Every once in a while the pressure builds and must be released or the pipes burst. In no particular order...
The influence of money in politics is not why I called this meeting, however. By this time, the fact that money has flooded the halls of Washington to the detriment of policies based on the public's interest should be self-evident. No, I called you here today to discuss the Tea Party. I'm not going to get into the weeds of Tea Party politics, which were often self-contradictory. Nor am I going to parse the people behind the purse strings of that supposedly grass roots movement. Rather, I want to discuss the consequences of demanding purity of thought and deed when it comes to the electoral process. I want to discuss the practice of 'primarying' incumbent elected officials.
First off, the scholarship on the subject of primarying currently suggests that the challenging of party-endorsed incumbents by outsiders is not mainly due to the radicalization of segments of the electorate but rather is a consequence of a failure of the party elites to endorse quality candidates. For instance, the ability to fund raise independently of party can be a deciding factor over the ability to articulate platform and policy when it comes to party endorsement. Other possible influences on the shift to the fringes, according to those writing books on the subject, may include the effects of gerrymandering, leading to battles within a party in otherwise safe districts, as well as the natural ebb and flow of voter sentiment over time. Movement to the fringes of political norms due to the targeting of radicalized primary voters themselves is discounted in relation to these other factors. That's current scholarship. I respectfully disagree. It's like the scholarship that sometimes insists that the Civil War was not about slavery. Scholars seem inclined to ignore the elephant in the room in their search for more esoteric fauna.
The Republican propensity for primarying those considered unpure began right around the time that the Tea Party peaked and has only grown in frequency ever since. And it's not about conservative versus RINO any more. The practice has morphed into something completely different. Some of the most doctrinaire conservative Republicans have been subject to attack, and not because of stances on issues. The party of economic conservatism is piling up debt at a staggering rate. The party that shunned foreign entanglements is now entangled in messy military affairs in two hemispheres. No, it's not about policy in a party that has shattered commitment to policy. It's about failure to adapt to a party that has become more rigid, more Christian nationalist, and more like a cult. Bend the knee, pledge loyalty to the cult, or You're Fired. Long-serving elected officials are no longer insulated from attack. Republicans have weeded out the dissent to the point that Mitch McConnell has become a poster boy for dissent within his own party. Who'da thunk it?
Why, oh why, have Democrats decided to jump on that very bandwagon of destruction? What leads them to think that the USofA is ready for democratic socialism? Bernie Sanders got beat in 2016. No matter what anybody says, he got beat fair and square. And he specifically got beat when Democrats voted rather than caucused. His best showings were in late March and early April, before the East Coast settled things. Of nine contests, Sanders won eight. Six of the eight were caucuses. Over the following few weeks, voting primaries in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Connecticut all went for Hillary. Bernie got beat. Deal with it.
Next we have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who successfully primaryed a senior Congressional Democrat in 2018, in a primary in which 30,000 people voted. In the general election in a D+29 district, 125,000 votes were cast. She won. Currently, AOC and Rashida Tlaib are the only members of the Democratic Socialists of America in Congress. After eight years, three election cycles. Two DSAs.
And now we come to the poster boy of the DSA, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In one of the bluest cities in America, running against a discredited sexist pig named Cuomo and perpetual gadfly Curtis Sliwa in the general election for mayor, Mamdani managed less than 51% of the vote. I have difficulty understanding how that can be celebrated as a defining victory. But that's the characterization. And that characterization, flawed as it may be, has led to primarying in the next round of Congressional elections just recently by Mamdani-endorsed candidates who have taken down two incumbents. In discussing that outcome with NPR, the transcript reports that Mamdani's answer to the first three questions on the subject featured the phrase 'working people'.
Nearly 40% of American adults are not working people. They may be disabled. They may have become discouraged and dropped out of the work force entirely, no longer looking for work. They may even have invested well and are retiring early. But the fact remains, 1,000,000 people simply up and left the workforce last year. And not just the old or infirm. Folks in their prime working years. Politicians don't hammer home a phrase without intention. What was Mamdani's intention? I fear that the answer may be because it sets up a conflict, sets up an Us Versus Them mentality. For my entire life, that's how the political parties recruited young people. Republican v Democrat meant Conservative v Liberal. Meant Business v Labor. Meant Fiscal Restraint v Safety Net Spending. Mamdani was setting up a more modern conflict. Working People v The Elite. And I have a problem with Mamdani's definition of The Elite.
Us means Mamdani. Them means the NY Democratic Party. Us means AOC. Them means Chuck Schumer. Us means the DSA. Them means Me. Me.
I live in a country that leans to democratic socialism on a continent where the happiest populations are governed by democratic socialists. I have no quarrel with the concept. My quarrel is with political strategies whose endgame appears to be to divide the American electorate into three tribes: one-third way over to the right, one-third way over to the left, and one-third wondering where the hell the center went that we thought that we inhabited. No room for Nelson Rockefeller or Dick Gephardt. No room for me.
