New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani emerged as something of a kingmaker this past week, as the Democratic primary candidates he endorsed swept their races in the Empire State.<\/p>\n
The problem for Democrats is that what sounds electrifying in Brooklyn coffee shops sounds wildly out of touch to the rest of the country. Republicans have now been gifted a fresh crop of candidates they can plaster across campaign ads from Bangor to Bakersfield, turning what might otherwise be local urban politics into a national cautionary tale \u2014 just in time for the midterms.<\/p>\n
Leading the renegade parade is Darializa Avila Chevalier, the 32-year-old daughter of Dominican immigrants who is now the Democratic nominee in New York\u2019s 13th Congressional District. Her r\u00e9sum\u00e9 includes her help in leading pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University and participating in a radical campus environment that later produced calls for \u201cDeath to America<\/a>\u201d \u2014 which, as campaign slogans go, lacks a certain broad appeal.<\/p>\n Chevalier\u2019s greatest hits \u2014 compiled from now-deleted social media messages \u2014 include criticizing minority men for relationships with white people (i.e., \u201cfetishizing ugly colonizer women<\/a>\u201d); talking about wiping her hands on the American flag<\/a>; attacking Joe Biden as a \u201crapist\u201d; declaring \u201cF\u2014 Kamala Harris<\/a>\u201d; wanting to abolish police, borders and prisons<\/a>; and calling U.S. service members \u201cchild murderers<\/a>,\u201d just to name a few of her past controversial comments.<\/p>\n Ordinarily, none of this would matter much outside the district. But politics no longer stays local. What happens in New York today becomes a 30-second television spot in Ohio tomorrow.<\/p>\n The other problem is this: It\u2019s not altogether wrong to suggest this is, in fact, a national trend. What happened in New York is not an isolated incident. It\u2019s merely the latest data point.<\/p>\n In Maine, for example, Democrats recently nominated oysterman (and veteran) Graham Platner, despite a history of controversial online statements and questions surrounding a tattoo associated with a Nazi symbol.<\/p>\n In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive and former public health official who (like Platner) is endorsed by Bernie Sanders, is leading in the primary race polls <\/a>against two more mainstream Democratic candidates seeking a Senate seat.<\/p>\n Despite the fact that two older candidates \u2014 President Trump and Sanders \u2014 first defined these extremes in modern American politics, their disciples tend to skew younger.<\/p>\n Speaking of which, there\u2019s at least a decent chance that this trend will transcend Congress, if Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 36, decides to run for president in 2028.<\/p>\n Progressives seem to have concluded that the strategy of nominating cautious, competent, moderate Democrats to offset Trumpy politics was a losing bet that simultaneously deprived them of fun\/excitement and yielded no electoral benefits.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to blame them. They look at Trump and see a man who violated every known rule of modern politics and won two presidential elections. Their conclusion is simple: If energy beats experience, authenticity beats caution and enthusiasm beats respectability, then it\u2019s time to stop nominating establishment politicians and start nominating revolutionaries.<\/p>\n None of this means the Democratic Party is universally sprinting leftward in 2026. Plenty of states continue to nominate and elect pragmatic, conventional candidates. North Carolina Democrats, for example, appear perfectly content with a moderate like former Gov. Roy Cooper. And that choice will very likely deliver Democrats a U.S. Senate seat.<\/p>\n But in reading the tea leaves, the future increasingly seems to belong to democratic socialists and progressive activists who would have been considered fringe figures not that long ago.<\/p>\n In this regard, the vibe in today\u2019s Democratic Party feels a bit like the Republican Party during the tea party and early MAGA eras.<\/p>\n As someone with center-right instincts (who resisted Trump\u2019s hostile takeover of the GOP a decade ago), I find this development troubling. Not merely because I disagree ideologically, but also because it increasingly appears that America is drifting toward a politics in which both parties become hostage to their most passionate and least restrained factions.<\/p>\n The danger isn\u2019t that America perfectly reenacts the Weimar Republic. History rarely repeats itself with such precision. But when moderation is viewed as weakness, compromise as surrender and liberal democracy as an obstacle rather than a miraculous achievement, things tend to go sideways.<\/p>\n History and common sense suggest that when one extreme faction (such as the fascists) begins to gain power, otherwise moderate or apolitical people suddenly become more willing to embrace rival extreme factions (like the communists).<\/p>\n Again, it\u2019s perfectly understandable that Democrats would look at Trump and the Republicans and conclude it\u2019s time to fight fire with fire. That policing your own side of the aisle is a fool\u2019s errand. And that, as the saying goes, \u201cIf you can\u2019t beat \u2019em, join \u2019em.\u201d<\/p>\n But this is a race to the bottom that will no doubt end in a disaster of epic proportions. The kids are not all right.<\/p>\n Matt K. Lewis is the author of \u201cFilthy Rich Politicians<\/a>\u201d and \u201cToo Dumb to Fail<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani emerged as something of a kingmaker this past week, as the Democratic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[148],"tags":[1859,1102,1390,486,64004,24152,12318,1857,20436,64003,64002,1419,48035,7212,74,553],"class_list":["post-130521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zohran-mamdani","tag-america","tag-democracy","tag-democratic-party","tag-democrats","tag-empire-state","tag-example","tag-graham-platner","tag-history","tag-left-wing","tag-minority-man","tag-modern-american-politic","tag-new-york","tag-politic","tag-time","tag-trump","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116817207167779792","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}