New York City's elections were a family feud. All the rest is vibes
Some progressive primary challengers knocked off some progressive incumbents.
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The proper takeaway is that New York City has a big impact on politics, not because it appears to be the location of a proxy fight between competing factions within the Democratic Party, but because it's New York City. There's no where else like it in America.
Some progressive primary challengers knocked off some progressive incumbents this week, and the chattering class hasn't stopped chattering about it since. Perhaps Reuters captured the hubbub best: "Mamdani's sweep in New York a 'political earthquake' among Democrats."
Candidates aligned with Hizzoner Zohran Mamdani, and who embraced his economic agenda, swept their races. The results, the Times said, proved Mamdani to be a "kingmaker" who "shook the foundations of the Democratic Party far beyond the five boroughs. When they are certified, Mr. Mamdani, 34, and his movement will be on track to double the number of socialists in Congress from two to four. The outcome will also force a Democratic Party, already searching for its identity, to reckon with its ascendant, unapologetic left."
But does doubling "the number of socialists in Congress from two to four" really count as a "political earthquake"? Does a total of four "socialists" amount to an "ascendant, unapologetic left"? Maybe, but if Tuesday's election had taken place in Terre Haute, say, we might not even be talking about it. New York City is peculiar place. It's the media capital of the country. Vast wealth is concentrated there. It's on the east coast. Love it or hate it, everyone pays attention to it. (Do you know who the mayor of Cincinnati is? I don't.) It's treated as if synonymous with America. If anything is doubled there, it's portrayed as if doubled everywhere.
John Stoehr
Basically, whenever there's an election in New York City whose outcome is even a little bit contrary to the conventional wisdom, the press corps sees it as a new age that's dawning. Something similar happened after Eric Adams won in 2021. Though he was the city's second Black mayor, he was regarded as a centrist who stood against "wokeness," etc. "The New Identity Politics of Eric Adams," Politico writer said. "A Leader Who Defies Easy Political Labeling. Finally," said a Times pundit. It's not exactly the same, but the tune is familiar.
Time will tell if this new quartet of "socialists" is really going to force a reckoning within the Democratic Party, but for now, my advice is to keep things in perspective. For one thing, Eric Adams turned out to be just another old dirty bastard. For another, some politicians aligned with the progressive left have struggled recently to keep their jobs. New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman lost to a primary challenger in 2024 (as did Missouri Congresswoman Cori Bush). Hype is often just hype, but nowhere is hype more spectacular than in New York.
If you don't keep things in perspective, you risk being swallowed up by the stupid. Since Tuesday, I have seen headlines from legit news sources tell me that Hakeem Jeffries wants Mamdani to "patch things up" with the party; that "moderates" are "freaking out"; that "there's going to be a war" between "centrists" and "leftists." I have seen posts that accuse Jeffries of being a "maga Democrat" and that blame Joe Biden for creating conditions in which "activists" are "trying to blow their party up." Talking heads keep equating the Democratic Socialists of America to the Tea Party. I have seen serious liberals declaring with confidence that "entrenched power" within the Democratic Party is "terrified." James Carville suggested that he's quitting because "I don't want to be in a political party that denies the right of the state of Israel to exist." Then there's always Donald Trump: "The communists are finally making their move," he said. "I’ve been waiting and preparing for this for a long time."
I have said for a while that if there are Mao-style communists in America, you will find them in the Republican Party, but I'm not going to revisit that right now. (I mean, why bother when the president himself said Friday, reportedly in jest, that "communism is very easy to sell … I’ll be honest — I think I’d be the greatest communist in history"?) Nor am I going to take these allegations too seriously, because in the end, what happened on Tuesday was a family feud.
The Democratic Party of New York City is a very old machine. It privileges and protects seniority. Like many cities run by Democrats (my New Haven in one), that has led to a kind of sclerosis. Incumbents end up taking their voters for granted, and that makes them vulnerable to ambitious upstarts. Sure, the Mamdanians call themselves "socialists" but they didn't win on ideology alone. They won, because they ignored convention and out-hustled their rivals.
John Stoehr
For others, the picture isn't as cheery. To Democrats invested in the party machine, what the Mamdanians did was selfish and maybe even dangerous. (There's a quote going around of New York Attorney General Tish James saying "all of us are a little frustrated with the Democratic Party. But you don’t blow it up. That’s what maga has done.") At the same time, there does appear to be legitimate questions of trust on Mamdani's part. The Times reported that he promised to support Adriano Espaillat, who is chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, after Espaillat brought critical votes to Mamdani's campaign. But Mamdani appears to have gone back on his word and backed his challenger, Darializa Avila Chevalier. (Avila Chevalier's history, meanwhile, suggests potential for being an unreliable ally. Liberal Currents' Alan Elrod explained in his recent piece on what he calls "dirtbagism.")
Whatever the case may be, what happens in the family likely stays in the family, and that's my larger point here. "The establishment" isn't terrified. It's going to accommodate the upstarts, as it accommodated them in 2018. (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now a leading figure.) The odds of victory in November are heavily in the Democrats' favor. Nothing in New York City is going to change that. Of course, the Republicans are going to make noise about "communists" coming for America (though they themselves bear the closest resemblance to, say, the Chinese Communist Party). And some moderates within the Democratic Party will make their own noise. They want their rather conservative supporters to believe they stand against "socialism." But what all these people are going to do is what they have always done: use the politics of New York City as a foil for making arguments about politics in America.
In reality, the shockwaves of Tuesday's "earthquake" won't be felt beyond Yonkers.
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