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.
Your essay resonated with me because I've been watching a similar dynamic unfold in Portland, Oregon.
On Portland's twelve-member city council, roughly half the members belong to or are closely aligned with the DSA, while the remainder are a mix of liberals, moderates, and non-DSA progressives. What's striking is that the fiercest political conflicts are often not between the left and the right—there is no effective right-wing presence in Portland politics—but between the DSA bloc and moderates, liberals and progressives.
The dispute is rarely over whether government should do more to help people. Most of the council supports expansive social programs and progressive goals. The conflict is increasingly about political behavior and ideological conformity. Critics argue that the DSA-aligned faction tends to divide the world into "the people" and their opponents, treats dissent from within the left as betrayal, and uses ideological purity tests to determine who counts as a legitimate progressive.
As a result, some of the sharpest attacks are directed not at conservatives but at fellow progressives who depart from the dominant faction on a few issues or who favor compromise and coalition-building. Opponents are often portrayed not as merely mistaken but as insufficiently progressive, morally suspect, or obstacles to progress.
That feels very similar to the dynamic you describe around gender. Your concern is not that Democrats support universal healthcare or redistribution. It is that disagreement on issues such as gender medicine increasingly becomes evidence of moral failure rather than a legitimate policy disagreement among people who share broadly similar values.
Critics of Portland politics point to several recurring patterns: defining opponents as insufficiently progressive rather than merely wrong; treating compromise as weakness or betrayal; selectively invoking identity-based claims to delegitimize critics who may themselves belong to the groups supposedly being defended; and maintaining an activist posture even while exercising governmental power.
What makes Portland interesting is that it illustrates what can happen in one-party political environments. Once conservatives become electorally irrelevant, the main conflict shifts from left versus right to competing factions of the left. In that setting, the harshest attacks often fall on liberals, moderates, and heterodox progressives who are close enough to be rivals for the same voters. That seems very much like the broader trend you are describing.
I wouldn’t try Ireland. Everyone “who is anyone”- from President through the legacy media, esp RTE, schools etc are confirmed adherents to the belief in magic that is “trans”.