heartland, as it is as close as Staten Island (within NYC bounderies) and suburban Long Island!
To your last point, the Israeli government’s excesses in Gaza have had the effect of reducing somewhat Jewish reflexive support for Israel; it’s possible to distinguish between opposition to Netenyahu’s government and antisemitism. Trump and MAGA are greater, more immediate threats in that view, and NYC lefties, fellow travelers and those suffering from political naïveté voted accordingly, believing Mandami is on the right side of history, as they say.
But Mamdani has made statements supporting Hamas and declines to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. This is not just criticism of the Netanyahu government and its policies. This is anti-Jewish genocidal rhetoric and Jewish NYC Comptroller Brad Lander is a fool for supporting Mamdani.
Many others have been saying the same thing, before the election even, before the 2020 election even. The D party has many objectives besides getting elected, and that's a big part of the problem. Getting elected necessitates moderation and reality.
I support this article but truth be told don't actually suport either major US party anymore for now, with some limmited exceptions at the state and local level. Trump and Republicans are curently still a threatening train wreck IMHO and Democrats weant off the rails years ago. But Ruy isn't the only one loudly shouting his message and it is of a sort that can take a long time to make an impact if it does, -people used to have a longer timeline for this sort of thing. His message is still desperately needed as long term, one party rule has proved a disaster where it has occured, -and we are now beginning to see that (once again) already.
Zohran Mamdani won, he was elected. That's how we do things here, we vote. I'll just wait and see. People got all upset over Trump too, turns out Trump didn't turn America into a Nazi concentration camp. Mamdani might not make NYC into a Stalinist Gulag.
About economic populism though. I sure haven't seen any from my party in the last election, not for anything resembling the lower 4/5ths of the electorate. I'm not sure tax breaks and Teslas for the 10% qualify. If anything the Harris campaign was corporate Democrats. Notice Mamdani has the support of Lina Khan?
Mamdani has said some things I don't like at all, he's young. It would be very easy to ditch his more radical side, they've nowhere else to go, and are most likely to turn on him anyway. More recently he got the support of Orthodox Jews in NYC. who knows, maybe he'll gain the support of the police too, and crack down on crime. As with Trump, I'll wait and see.
There will be checks and balances on the new mayor. He still needs to get a majority from the City Council for his policy initiatives. New York Governor Kathy Hochul still has control over major assets like the MTA which need an infusion of cash to get more riders.
Keep in mind also he might not even become NYC mayor, -I really wouldn't count on the Democrat winning the general election with Mamdani as the nominee.
We can all agree, that many cities no longer count crimes, they estimate them. Moreover, many crimes are now civil infractions, which lessens crime stats.
Ask people circling retirement if, when they were young, the tooth paste in their drug stores was locked up like nuclear material. Ask how many stopped for dinner or groceries on the way home from the airport, only to find their car window smashed and luggage gone.
In pricey Bay Area suburbs, with $3 million dollar starter homes, community centers offer free classes on how to park at the grocery to lessen the chance your catalytic converter is stolen while you grab a $10 carton of OJ and a $10 loaf of sourdough bread for breakfast. Not all of us believe crime is at historic lows.
As far as I know, homicide has not been reclassified as a "civil infraction" and homicide rates are almost back to where they were in the 1960s. Fear-mongering about crime is intended to get MAGAt politicians (who want to transfer money from the poor to the wealthy while increasing the budget deficit) elected.
Why do the some Dems always segue to homicide when the discussion is about being fed up with chasing down employees to unlock various cabinets so you can buy a tube of toothpaste, a bottle of shampoo, and ibuprofen?
Pretending that lesser crimes aren’t a serious problem or that it’s all made-up is a hallmark Dem failure. It helped Trump win.
I’m a lifelong Dem who finally got fed up last year and am even more fed up almost 8 months later by the utter refusal of Democrats to accept reality. You people are as damaging as the worst Republicans. Yes, you are. It’s why so many people hate you.
We segue to homicide because 1) homicides stats are very hard to fudge, and 2) homicides are the costliest (both in money and in human pain) of all the violent crimes. "chasing down employees to unlock various cabinets so you can buy" stuff is an inconvenience but nothing compared to major crimes. PS where I shop at Costco, I have never encountered "toothpaste, a bottle of shampoo, and ibuprofen" in locked cabinets.
Crime rates of all types are far below their 1990s peaks. Suggest you look at
"U.S. violent and property crime rates have plunged since 1990s, regardless of data source":
Am I really "as damaging as the worst Republicans' who are trying to take from the poor and give to the rich while increasing the national debt with their big budget bomb bill?
“ never encountered "toothpaste, a bottle of shampoo, and ibuprofen" in locked cabinets.
Then maybe you don’t live in an affected area. It’s geographical.
The Dems are also lying about the data. Paul Krugman was at the top of that list of liars. I was still a register Dem when he started writing his dishonest columns. At the time, our locked car had been broken into twice, my son had been carjacked at gunpoint, and my daughter and her friends had dealt with frequent aggressive shoplifting gangs at Valley Fair Mall in San Jose. This is a high-end mall and we live in a nice neighborhood.
Yes, you and the Dems are doing as much damage as the Rs. The problem is that you’re so blinded by ideology, you see them as thoroughly evil and yourself as thoroughly virtuous. Gender medicine is causing permanent damage to children. Woke racism is still racism. We handed our technology and know-how to China (read Apple in China), annd that really is an huge problem. And organized shoplifting really is damaging the economy and costing jobs.
You're joking, right? The headlineS were all INFLATION, INFLATION,INFLATION! in the last 6 months before the election. Now, with inflation essentially unchanged, it's all crickets
One nit to pick. . . Ruy mentions the top 3 issues of swing voters who switched to Trump according to polling were all involving immigration, which I would argue is an economic issue, and a big one not a cultural issue at all. Hispanic immigrants feel downward pressure on wages from more recent, and often illegal immigrants, as much or more so than native born Americans.
Corporate or Sanders type populists both, no Dem can mention the most pressing issue by far for the working class. People from Mexico might speak a different language, eat different food, listen to different music, and look on many cultural issues differently, but it's impossible to dislike the people you work beside for twenty years and with whom your sons and daughters intermarry. The working class is not anti Hispanic, they are anti importing workers to drive down wages.
Immigration of low wage (not necessarily low skilled) workers is the number one economic issue, and Trump addresses it. Ham handedly, often harshly, but at least he is dealing with it. In NYC there was a backlash against faux asylum seekers being put up in hotels and given money. We'll see how it settles out.
“But it makes much less sense that an aggressive economic populism by itself is a sort of get-out-of-jail free card for a party whose brand among working-class voters has been profoundly damaged, especially by its cultural radicalism. In fact, it’s completely ridiculous, a comforting myth for Democrats like Rupert, Mamdani and the party’s legions of inclusive populists who don’t want to make hard choices.”
*Don’t want to make hard choices.* That is *the* test for true political leadership, for any politician or party, and it is profoundly true for the Democrats here.
Mamdani's candidacy is not the last best hope of either New York City or the Democratic Party, but more likely the final cynical and clueless nail in the coffin of a long-declining both.
The best hope now at least for the national Democratic Party may be that Mamdani wins the New York mayor's race and, in trying to force his looney and historically failed economic populism/socialism on New Yorkers, fails so decisively that the political aftershocks at last moves national Democrats back to a more sensible middle.
Exactly my sentiment. Let Momdami win and bring it on. If he can succeed with his policies and bring any positive changes, or if he wins and his policies fail to bring any positive changes, then the Dems will know what way to go.
We can hope. A worthy sentiment,, though if the Dems have not yet picked up on what way to go, despite defections and electoral defeat of a very Left-leaning agenda, then their problems may run deeper than those poll number snapshots can capture
Why would you think "it won't get past NYC?" It's already THERE. Chicago (Benghazi-by-the-Lake) is a hellhole, as is LA, SF, and Seattle. Denver isn't far behind. There can be no "good management" of cities or states when the underlying philosophies are socialistm, antisemitism, pro-illegal immigration, and wokeism. ALL of these combine to prevent ANY decent city management. You simply cannot have functioning government with any of these, let alone all.
Hence, the generic ballot this week was a shocking GOP +8 (a number I have never seen in my entire career or watching politics); Kollyfornia, in the Judicial Watch suit, is now having to scrub MILLIONS off its voter list---Shilow Marx on X has shown that nearly 1 m are already gone without Los Angeles Co. weighing in. That will by itself mean about 500,000 Democrats will fall off the voter lists there, along with perhaps 300,000 Rs and 200,000 Is. But the net gain again is in the R direction.
In short, until the fundamental root-cause problems were dealt with, the face of the Party will be Momdami, not someone else.
The Democratic Party will not win back working class voters until it confronts Pride and tells them to a) get a room, and b) keep your hands off the kids.
Democrats are a study of the gambler syndrome/disorder... the uncontrollable urge to keep gambling despite the toll it takes.
The disorder tends to hit those that have previously won a jackpot and keep pursuing a repeat of the good feelings despite they evidence that they are digging a huge hole that they will never be able to climb out from.
The problem is that Democrats mistake the 2020 election as a jackpot return from their radical woke agenda... when it was actually only a gift from the plandemic era ballot harvesting... something that no longer exists.
The general public hates that woke Democrat dogfood, and yet they, the Democrats, keeps doubling making bigger radical bets expecting another jackpot.
Well I would never vote for Socialism, however I give Mr Mamdani credit for being upfront with his positions , and he ran a very good campaign against a flawed candidate. I guess it could work if the rich people don’t leave and are willing to pay even more in taxes. But the thing is would it ever be enough? And as the saying goes … with Socialism you eventually run out of other people’s money. But the beauty of America is that each state or city can be its own experiment … so good luck to NYC. But for the country as a whole I would be a hard no
I hope Mamdani helps MAGA and the MAGA-adjacent understand why Trump’s current methods of governance should horrify them.
Imagine in 2028 a severely deteriorating economy allows a particularly mendacious, digitally fluent DSA upstart to win the presidency. In the first 100 days of his term hundreds of executive orders go out, declaring the federal government must act on every DSA initiative. Healthcare is nationalized; ‘national grocery stores’ immediately begin to be constructed in every municipality and county—etc. An advisory board called ‘DOGS’(Department of Government Services), which isn’t really a department, begins to act like one anyway and starts diverting money from the treasury to massively expand the Federal Workforce to carry out these initiatives.
All of it is dubiously legal, but by the time the matter of any given order’s legality gets through the courts, the government is already well into the process of carrying it out. The judges who issue injunctions to stop this process are decried as ‘obstructionists’, and the president walks the line of directly disobeying them. (And there is talk of packing the Supreme Court)
Conservatives in several cities protest all this; in response to these protests, the new president sends in the military to ‘protect government property’ owing to rumors of “disruption to public order”, and marines are soon marching through the streets of conservative neighborhoods and towns, as the government sets up surveillance systems there to “aid the troops in their duty”. The president also calls on his party, the military, the DOJ and local law enforcement to target these cities and towns legally and financially, because they are the ‘power center of the enemy.’
Government critics are doxxed and harassed and in many cases physically attacked by left-wing radicals; when they are convicted in the courts, they are immediately pardoned. And these include critics of the new president’s oft-repeated statement that “I can only lose in 2032 if Republicans cheat, and I won’t accept any outcome that is the result of cheating.”
These are the precedents Trump is setting. They are very bad precedents and MAGA-world should be against them—and the speculative future of a President Mamdani/AOC/etc. should instruct them as to why. Sure, it could “never happen”. But that’s what they said about Trump too, isn’t it?
I'm going to engage you directly. I agree with your concerns. I just don't see where removing Trump from the mix really changes anything. The government over the 4 years before Trump 2.0 essentially was as lawless as you are describing. Future governments are going to be just as lawless, because it was exposed after 2020 that there are no guard rails. There is no national consensus for good governance. Hell, we don't even demand humanitarianism in our foreign policy anymore, and we lie to ourselves about the results of our armed interventions. We are lost.
I look at the whole experiment of the US as a slow defeat. The founders knew what had happened to Athenian democracy, and they knew the fate of the Roman Republic. They tried their best to come up with new stuff to try to sidetrack the inevitable abuses. They did pretty well - we're here 230+ years later, but the game is up. The code was cracked and now we have the same demagogues that wrecked Athens, and the same wealthy men who wrecked Rome. Hell, the whole nationally coordinated lawfare campaign against Trump and his people reminded me of nothing more than the attempts to prosecute Caesar that led to the Rubicon crossing. Not that i'm suggesting Trump is half the man Caesar was, but the way he was treated was very similar. Call it optimates or 'the deep state', it's all the same. Casting Biden as Pompey is actually flattering to Biden.
It seems extremely unlikely to get better without blood, without the populace being so tired of the insecurity of war that they reject divisive politics. This is also a direct reflection of history. Let us hope that the blood that is shed is minimized. The only thing that seems unclear is whether we putter along with a corrupt and unresponsive government for a while, things degenerate quickly to the point that the fighting begins, or an actual authoritarian government seizes power. The last seems most likely, and it is what happened in Rome and ultimately Athens.
I think getting rid of Trump-*ism* would be helpful--partially because you would have to address the forces that make his (and Orban's, and Erdogan's, etc.) authoritarian politics possible to do it.
But I don't think that's mutually exclusive with the argument you're making that he is also a symptom of the larger secular decline of Western liberal democracy. It is decaying for many reasons. To your point, I think it's clear the 'connective tissue' of the the collective memory of WWII has been lost, and people no longer hold liberal institutions in the same regard as their forebears, who fought in two bloody wars to preserve them against autocrats. The 'norms' that have been broken, and institutions like NATO that we have now forsaken, were borne out of that. The new forms of information technology that wire the world's communication systems also have a naturally balkanizing effect, and make rational politics more difficult. The shift to an information economy away from an industrial one has also happened without the development (thus far) of the kinds of social supports that made industrial capitalism sustainable--things like wages, unions, pensions. And the business model of social media, which is optimized to mass produce paranoia, fear and anger, has made people more open to the 'soft' authoritarianism of strongmen like Trump and Orban.
But, as you can probably surmise, a World War, or a civil war, carried out today would be a thousand times bloodier than the wars of the later 19th and early 20th centuries, which were themselves a thousand times bloodier than the wars that fractured the Late Roman Empire. So one hopes a less bloody endgame is found than the ones that ended previous periods of rising autocratic leadership and entrenched factionalism.
My personal take is that, ultimately, while we might not wind up at war, the next century *will* see Eurasia retake the global lead from the West, as they have developed post-liberal forms of governance more suited to the direction the world is headed. For us, obviously, it will seem like an aberration--but, in truth, you could argue it would be more of a return to what was the norm for the majority of human history. The rise of the West is a very small fraction of world history, most of the rest of which involves Asia as the global technological and political leader.
Ranked choice resulted in a moderate, Daniel Lurie, being elected Mayor of San Francisco. One of his goals is to create affordable housing. He plans to lower the requirements for affordable housing to allow builders to either finish new projects. He also plans to use bonds to put towards housing so that public workers will be able to afford to live in the city where they work. Build, baby, build.
The Democratic Socialists' biggest retort to their failed policies and approaches elsewhere (e.g., Venezuela) is that THEIR version (whatever that is, however it differs) has never been tried, Chicago, San Francisco, and LA notwithstanding. As important as New York is and as damaging to the nation as it may be, I'm happy to let them have their way with the city, taking away their talking point. There will be a hell of a book that chronicles New York's descent into a dystopian hellhole. It's already well on its way.
An Emerson College poll showed 62% of 4 year college educated voters voted for Momdami, and 38% to others, while 61% of voters without a 4 year college degree voted for Cuomo. Hmm.
I am an FDR Democrat....So, the following passages make sense to me:
It certainly makes sense that in our current populist era, Democrats need to be responsive to that [economic] populist mood. But it makes much less sense that an aggressive economic populism by itself is a sort of get-out-of-jail free card for a party whose brand among working-class voters has been profoundly damaged, especially by its cultural radicalism. In fact, it’s completely ridiculous, a comforting myth for Democrats like Rupert, Mamdani and the party’s legions of inclusive populists who don’t want to make hard choices.
In particular, it’s preposterous that economic populism, by itself, can solve Democrats’ cultural radicalism problem. In a post-election YouGov survey of working-class (non-college) voters for the Progressive Policy Institute, 68 percent of these voters said Democrats have moved too far left, compared to just 47 percent who thought Republicans have moved too far right. It’s a fair surmise that working-class sentiment about the Democrats’ leftism is heavily driven by the party’s embrace of cultural leftist positions across a wide range of issues (immigration, crime, race, gender, etc.) given how unpopular these positions are among those voters.
Trump calls Mamdani a communist lunatic. Bernie calls him the future of the Democratic Party. These are not mutually exclusive.
I will try to keep this very short and simple. New York City Democratic primary was a one off. The rank choice voting was manipulated. The hot weather kept a lot of elderly people from the polls. Now this may be silly excuses. But the real deal is New York City is a center of democrat so called progressive issue and identity politics voters. Then you have all the so-called underserved who will vote for anything that gives them more stuff for free or subsidized. None of this will play out nationally and international Democrats will pay a huge price in the 2026 midterms when this communist in New York City becomes mayor. What I can’t understand yet I really should understand it is why so many Jews in New York City, supported the antisemitic communist.
To your point, Bob, I read that only 8% of registered voters supported Mandami.
Please expand on this
I don't remember the source, some New York publication (New Yorker online?), but that's what they said, and very low turnout overall.
“ . . . positions of administrative and cultural power” very much include those in the major media. What we can’t say aloud (without being accused of rank racism) is that the effectively ‘all identity group, all the time’ format of news and culture coverage is what the white working class hears and sees - filtering down from the NYT - and this goes a long way explaining why the heartlanders feel they’re being told what and how to think. Wokesters (Trump’s given anti-woke a bad name!) have been pouring out of college into media (and law) for a few decades now, and the media reflect it. One day the definitive book on this will be written.
And you don't even have to go that far to find that increasingly red leaning heartland, as it is as close as Staten Island (within NYC bounderies) and suburban Long Island!
To your last point, the Israeli government’s excesses in Gaza have had the effect of reducing somewhat Jewish reflexive support for Israel; it’s possible to distinguish between opposition to Netenyahu’s government and antisemitism. Trump and MAGA are greater, more immediate threats in that view, and NYC lefties, fellow travelers and those suffering from political naïveté voted accordingly, believing Mandami is on the right side of history, as they say.
But Mamdani has made statements supporting Hamas and declines to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. This is not just criticism of the Netanyahu government and its policies. This is anti-Jewish genocidal rhetoric and Jewish NYC Comptroller Brad Lander is a fool for supporting Mamdani.
Ruy - when are you just going to give up on the Democrat party?
Ruy must not give up! He is a voice for the protection against one party rule. More Democrats need to hear him, and fast!
He's been preaching for over a year (that I know of). No one is listening apparently.
Many others have been saying the same thing, before the election even, before the 2020 election even. The D party has many objectives besides getting elected, and that's a big part of the problem. Getting elected necessitates moderation and reality.
I don't see any signs of moderation, if anything they're going further left.
It might be that the Democrats will go into the dustbin of history as a rump extreme left party, and we will get a new loyal opposition party
1 in 75 million. There's still a chance
Sadly his posts just confirm my belief that I will never return to the Democratic party. Independent voter for life it seems.
Wish we had decent choices tho....
Or at least tell us the name of one Liberal Patriot that is running for office in 2025 or 2026.
I support this article but truth be told don't actually suport either major US party anymore for now, with some limmited exceptions at the state and local level. Trump and Republicans are curently still a threatening train wreck IMHO and Democrats weant off the rails years ago. But Ruy isn't the only one loudly shouting his message and it is of a sort that can take a long time to make an impact if it does, -people used to have a longer timeline for this sort of thing. His message is still desperately needed as long term, one party rule has proved a disaster where it has occured, -and we are now beginning to see that (once again) already.
Zohran Mamdani won, he was elected. That's how we do things here, we vote. I'll just wait and see. People got all upset over Trump too, turns out Trump didn't turn America into a Nazi concentration camp. Mamdani might not make NYC into a Stalinist Gulag.
About economic populism though. I sure haven't seen any from my party in the last election, not for anything resembling the lower 4/5ths of the electorate. I'm not sure tax breaks and Teslas for the 10% qualify. If anything the Harris campaign was corporate Democrats. Notice Mamdani has the support of Lina Khan?
Mamdani has said some things I don't like at all, he's young. It would be very easy to ditch his more radical side, they've nowhere else to go, and are most likely to turn on him anyway. More recently he got the support of Orthodox Jews in NYC. who knows, maybe he'll gain the support of the police too, and crack down on crime. As with Trump, I'll wait and see.
There will be checks and balances on the new mayor. He still needs to get a majority from the City Council for his policy initiatives. New York Governor Kathy Hochul still has control over major assets like the MTA which need an infusion of cash to get more riders.
Keep in mind also he might not even become NYC mayor, -I really wouldn't count on the Democrat winning the general election with Mamdani as the nominee.
Always a good idea to wait.
No choice. Deportation looks to be off the table.
Crime in NYC ( and the rest of the US for that matter) is at historic lows . Can we all agree on that?
We can all agree, that many cities no longer count crimes, they estimate them. Moreover, many crimes are now civil infractions, which lessens crime stats.
Ask people circling retirement if, when they were young, the tooth paste in their drug stores was locked up like nuclear material. Ask how many stopped for dinner or groceries on the way home from the airport, only to find their car window smashed and luggage gone.
In pricey Bay Area suburbs, with $3 million dollar starter homes, community centers offer free classes on how to park at the grocery to lessen the chance your catalytic converter is stolen while you grab a $10 carton of OJ and a $10 loaf of sourdough bread for breakfast. Not all of us believe crime is at historic lows.
As far as I know, homicide has not been reclassified as a "civil infraction" and homicide rates are almost back to where they were in the 1960s. Fear-mongering about crime is intended to get MAGAt politicians (who want to transfer money from the poor to the wealthy while increasing the budget deficit) elected.
Why do the some Dems always segue to homicide when the discussion is about being fed up with chasing down employees to unlock various cabinets so you can buy a tube of toothpaste, a bottle of shampoo, and ibuprofen?
Pretending that lesser crimes aren’t a serious problem or that it’s all made-up is a hallmark Dem failure. It helped Trump win.
I’m a lifelong Dem who finally got fed up last year and am even more fed up almost 8 months later by the utter refusal of Democrats to accept reality. You people are as damaging as the worst Republicans. Yes, you are. It’s why so many people hate you.
We segue to homicide because 1) homicides stats are very hard to fudge, and 2) homicides are the costliest (both in money and in human pain) of all the violent crimes. "chasing down employees to unlock various cabinets so you can buy" stuff is an inconvenience but nothing compared to major crimes. PS where I shop at Costco, I have never encountered "toothpaste, a bottle of shampoo, and ibuprofen" in locked cabinets.
Crime rates of all types are far below their 1990s peaks. Suggest you look at
"U.S. violent and property crime rates have plunged since 1990s, regardless of data source":
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-data-says-about-crime-in-the-us/sr_24-04-23_crime_3/
Am I really "as damaging as the worst Republicans' who are trying to take from the poor and give to the rich while increasing the national debt with their big budget bomb bill?
“ never encountered "toothpaste, a bottle of shampoo, and ibuprofen" in locked cabinets.
Then maybe you don’t live in an affected area. It’s geographical.
The Dems are also lying about the data. Paul Krugman was at the top of that list of liars. I was still a register Dem when he started writing his dishonest columns. At the time, our locked car had been broken into twice, my son had been carjacked at gunpoint, and my daughter and her friends had dealt with frequent aggressive shoplifting gangs at Valley Fair Mall in San Jose. This is a high-end mall and we live in a nice neighborhood.
Yes, you and the Dems are doing as much damage as the Rs. The problem is that you’re so blinded by ideology, you see them as thoroughly evil and yourself as thoroughly virtuous. Gender medicine is causing permanent damage to children. Woke racism is still racism. We handed our technology and know-how to China (read Apple in China), annd that really is an huge problem. And organized shoplifting really is damaging the economy and costing jobs.
Denial of inflation was also a hallmark of Biden era — once Trump was elected MSM became interested.
You're joking, right? The headlineS were all INFLATION, INFLATION,INFLATION! in the last 6 months before the election. Now, with inflation essentially unchanged, it's all crickets
One nit to pick. . . Ruy mentions the top 3 issues of swing voters who switched to Trump according to polling were all involving immigration, which I would argue is an economic issue, and a big one not a cultural issue at all. Hispanic immigrants feel downward pressure on wages from more recent, and often illegal immigrants, as much or more so than native born Americans.
Corporate or Sanders type populists both, no Dem can mention the most pressing issue by far for the working class. People from Mexico might speak a different language, eat different food, listen to different music, and look on many cultural issues differently, but it's impossible to dislike the people you work beside for twenty years and with whom your sons and daughters intermarry. The working class is not anti Hispanic, they are anti importing workers to drive down wages.
Immigration of low wage (not necessarily low skilled) workers is the number one economic issue, and Trump addresses it. Ham handedly, often harshly, but at least he is dealing with it. In NYC there was a backlash against faux asylum seekers being put up in hotels and given money. We'll see how it settles out.
“But it makes much less sense that an aggressive economic populism by itself is a sort of get-out-of-jail free card for a party whose brand among working-class voters has been profoundly damaged, especially by its cultural radicalism. In fact, it’s completely ridiculous, a comforting myth for Democrats like Rupert, Mamdani and the party’s legions of inclusive populists who don’t want to make hard choices.”
*Don’t want to make hard choices.* That is *the* test for true political leadership, for any politician or party, and it is profoundly true for the Democrats here.
Thank you Ruy Teixeira.
Mamdani's candidacy is not the last best hope of either New York City or the Democratic Party, but more likely the final cynical and clueless nail in the coffin of a long-declining both.
The best hope now at least for the national Democratic Party may be that Mamdani wins the New York mayor's race and, in trying to force his looney and historically failed economic populism/socialism on New Yorkers, fails so decisively that the political aftershocks at last moves national Democrats back to a more sensible middle.
.
Exactly my sentiment. Let Momdami win and bring it on. If he can succeed with his policies and bring any positive changes, or if he wins and his policies fail to bring any positive changes, then the Dems will know what way to go.
We can hope. A worthy sentiment,, though if the Dems have not yet picked up on what way to go, despite defections and electoral defeat of a very Left-leaning agenda, then their problems may run deeper than those poll number snapshots can capture
Why would you think "it won't get past NYC?" It's already THERE. Chicago (Benghazi-by-the-Lake) is a hellhole, as is LA, SF, and Seattle. Denver isn't far behind. There can be no "good management" of cities or states when the underlying philosophies are socialistm, antisemitism, pro-illegal immigration, and wokeism. ALL of these combine to prevent ANY decent city management. You simply cannot have functioning government with any of these, let alone all.
Hence, the generic ballot this week was a shocking GOP +8 (a number I have never seen in my entire career or watching politics); Kollyfornia, in the Judicial Watch suit, is now having to scrub MILLIONS off its voter list---Shilow Marx on X has shown that nearly 1 m are already gone without Los Angeles Co. weighing in. That will by itself mean about 500,000 Democrats will fall off the voter lists there, along with perhaps 300,000 Rs and 200,000 Is. But the net gain again is in the R direction.
In short, until the fundamental root-cause problems were dealt with, the face of the Party will be Momdami, not someone else.
The Democratic Party will not win back working class voters until it confronts Pride and tells them to a) get a room, and b) keep your hands off the kids.
Democrats are a study of the gambler syndrome/disorder... the uncontrollable urge to keep gambling despite the toll it takes.
The disorder tends to hit those that have previously won a jackpot and keep pursuing a repeat of the good feelings despite they evidence that they are digging a huge hole that they will never be able to climb out from.
The problem is that Democrats mistake the 2020 election as a jackpot return from their radical woke agenda... when it was actually only a gift from the plandemic era ballot harvesting... something that no longer exists.
The general public hates that woke Democrat dogfood, and yet they, the Democrats, keeps doubling making bigger radical bets expecting another jackpot.
Well I would never vote for Socialism, however I give Mr Mamdani credit for being upfront with his positions , and he ran a very good campaign against a flawed candidate. I guess it could work if the rich people don’t leave and are willing to pay even more in taxes. But the thing is would it ever be enough? And as the saying goes … with Socialism you eventually run out of other people’s money. But the beauty of America is that each state or city can be its own experiment … so good luck to NYC. But for the country as a whole I would be a hard no
I hope Mamdani helps MAGA and the MAGA-adjacent understand why Trump’s current methods of governance should horrify them.
Imagine in 2028 a severely deteriorating economy allows a particularly mendacious, digitally fluent DSA upstart to win the presidency. In the first 100 days of his term hundreds of executive orders go out, declaring the federal government must act on every DSA initiative. Healthcare is nationalized; ‘national grocery stores’ immediately begin to be constructed in every municipality and county—etc. An advisory board called ‘DOGS’(Department of Government Services), which isn’t really a department, begins to act like one anyway and starts diverting money from the treasury to massively expand the Federal Workforce to carry out these initiatives.
All of it is dubiously legal, but by the time the matter of any given order’s legality gets through the courts, the government is already well into the process of carrying it out. The judges who issue injunctions to stop this process are decried as ‘obstructionists’, and the president walks the line of directly disobeying them. (And there is talk of packing the Supreme Court)
Conservatives in several cities protest all this; in response to these protests, the new president sends in the military to ‘protect government property’ owing to rumors of “disruption to public order”, and marines are soon marching through the streets of conservative neighborhoods and towns, as the government sets up surveillance systems there to “aid the troops in their duty”. The president also calls on his party, the military, the DOJ and local law enforcement to target these cities and towns legally and financially, because they are the ‘power center of the enemy.’
Government critics are doxxed and harassed and in many cases physically attacked by left-wing radicals; when they are convicted in the courts, they are immediately pardoned. And these include critics of the new president’s oft-repeated statement that “I can only lose in 2032 if Republicans cheat, and I won’t accept any outcome that is the result of cheating.”
These are the precedents Trump is setting. They are very bad precedents and MAGA-world should be against them—and the speculative future of a President Mamdani/AOC/etc. should instruct them as to why. Sure, it could “never happen”. But that’s what they said about Trump too, isn’t it?
I'm going to engage you directly. I agree with your concerns. I just don't see where removing Trump from the mix really changes anything. The government over the 4 years before Trump 2.0 essentially was as lawless as you are describing. Future governments are going to be just as lawless, because it was exposed after 2020 that there are no guard rails. There is no national consensus for good governance. Hell, we don't even demand humanitarianism in our foreign policy anymore, and we lie to ourselves about the results of our armed interventions. We are lost.
I look at the whole experiment of the US as a slow defeat. The founders knew what had happened to Athenian democracy, and they knew the fate of the Roman Republic. They tried their best to come up with new stuff to try to sidetrack the inevitable abuses. They did pretty well - we're here 230+ years later, but the game is up. The code was cracked and now we have the same demagogues that wrecked Athens, and the same wealthy men who wrecked Rome. Hell, the whole nationally coordinated lawfare campaign against Trump and his people reminded me of nothing more than the attempts to prosecute Caesar that led to the Rubicon crossing. Not that i'm suggesting Trump is half the man Caesar was, but the way he was treated was very similar. Call it optimates or 'the deep state', it's all the same. Casting Biden as Pompey is actually flattering to Biden.
It seems extremely unlikely to get better without blood, without the populace being so tired of the insecurity of war that they reject divisive politics. This is also a direct reflection of history. Let us hope that the blood that is shed is minimized. The only thing that seems unclear is whether we putter along with a corrupt and unresponsive government for a while, things degenerate quickly to the point that the fighting begins, or an actual authoritarian government seizes power. The last seems most likely, and it is what happened in Rome and ultimately Athens.
I think getting rid of Trump-*ism* would be helpful--partially because you would have to address the forces that make his (and Orban's, and Erdogan's, etc.) authoritarian politics possible to do it.
But I don't think that's mutually exclusive with the argument you're making that he is also a symptom of the larger secular decline of Western liberal democracy. It is decaying for many reasons. To your point, I think it's clear the 'connective tissue' of the the collective memory of WWII has been lost, and people no longer hold liberal institutions in the same regard as their forebears, who fought in two bloody wars to preserve them against autocrats. The 'norms' that have been broken, and institutions like NATO that we have now forsaken, were borne out of that. The new forms of information technology that wire the world's communication systems also have a naturally balkanizing effect, and make rational politics more difficult. The shift to an information economy away from an industrial one has also happened without the development (thus far) of the kinds of social supports that made industrial capitalism sustainable--things like wages, unions, pensions. And the business model of social media, which is optimized to mass produce paranoia, fear and anger, has made people more open to the 'soft' authoritarianism of strongmen like Trump and Orban.
But, as you can probably surmise, a World War, or a civil war, carried out today would be a thousand times bloodier than the wars of the later 19th and early 20th centuries, which were themselves a thousand times bloodier than the wars that fractured the Late Roman Empire. So one hopes a less bloody endgame is found than the ones that ended previous periods of rising autocratic leadership and entrenched factionalism.
My personal take is that, ultimately, while we might not wind up at war, the next century *will* see Eurasia retake the global lead from the West, as they have developed post-liberal forms of governance more suited to the direction the world is headed. For us, obviously, it will seem like an aberration--but, in truth, you could argue it would be more of a return to what was the norm for the majority of human history. The rise of the West is a very small fraction of world history, most of the rest of which involves Asia as the global technological and political leader.
Ranked choice resulted in a moderate, Daniel Lurie, being elected Mayor of San Francisco. One of his goals is to create affordable housing. He plans to lower the requirements for affordable housing to allow builders to either finish new projects. He also plans to use bonds to put towards housing so that public workers will be able to afford to live in the city where they work. Build, baby, build.
It does seem that San Francisco has really begun to pivot. If you knew the City before and now, you’d know why. Maybe NYC will do the same.
The Democratic Socialists' biggest retort to their failed policies and approaches elsewhere (e.g., Venezuela) is that THEIR version (whatever that is, however it differs) has never been tried, Chicago, San Francisco, and LA notwithstanding. As important as New York is and as damaging to the nation as it may be, I'm happy to let them have their way with the city, taking away their talking point. There will be a hell of a book that chronicles New York's descent into a dystopian hellhole. It's already well on its way.
An Emerson College poll showed 62% of 4 year college educated voters voted for Momdami, and 38% to others, while 61% of voters without a 4 year college degree voted for Cuomo. Hmm.
I am an FDR Democrat....So, the following passages make sense to me:
It certainly makes sense that in our current populist era, Democrats need to be responsive to that [economic] populist mood. But it makes much less sense that an aggressive economic populism by itself is a sort of get-out-of-jail free card for a party whose brand among working-class voters has been profoundly damaged, especially by its cultural radicalism. In fact, it’s completely ridiculous, a comforting myth for Democrats like Rupert, Mamdani and the party’s legions of inclusive populists who don’t want to make hard choices.
In particular, it’s preposterous that economic populism, by itself, can solve Democrats’ cultural radicalism problem. In a post-election YouGov survey of working-class (non-college) voters for the Progressive Policy Institute, 68 percent of these voters said Democrats have moved too far left, compared to just 47 percent who thought Republicans have moved too far right. It’s a fair surmise that working-class sentiment about the Democrats’ leftism is heavily driven by the party’s embrace of cultural leftist positions across a wide range of issues (immigration, crime, race, gender, etc.) given how unpopular these positions are among those voters.