Rage Against the Machine
What the New York City primary results tell us about Democratic Party politics
New York City’s primary election results tell one fundamental story: A total rebuke of the Democratic Party, and a desire for radical — if somewhat ideologically amorphous — change.
A record number of Democratic Socialists won, backed by mayor Zohran Mamdani and the DSA. The word “Palestine” must have been uttered more in these primary elections than any others in New York State history. The socialist candidates ran against Democrats and AIPAC as much as they ran against Republicans and Donald Trump. They are a near-universally young bunch, and their message is that things are fundamentally broken for most Americans; that big change is necessary, and the mainstream Democratic Party is not delivering it.
I will be honest: I am not a revolutionary. I do not, as the DSA platform demands, want to rewrite the Constitution of the United States. I have mixed feelings about some of the primary winners. I think several of them are smart and interesting and I’m glad to see them push the party to the left; there are a small number of others who I think are genuine lunatics. I also think Mamdani has been a very good mayor, largely forgoing pointless ideological fight-picking in favor of delivering tangible services for New Yorkers. He is also an excellent mayor-as-figurehead: People want to follow a leader, and Mamdani is an inspiring speaker with nearly contagious positivity; he clearly loves New York, and he invites everyone in the city to be as invested in and excited by the city as he is. Technocratic liberals like me tend to prefer uninspiring but competent leaders; Mamdani is an important reminder that if you want to actually persuade people to get your agenda accomplished, having an enthusiastic broader public behind you really helps.
It’s also not a coincidence that this emergent crop of socialist electeds are young, or that many of them came from the pro-Palestine movement. The mainstream Democratic Party has utterly failed to make room for young leaders. It has utterly failed to cultivate young talent. And it has certainly failed to foster the kinds of ideological communities that excite and engage the young and idealistic.
In conservative circles, there has been a decades-long effort to inculcate conservative ideology in universities and law schools via the Federalist Society and other groups, and more recently various young conservative groups (Turning Points USA, American Moment, and so on) have created spaces for intra-conservative discussion, debate, and philosophical exchange. It’s hard to overstate how much young and politically-engaged people want these spaces: One hallmark of youth is engaging with new and sometimes provocative ideas. As the staid old Republican Party turned MAGA, it became provocative indeed, and the far right movement benefited from its air of transgression. The Democratic Party and mainstream liberalism offered the exact opposite: censoriousness, a culture of call-outs and cancellations, little space for new ideas once the politics of identity had exhausted themselves.
The DSA and the broader socialist left filled the void.
