If the NY Primary Is Any Indication, Democrats Are Headed So Far Left...
...that they're about to fall off a cliff
Yesterday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s three preferred candidates for office handily won their primaries. The New York Times, which fawns over the boy mayor, has anointed him a kingmaker. Mamdani’s mini-kings tend to favor the slate of slogans that drove many Democrats away in recent years, from “defund the police” to “gender-affirming care is life-saving and medically necessary.”
In my own district, Mamdani’s choice for Congress—the mayoral candidate he cross-endorsed during the race and then jilted in his own administration—Brad Lander, won by a landslide, by pitting Democrat against Democrat and Jew against Jew. Mamdani’s hostility toward anyone who supports the state of Israel—the major democracy in the Middle East, albeit one behaving very badly (as is its frenemy, the United States)—has normalized his supporters mimicking his rhetoric.
Voila:
When I met Lander at a fundraiser, and tried—admittedly, with very little tact—to get him to listen to me about gender, he told me not to vote for him. So I didn’t. But once again I find myself at odds with my own party, which is now home to as many extremists as the Republican party is.
I say this as someone who leans socialist. I want universal healthcare. I believe that there is no such thing as a free market, and as long as we’re tilting it, we should tilt it toward the neediest. But the Democratic Socialists of America don’t seem particularly interested in democracy, and they certainly don’t seem interested in the reality about the field of gender-affirming care. They have downsized the big tent into a tiny yurt perched on the edge of a chasm—if you dare to step outside, down you’ll fall.
Increasingly, it seems, this is the status quo. The Dems aren’t going to moderate any more than the Republicans are going to oust the madman running the country.
Next week, I begin the revisions of my book, which is the story of how we got to this precarious place. But when I started, I had assumed that we’d be in a better spot by now. We aren’t. I have tried with all my might to break through in any way I could imagine, but instead, I’m watching my city fund gender medicine, my daughter compete against and with boys, and my fellow blue bubble residents remain largely in the dark about this issue.
I have responded to this reality by crawling inside a never-ending supply of dark chocolate and chips and watching a lot of shitty television. It looks a lot like depression, and has resulted in needing a new wardrobe of elastic waistband pants. I’m out of ideas other than, starting next week, returning to my manuscript to make it spectacular, and imagining people reading it down the line when, in theory, things have settled some in this country. That may never happen.
In the meantime, I am dreaming of living in a more reasonable country. Which one? I have no idea. Irish accents are my favorite, and I like how straightforward the people are. In what country should we create Heterodox Island?
Comments are open for suggestions, commiseration, repudiation, or whatever you want to say.