Wins by democratic socialists in last week's primary elections inspired quite a frenzy among centrist Democrats as well as MAGA. The influence of Second Wave feminism makes me reluctant to call it hysteria, because of the word's etymology, but I think relatively few people know that anymore, so what the hell, I'm going with Merriam-Webster's simple definition: "a state in which your emotions (such as fear) are so strong that you behave in an uncontrolled way."
I thought much of the panic over Zohran Mamdani's election as Mayor of New York City had subsided, though it still rages in comments on Twitter and other social media. he's a communist he's a radical islamist terrorist he was behind the 9/11 attacks he's an antisemite he's going to round up all the Jews and impose sharia law etc. it wasn't just Twitter or Facebook randos who lost it, it was also politicians and party leaders -- the kind of people who we're told are the adults in the room were squalling like toddlers.
When some candidates Mamdani endorsed won in the primaries last week the frothing broke out anew. Mamdani had forced these communist third-worldists on the voters, as though the voters had no choice but to do his bidding. Mamdani is certainly popular in some circles, but he doesn't have the kind of clout Donald Trump, say, has. And he only endorsed three candidates. Other lefty candidates won elsewhere without Mamdani's support, though I suppose his sinister third-world tentacles reached out to force them on the voters there too.
And, of course, these were primaries. As some of the frothers pointed out correctly, turnout in New York City was around 9 percent. The general elections are in November. I've also seen a lot of people celebrating prematurely, but that's normal. No one thinks they're the adults in the room. It seems likely that some of these candidates will win the general, since they're in safely blue districts, but it remains to be seen. One Dem jeered, "If Socialists want to impress Democrats, go to North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, etc, and flip some seats." I liked the person who replied, "centrists love to be like 'when are you socialists going to win regions and states that we centrists currently also don’t win'".
One reason I make myself keep this blog going is that it's useful to be able to look back in time a little. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unseated a Democratic incumbent in 2018, establishment Democratic reaction was like what I saw last week: how dare she go after an incumbent, she's helping Trump, and so on. But she won the general and is still in office eight years later despite Democrat-backed attempts to primary her. And then the same establishment, including Nancy Pelsoi, primaried Ed Markey a year later, apparently because he'd become too friendly with Ocasio-Cortez and the other insurgent lefties known as the Squad.
Then, today, the Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump's assault on birthright citizenship. The MAGA right predictably went bonkers. This hysteria isn't a partisan thing, and it's good to remember that.
P.S. Just after I posted this and before I went to bed last night, I saw that two more entrenched Democratic incumbents were defeated in Tuesday's Colorado primary by candidates to their left, apparently without help from Zohran Mamdani. But another Colorado Democratic incumbent defeated a progressive challenger. That's no surprise, there will be losses as well as victories. But there are some satisfying moments to savor, as in an item I saw this afternoon. One of those incumbents posted a video of herself berating a voter last March ""If ... the only issue that you care about is this issue, then you should not vote for me"-- the issue being Israel's atrocities in Gaza. Ah yes, that move worked so well for Kamala Harris in 2024.
I wouldn't assume that Gaza was the only issue that voter cares about. Last week a self-identified "liberal progressive" and best selling author posted: "As a liberal progressive, I would be fine with the party moving left if these wins were about Medicare for all, reproductive rights, universal childcare, taxing billionaires, and creating affordable housing, But they weren’t." The winners in question are mostly Democratic Socialists, so they have the same wish list this person said she has. Mamdani, for a prominent example, campaigned on much more than Gaza, but his position on Israel obsessed centrist Democrats and the corporate media. The same seems to be true of these other challengers. But it's also true that unbending support for Israel's crimes and the suppression of dissent about them in the US, not to mention their dependency on AIPAC money, are hurting the incumbents.
One senior Democrat, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, said he would argue that Mamdani "is the leader of the Democratic Party right now." I think that's obviously absurd at this moment, but "rising star" feels about right, and Mamdani isn't the only one. I've been wondering who will fill Bernie Sanders's shoes when he leaves office; suddenly there seem to be contenders.
