Democratic voters want fighters
The New York primaries are just the latest data point.
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It’s been bemusing to watch centrist Democrats and “never Trump” Republicans freak out over the primary results last week in New York.
Three Mamdani-endorsed Democrats ran to the left of their opponents and won, unseating a pair of incumbent Democrats. This caused James Carville to declare, “I’m done. I’m not in that f*cking political party.”
It wasn’t just Carville. Democratic leadership was reportedly shaken, yet they are still resistant of coming to grips with reality.
“The mayor and I agree to strongly disagree about some of his endorsements, and he’s got work to do in terms of the conversations that he’s going to have with members of Congress moving forward,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
The reasoning is always the same: how will we unseat Republicans if we don’t run centrists against the far-right extremist candidates of the GOP? Leadership favors candidates who back Israel, who are willing to use the rights of trans children as a bargaining chip, and who are go-along-to-get-along with the powerful tech industry that dominates campaign spending and the media.
Their constituents, however, do not. When presented with a choice, they’re voting for candidates who have woken up and smelled the napalm being dropped on American democracy — fighters willing to inconvenience big businesses so that they can afford to eat, go to work, and access healthcare.
When Hispanics and immigrants are being nabbed off the streets and citizens are being murdered in snowbanks, Democratic voters don’t want to hear “we’ll fix it later in some unspecified way that the Supreme Court will probably shoot down.” They want to hear someone acknowledge that the system is broken, and that they are willing to defy the regime and take risks to protect their constituents.
LGBT people don’t want to hear one more mealy-mouthed promise to “respect the dignity of everyone” when they’re systematically being driven out of public life and erased from history. They want to vote for representatives that see them as constituents worth respecting and fighting for.
Centrism doesn’t create a “big tent”
I’m not some wild-eyed activist; I voted for John McCain in 2008. I’m simply an analyst looking at the data and noticing the glaringly obvious fact that Democratic voters are very unhappy with current party leadership, who they regard as out of touch while still expecting the base to elect whom they tell them to elect.
That’s not how democracy works. You either represent the people who elected you, or you find another job. It’s also not how capitalism works: you either sell something your customers want or need, or you go out of business while your competitors do.
The polling data backs this up. When asked what the worst thing about the Democratic Party is, most voters say that it’s too weak and reluctant to stand up to Trump. Three-quarters of Democrats want to cut off arms sales to Israel unless it stops attacking Gaza and Lebanon. Hakeem Jeffries’s net approval is significantly underwater, and Chuck Schumer’s is even worse.
In fairness, leading a party that’s in the minority in both chambers of Congress while trying to contend with a lawless administration that spits in the face of checks and balances is not easy. But the lack of faith in leadership has led to a notable lack of enthusiasm for the party more broadly. That is why a horribly flawed candidate like Graham Platner in Maine easily beat out a former governor in a primary by promising to be a thorn in leadership’s side.
The Democratic base doesn’t want someone taking AIPAC money, AI money, or shilling for the tech bros and data centers. James Carville’s defection is a result of the Democratic base rejecting the idea of finding “middle ground” with an administration who believes that particular minorities should not exist, and who are using the full force of government to achieve that aim. There is a sense in many communities that if Republicans wanted to throw transgender people out of helicopters from 4,000 feet up (and many of them threaten to do it to me all the time over social media), Democrats would try to negotiate them down to 2,000.
There’s ample evidence that this centrism doesn’t create the “big tent” that leaders think it does. Center-left politicians in the UK Labour Party threw their transgender constituents to the wolves in the hopes of portraying themselves as “not woke” while implementing draconian immigration policies. In the end, their base bailed on them. Now Labour has lost half of its support compared to two years ago. They are at risk of being defeated in the next election at the hands of the far-right Reform UK party, which is currently helping to foment pogroms against legal immigrants in Northern Ireland.
Democratic leadership needs to read the room: their constituents know the old rules are dead. They can clearly see the emergence of a new gilded age of oligarchs who want everything for themselves. They instinctively understand that Trump’s lawlessness demands more than strongly worded pressers.
Finding a “middle ground” won’t work against the tyrannical force that is the modern GOP. You can either give constituents what they’re demanding, or they will find someone who’s up for it.
That’s it for today
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 | A guest post by
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Every point made is exactly how this lifelong Democrat feels. No more cowards. No more AIPAC. My congresswoman, Sarah Elfreth in MD refuses to discuss the fact that she accepted $5,000,000 from AIPAC. I have called repeatedly, and her people will not answer questions. She easily won the primary. I will not vote for her in the general election unless she explains why she took dirty money and vows not to accept any more funds from them. It is time to stand up to the cowards in the Democratic party.
Perhaps Dems should take clues from Hungary or Albania—citizens protest while politicians justify … or stubbornly remain silent.