Preparations for a looming invasion

Indivisible Brooklyn volunteers with the Hands Off NYC campaign handing out materials to defend neighborhoods from ICE.

 

I love this photo. I haven't lived in New York for many years now, but I can still readily imagine this scene. New Yorkers are tough. They have to be. No wonder Donald hates them and the sentiment is reciprocated.

Post election tidbits

Yes, there are other things in life besides fighting fascism and I'm busy with several of them, all to the good. But here are some morsels from Tuesday's national wipe out of MAGA and its ilk.

Let's start with a particular delight:

Alejandra Caraballo‬: 57% of all ad spending by Republicans in the Virginia governors race was on anti trans ads. Just an incredibly mismanaged campaign. Anti-trans politics are a losing issue.

{and] According to the Wapo: A Washington Post-Schar School poll from late last month showed that only about 3 percent of Virginia voters list policies about transgender students as top concerns, compared to far greater concern over economic security and the cost of living. 

Once upon a time, hating on LGBT folks was the right wings' magic bullet. As recently as 2008 in California. But overexposure to nonsense eventually wanes in efficacy. I'll make the bold prediction that trans-hate will also recede as people realize somebody is trying to make them look away from their actual interests and concerns. Here's hoping the process is rapid, though inevitably uneven and painful.

 • • •

We're finally seeing the generational transition of (small "d") democratic power that displaces my Boomer generation. About time.

I often find Jen Rubin annoying, but she sees what's in front of her face:

Democratic stodgy insiders seem not to appreciate that Gen Z-ers and Millenials are also more diverse than older generations. (And many white people in these age brackets have grown up, unlike their parents, among people whose religions, races, ethnicities, and languages differ than their own.) Along comes Mamdani, speaking from an immigrant’s vantage point about the values that have allowed New York to flourish as one of the most diverse cities on the planet. Entirely without pretense, he relates effortlessly with a swath of voters in a way that older, white politicians simply cannot. And while he has a specific religious and racial identity, he has given voice to New Yorkers of all backgrounds who feel overlooked by the white, rich power structure. 

I bet my ancestors thought the end was near when an Irish immigrant wave began to establish its democratic power in New York City in the 1850s. Then came the Italians in the later 19th century; the eastern Europeans in the beginning of the 20th; European-origin Jews by mid-century; and now the offspring of a wider world. Good for New York for continuing its historical role as a landing place for people yearning for a living and "to breathe free."

Another generational transition.

John Ganz celebrates his city, hoping he is seeing a break in a tiresome pattern: 

... Humanity has accomplished something truly incredible and almost utopian in New York: millions of very different types of people living peaceably—and sometimes even amicably—side by side. That’s every bit as real as the death and destruction halfway around the world. For me, New York is the living counterpoint to all that suffering and hate. It’s worth protecting and building upon. In fact, it’s the most important thing: New York City is, in my humble opinion, the greatest accomplishment in the history of human civilization. We’ve long set the standard for art, culture, industry, literature—you name it. Every good and great thing is available here. 

As Pericles said of Athens in the funeral oration, “Because of the greatness of our city, the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as our own.” But in politics, we resigned ourselves, with a weary smile, to a certain cynicism. Now we are attempting a politics that lives up to our humane and cosmopolitan aspirations. Wedded to some hard-nosed pragmatism, it might just work. 

Let's hope Mamdani is up to the challenge, as much as a mayor can be. My FIL, a life long New Yorker, called the job the toughest in American politics and he was probably right.

• • •

The man of the hour, Mamdani himself, knows no one succeeds without community: 

... And while we cast our ballots alone, we chose hope together. Hope over tyranny. Hope over big money and small ideas. Hope over despair. 

• • •

Let's give the last word to Bill McKibben, that climate prophet who has taken up the burden of trying to save humanity from ourselves:

Americans showed that the idea of this country is not dead just yet. We elected Muslims to historic office in the two states targeted on 9/11, we elected climate-conscious candidates to help run Georgia’s massive energy system—but more than that we began the repudiation of Trump and Trumpism. 

There is so so much more work to do, but as war leader Winston Churchill said after an early triumph in North Africa, “we have reached the end of the beginning.” 

As AOC—for my money perhaps the best political analyst in the country—put it, Americans understood “the assignment of fighting fascism right now. And the assignment is to come together across difference no matter what.”

This little election reminded us that participation in this messy, unjust, yet idealistic country is an unending struggle, but sometimes one that carries a moment.

On the eve of New York's mayoral election

New York City is the most Jewish city in the world outside Israel. Somewhere around 12-14 percent of residents are Jewish; that's over 1.3 million residents of the metropolis.

Zohran Mamdani's successful candidacy for mayor has brought focus on the fears and hopes of that constituency. How can a Muslim who is anti-Zionist be poised to win the job of mayor in New York, most likely with solid support of younger New York Jews?

Perhaps he stands for a hope for their city which that old sleaze former state governor Andrew Cuomo and a GOP perennial joke candidate don't offer. I don't live in New York though I once did and have long had family in the city. But I appreciate the observations of Jewish writers who live in the midst of the fray.

Israel's war on Gaza prompted Brookynite John Ganz to reflect broadly on antisemitism and Zionism. He identifies mirroring varieties of racist corruption in the service of power over others.

I want to make one other remark about Zionism and antisemitism. Both confuse cause and effect to a dangerous degree and begin processes unchained from history and common sense. In the radical Zionist worldview, antisemitism is eternal and endemic; hatred of the Jews preexists any Jewish behavior, so Jewish behavior then doesn’t matter. This is how you get the nihilism and denial that allows the Jewish state to indulge in the very types of criminal activities that led to its creation. “They hate us anyway.” This belief engenders a totally irresponsible and immoral attitude. The existence of antisemitism, the Holocaust, and all the historical suffering of the Jews does not make a permanent moral exception of the Jewish people. Accepting that nihilism is to conspire with antisemites in the creation of antisemitic propaganda. 

The antisemite has a remarkably similar logic, but reversed: the Jews are intrinsically, eternally a criminal species; no historical explanation or context is possible or necessary, because the answer is always there: the Jews are evil itself. Does Zionism come out of a particular historical situation? No, it is just one more emanation of this evil. Does Hamas or Palestinian resistance arise out of a particular historical situation and context? No, it is just one more emanation of this evil. 

Both cut themselves loose from historical time and causality and replace it with a mythic world of eternal racial struggle. In such a conception lies the utter devastation of humanity.

Both Zionism and anti-Zionism often try to hide the ball of racism while taking advantage of its emotional appeals. Zionists often rely on propaganda appeals based on preexisting prejudices that hold their enemies to be subhuman savages and barbarians, and anti-Zionists’ propaganda appeals often try to take advantage of or deepen preexisting prejudices against Jews. They both try to distinguish themselves from intrinsically racist discourses but are parasitic upon them. 

And it’s unclear to me if either can be separated from them. At some point, argue long enough, and they will both exclaim, “They are just a different breed!” They are lower, more evil, more prone to violence, etc. 

The ascendancy of Donald Trump's neo-Nazi fans make clearer thinking about the persistence of vicious antisemitism all the more essential.

• • •

Peter Beinart comes to New York's electoral moment full of passion. For him, the dismissal by some older Jewish leaders of Mamdani reveals a form of idolatry. I don't usually post longer [8 minutes] videos here, but I strongly recommend experiencing Peter's heart-filled little sermon: What Will Establishment Jewish Leaders Sacrifice to Defeat Mamdani?

Alone in public amid randomness and isolation

John Della Volpe introduces himself: 

For more than two decades, I’ve been embedded in the land of young Americans. First millennials, and now Gen Z with an eye on Gen Alpha. From my perch since 2000 as polling director at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, at SocialSphere, and as the dad of a few Zoomers and one Zillennial — I spend most of my time talking with, surveying, and thinking about young Americans. 

In the context of New Yorker's mayoral election, he's been talking with young citizens of that city. He reports: After Everything, They Still Want In. You can read it all at the link. 

Twelve young New Yorkers — disillusioned with both parties, abandoned by institutions, and living under daily pressure — still believe in something better. ...

All under 30. Some were born there, some were not. All living in the tension between loving New York and questioning whether it loves them back.

“We love it here,” one said. “But it doesn’t always love us back.”

The conversation didn’t spiral. Everyone stayed grounded. They were proud to live in the “greatest city in the world” — but honest about how much it costs them, in every sense.

He covers ten points; I found myself reflecting on this one:

#7: Fear is everywhere. So is numbness.

Almost every participant described feeling physically unsafe at some point in the last month.

“You’re always calculating... Should I step in? Should I run? Am I going to get hurt just trying to help someone?”

“They’re not there to protect people. They’re there to write tickets.”

The problem wasn’t just crime. It was the feeling of being left alone with it.

I tried to think how this was the same and different from what I felt when I lived for awhile, a long time ago, in the great city. So I raised the question to Della Volpe and he responded: 

janinsanfran: Can you expand on what the fear is about? I know New Yorkers who feel that NYC feels safer than it ever has. 

Lived there myself as a very young person in the 70s -- very sporadically, but not uniformly, seemed unsafe then, in what was then thought a very unsafe area. 

These folks feel what they feel and we must honor that -- but that conclusion seems something that could be expanded on. 

Della Volpe: You’re right — the fear young New Yorkers describe isn’t the same one older generations remember. It’s not about crime rates; it’s about randomness, isolation, and trust.

They’re afraid that anything can happen anywhere — a shove on the platform, a stranger following them — and no one will step in. It’s the sense of being alone in public that feels new.

And even when they know the data shows record-low crime, they don’t feel it. The fear now is less about danger itself, and more about whether anyone — the police, the city, other people — will show up when it happens.

In that gap between statistics and experience, you can feel how much trust has frayed.

Let's hope the experience of the Mamdani campaign is breaking through this isolation. Effectual campaigns can do that. If Mamdani's mayoral term can deliver on some of its promise, that would help too.

Mamdami offers a history lesson

I hope this YouTube message from Zohran Mamdami is everywhere on the internet. Mamdami is the Democratic Party-endorsed candidate for mayor of New York if you've been distracted and had not heard. He's ahead in the November contest. 

Just in case you missed it, here Mamdami takes a stand for his potential transgender constituents. 

And he proves he is not afraid to go where so many pols are afraid to tred.

Erin in the Morning explains why the ad is so powerful:

The ad, set to transgender artist SOPHIE’s “It’s OK to Cry,” opens with the story of Sylvia Rivera, a trailblazing activist who helped lead the Stonewall uprising and lay the foundation for the first Pride. It then traces landmarks of New York’s queer history ...

The ad serves as a masterclass for Democrats on how to talk about transgender people with empathy and conviction. Many of Mamdani’s own supporters may not know the history he highlights, and so it serves the purpose to educate his supporters in how to humanely talk about transgender people. Through this framing, he grounds his stance in moral clarity rather than political expedience—a rare trait in modern campaigns. 

For voters on the fence, the ad demonstrates that his support for transgender rights isn’t a focus-grouped calculation; it’s a reflection of his core values. In doing so, Mamdani not only strengthens trust among progressives but also draws in those who may have felt ambivalent, offering them something increasingly scarce in politics today: authenticity. 

Dems need to learn that when Republicans try to make you squirm because some of your supporters are their targets for hatred, you can either prove you are chickenshit or step up and stand up for the human dignity of all people. No alternative works. Dodging only makes you look unbelievable and untrustworthy to everyone. 

Listening to the next generation

The aftershocks of Zohran Mamdani's victory over the Democratic field in New York City's mayoral primary just keep on coming. I've read and listened to a slew of them in the last few days. For an election operative/election junkie like me it's all fascinating.

From my own idiosyncratic background in decades of trying to get ordinary citizens to turn out for good causes as well as striving to enlarge the electorate, what Mamdani did is astonishing. About 975,000 people voted according to the final ranked choice tallies: 545,000 for Mamdani; 428,500 for Andrew Cuomo.  Mamdani's campaign organized something over 50,000 campaign volunteers (most of whom we can assume were New York voters.) That is, nearly 10 percent of his voters volunteered in some way. And this number doesn't count whatever percentage of Mamdani's over 20,000 small donors gave money but didn't actively work in voter contact in the campaign.

Getting this high a percentage of an electorate activated is extremely rare. I'm not sure I've ever seen any thing close; perhaps for Obama in 2008, though I doubt it. Mamdani must have combined good fundamentals -- a deep appeal -- with extraordinary organization.

John Della Volpe has been polling director at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics for over 20 years. He has a specialty, he explains: "I spend most of my time talking with, surveying, and thinking about young Americans." 

Young people campaigned for Mamdani and voted for Mamdani in very high numbers. Della Volpe describes what he thinks Mamdani evoked and what he has seen emerging for a long time: 

To Republicans, Mamdani represents everything they warn against: a socialist insurgent, a destabilizing force, a glimpse of where they fear the country is heading. Trump labeled him a “100% Communist Lunatic.” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis called him “very dangerous to the future of the city.” Charlie Kirk went even further, comparing Mamdani’s win to “9/11 2.0.”

But the louder panic came from inside his own party. Democratic leaders rushed to express concern — not just about his victory, but about what it might signal. ... What’s become clear is this: Mamdani didn’t just pull off a political upset. He revealed a deeper fracture — a generation of voters who feel unseen and unheard — and a political establishment that, instead of listening or re-engaging, is warning the rest of the country to look away. 

Della Volpe makes three observations about Mamdani's win. There were voters available to be persuaded.

#1: This Wasn’t About Labels. It Was About Lives.

Mamdani’s win wasn’t a fluke. It was the result of a campaign that grasped something most politicos and consultants still miss: in cities like New York, the real divide is no longer left versus center. It’s disconnection versus recognition. 

... Mamdani didn’t offer slogans. He listened. He took those stories seriously. Then he built a platform that sounded less like a press release and more like the people living it. ... And Mamdani didn’t manipulate it. He mirrored it — and then turned it into momentum.

Listening won Mamdani what money could not buy: 

#2: The Trust Recession

This election wasn’t just about housing or crime or affordability. It was about trust. And how little of it remains.

Sounds easy, but for a politician to choose to really listen and thereby win trust is a stretch for even willing politicians. Throwing oneself into the public arena is hard; you quickly learn there will be detractors, some of them unfair. Listening requires ego strength -- but also a strength that doesn't mask defensiveness. Mamdani seems to have such an equilibrium; this made for a perfect contrast to Cuomo's habitual arrogant bluster. 

#3: The Strategy Worked — But It Doesn’t Travel on Its Own

There’s already a rush to frame Mamdani’s win as a warning shot — or a roadmap — for Democrats nationally. But the truth is more grounded than that. What happened in Queens, Brooklyn, and across parts of the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island wasn’t a template for the nation. It was a local reaction to a local crisis — a campaign rooted in New York’s specific pain points: housing, transit, affordability, and a growing sense that city government no longer works for regular people.

The lesson isn’t to copy Mamdani’s message. It’s to copy his method. ... In a post-election interview with Jen Psaki, Mamdani put it plainly: “We hoped to move our political instinct from lecturing to listening.

This New Yorker is going to have to be tough. Fortunately, he's suited for a tough city -- a city in Donald Trump's crosshairs.

A few thoughts about Zohran from people closer than I am

I did live in New York City for a few years, way back in the hyper-energetic times of Mayor John Lindsay (1970-73) whose government epitomized the hope that a rich, diverse city could somehow have it all -- social peace, racial justice, and economic prosperity. Some look back on the moment with belated appreciation, while for others, it still seems a nadir of dysfunction. For a young person seeking her path, it was an exciting, if occasionally scary, backdrop to personal maturing. And then I got out in time not to witness the city's near insolvency and the blowback when the plutocrats reasserted their rule.

So I'm truly a remote observer of Zohran Mamdani's earthquake. Why NYC voters have dared to vote for someone/something new!

Evidently the money guys are terrified, reports Paul Waldman. Zohran has a excited a city they avoid noticing from their chauffeured limousines. 

Mamdani Win Causes World's Whiniest Babies to Melt Down 

... What exactly do these babies think Mamdani is going to do if he becomes mayor? They don’t like that he’s a democratic socialist; fair enough. Many of them just don’t like Muslims, which is sadly predictable. But what do they think the mayor is going to do that will be so catastrophic?

Granted, he has a lot of ambitious ideas in his platform. He wants to make buses and childcare free for all New Yorkers, for instance. Will that happen? Maybe, maybe not. It won’t be easy. But if he managed it, would it make the city some kind of intolerable hellhole for the rich?

... For many Americans, the idea that there are other Americans who feel safe and happy in environments of racial and ethnic diversity just doesn’t compute. Aren’t you supposed to only be comfortable around your own tribe? Aren’t you supposed to feel aggrieved when you hear languages other than English being spoken? For many people who have spent a lot of time in urban environments, the answer is that diversity is precisely what makes a place feel reassuring and comfortable. 

That's sure what I learned living in New York and I eventually settled in the place most like NYC with less crowding that existed in that decade. (San Francisco might no longer play that role ... times and cities change.) 

John Ganz at Unpopular Front tackles the touchy question of America's most Jewish city voting for a proud Muslim who supports Palestine:

... There clearly was an effort to smear Mamdani with Jewish voters as an antisemite, and it just didn’t work. 

The guy just does not come across as a hateful person. Also, New York has a population about the size of Israel, except compared to them, we are practically a utopia, where people of very different backgrounds live peacefully (if grumpily) side by side. Let’s not introduce ethnic hatreds into a place where they are largely successfully overcome. 

And let me tell you a little secret: most New York Jews really like New York’s diversity. We like that it attracts the Mamdanis of the world. We like sharing it with people of lots of different backgrounds. That’s what makes us feel safe and happy here. Especially when they are such a mensch like him: a nice college boy, his parents are a professor and a filmmaker, he went to Bronx Science, and then to a liberal arts school. 

I’m sorry, but you are gonna have a hard time convincing liberal educated, upper-middle-class Jews not to like a college-educated, left-leaning immigrant—and one who tried to make a career in the arts?! Forget about it. The guy is practically Jewish! Not to mention that his Muslim and Indian identity is no doubt sincere, but it’s also largely cultural in a way a lot of Jews recognize. ...

Ganz draws some conclusions which I think speak to how US voters might retrieve our democracy, if we get the chance. Most politicians, especially Democrats currently in the wilderness, have been mesmerized by messaging gurus who prescribe poll tested lines ... but mostly voters simply want someone who convinces them they can lead, in some new, better direction. That can be dangerous.  Trump's success points up the danger of a democratic populace feeling adrift -- a whole lot of people are finding out that the Leader might be leading them over a cliff.

Ganz again:

The problem with the polling and all the emphasis on data in contemporary politics is that it does not take into account that the electorate doesn’t really exist until election day, and the politician and his or her campaign are actively creating that electorate. All political errors, from the level of action to analysis, are based on reifying the situation, believing in a static, factual reality that cannot be changed. And all great political successes are based on the opposite: the art of the impossible; believing in a chance for something new.

Once upon a quite recent time, Barack Obama came across as something new; we're open to a novel direction again. Let's make sure it is a good one.