On Sunday, in an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union program, Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries refused to answer the question put to him several times by anchor Dana Bash as to why he has not endorsed the winner of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary election, Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). He dodged the question, saying he was “engaged in a conversation” with Mamdani on a variety of topics.
To date, none of the leading national or state figures in the Democratic Party, including, besides Jeffries, New York senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Governor Kathy Hochul, have endorsed Mamdani. Gillibrand was recently forced to retract her statement that Mamdani’s position on Palestine is “glorifying the slaughter of Jews.”
The refusal to date of top national and state elected Democrats to endorse the party’s candidate in the country’s largest city, more than two months after the primary, is extraordinary. It is an expression of a deep crisis pervading the Democratic Party.
Mamdani, who refers to himself as a socialist and opposes the Gaza genocide, ran on a program of minor reforms, such as a freeze on rent increases on rent-regulated apartments, free bus service and universal childcare. He won the votes of hundreds of thousands of workers and young people, in a lopsided victory over former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and other contenders.
The oligarchy that controls both big business parties demands that the next administration in New York impose sweeping austerity measures as state and federal funding for education and social programs evaporates.
Moreover, the Democratic Party has swung so far to the right since the Reagan era, working with Republicans to redistribute the national income from the bottom to the top, gut social programs, and wage aggressive imperialist wars, that even nominal opposition to these policies sets off alarm bells. The oligarchic character of American society is such that the class of billionaires that dominates US politics is not willing to sanction even the most modest incursion into its members’ fabulous fortunes.
Both Cuomo and the current mayor, Eric Adams, are running as independents against Mamdani, with varying degrees of support from ruling circles in the city and state. Both are trailing far behind Mamdani in the polls…
Primary him. It’s the only way to scare these power-hungry assholes into listening to their constituents. Imagine if Jeffries becomes speaker, he’d be even more beholden to the neoliberals and billionaires.
Fuck with the base (the base voted for Mamdani), and lose your seat. Actual real consequences are the only thing that matter these clowns.
In order for him to be “primaried” we need a leftist candidate from his district to step up. And then that candidate will need a buttload of crowdfunding to overcome his rich backers’ ad dollars in order to convince the plebes who just mechanically vote in the incumbent democrat to think before pulling that lever for him again.
Edit: for those outside his district, seek the leftist running against your local billionaire boot licking democrat and help them get elected so we can at least remove him as minority leader in the house.
If primaries worked America wouldn’t be in this situation. What’s the next step?
This is literally an article about a primary that worked.
They had rank choice voting its the only reason he won primary. Take that away and Democrats will cheat just like the Republicans especially in their primaries.
A primary can work; primaries as a whole evidently aren’t. Also this is an article about a primary not fulfilling its purpose because the party leadership doesn’t give a shit about democracy when it doesn’t suit them. Mamdani has enough independent popularity to win anyway, but since he has that independent popularity it means he never needed the DNC or their primary in the first place.
They work but the problem is that it’s a lot of work and requires a lot of people to organize.
Those are potential explanations for why primaries don’t work, but the fact still remains that “more of the same” isn’t an answer to America’s problems. I mean hell, right now we have two progressive primary winners (Mamdani and Omar Fateh) that the Democratic Party and its local subsidiaries are refusing to endorse despite that being the whole point of a primary. The “get 'em in the primaries” model of progressive activism has been a resounding failure.
Right, we’re watching them be primaried and they literally ignore the results and campaign as independent, taking the dnc party backing with them. Maybe the problem is the democratic party and their opposition to any working class politics? Or any politics at all that arent “youre a fascist for not voting for our 95% hitler instead of 99% hitler we allowed to exist in order to force you to vote for us”?
Idk, I’m just living in reality and perceiving the world as it is so what do I know
That’s kind of defeatist. Some of the most popular and well known US congresspeople are The Squad. The current progressive movement seems to have been started after Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squad_(U.S._Congress)
Political change doesn’t happen overnight. It is a marathon. The wealthy donors expect you and I to give up sooner rather than later.
Yes, and yet nobody is successfully following their example outside local elections. Hell, the Squad has shrunk compared to two years ago with the defeat of Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, so if anything we’re looking at a brief wave that’s already receding. Also there’s nothing that makes this decade (counting from 2016) special compared to 2008 when Obama was elected on a “hope and change” platform, and we’ve seen how that went.
There’s a marathon of preparation, but after that preparation the results should come much faster than what we’re seeing now. Current US politics don’t inspire hope that there’s a progressive wave coming to fundamentally change American politics. More importantly, though, political change isn’t just a marathon; there’s a timeline you have to stick to because you need to effect real change before the right reaches its end goal of fascism. Promising change sometime next century simply won’t cut it, as seen from the ongoing collapse of US democracy. There’s a reason every positive change for the working class, peaceful or violent, required action a lot more forceful than “run for election.”
At the risk of repeating myself, they don’t need you to give up; they can simply outpace you. At this point even the midterms are too late; something needs to be done right now.
To be clear, what I’m arguing for here isn’t “let’s sit on our asses and do nothing;” there are historical and current examples for how to extract concessions from the ruling class, but they relied organization among the working class and direct action (and a healthy dose of violence) a lot more than electoral politics. The civil rights movement, the labor rights movement and abolition are just a few examples of this in action; every single right you have was fought for not through the ballot box, but through the blood, sweat and tears of people who decided they’d had enough.
I think it goes
And the last step, pine box