The Democratic Party's future, under the bright lights
Plus, some news
Welcome to a Friday night edition of Progress Report.
I don’t frequently write about New York politics, but tonight, I’m using the city to draw a larger picture of the dynamic facing Democrats right now.
I’ll be at the NYC Labor Day parade tomorrow, so I’ll let you know of any exciting details or happenings. Judging by the comments, readers seemed to enjoy this week’s dive into that latest labor news, organizing, and strikes: is that something people want on a more regular basis? Let me know in the comments!
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There is a battle afoot for the future of the Democratic Party and it runs through New York City.
It’s a multi-faceted fight: traditional corporate centrists against progressive populists; established and elderly lawmakers versus an aggressive new generation of leaders; institutionalists against insurgents. No single fight will determine the direction of the Democratic Party, but the high profile power struggles here in New York will give a very good indication of who has the juice right now.
It begins with the NYC mayoral election, which is growing nastier by the day. Mayor Eric Adams, who is running a long-shot reelection campaign as an independent, today held a press conference to call disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo a snake and a liar for allegedly spreading the word that Donald Trump offered him an ambassadorship to drop out of the race. It was an instantly iconic moment:
Adams isn’t wrong about Cuomo, but obviously doesn’t have the best record with the truth, either; the mayor went to Florida this week to speak with Trump amid reports that Trump has in fact been considering giving Adams an ambassadorship to clear the field. Either way, the reality is that Trump absolutely wants Cuomo to defeat Mamdani and has become fixated on a race that his old NYC billionaire friends, like Ronald Lauder, are desperately trying to purchase for the former governor.
Cuomo, the son of a three-term former governor, has tried to paint Mamdani as an elite who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He’s also sought to make the race an explicitly ideological one, linking Mamdani to the most radical (or, aspirational) items on the national DSA platform. He’s had help on that front by many other New York Democrats, most prominently Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi, who nearly went the full McCarthy on Mamdani in a local TV interview this week.
“Zohran Mamdani and other Democratic Socialists should create their own party because I don’t want that in my party,” Suozzi said during a rant against the Democratic nominee chosen overwhelmingly by Democratic voters. Suozzi has been railing against Mamdani and DSA since before the primary, an aggressive campaign that he believes will inoculate him from right-wing attacks.
Suozzi is one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress; much of his special election campaign was about embracing ICE, and he primaried Gov. Kathy Hochul from the right with a tough-on-crime campaign that failed miserably. His outspokenness has not drowned out the deafening silence from Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, who have each refused to endorse Mamdani, the Democratic nominee of the city where they live.
It’s an approach that smacks of hypocrisy and does the opposite of building that so-called big tent that only ever seems to expand toward the right. Democrats understand this race as an early preview of next year’s primaries, both nationally and locally, especially after this week’s latest Congressional retirement.
On Monday, longtime Congressman Jerry Nadler announced that he will retire at the end of his 16th term in office. A giant of the House of Representatives, Nadler’s liberalism fit right in with the traditional politics of the Upper West Side: progressive, anti-war but pro-Israel, and committed to the norms and processes that long-governed Washington. He recognized the urgency of our current crises and has the self-awareness, rare among politicians, to re-evaluate long-held positions and acknowledge that this moment demands leaders adept at a new kind of politics.
Whether we get that is very much an open question.
When Nadler was first elected to Congress in 1992, it was the natural step up after years spent serving in the state legislature. The Democratic Party’s internal divisions at the time didn’t apply that much to the Upper West Side, and over the years, Nadler has become such an institution that his personal politics were almost irrelevant; when he defeated longtime colleague Rep. Carolyn Maloney when their districts were drawn together after 2020, it wasn’t so much a triumph of ideology as familiarity.
Changes in Democratic politics, along with the fact that the district now covers much of Manhattan, mean that this will be a deeply ideological battle fueled by what could be a record amount of money.
The mayoral primary provides a decent proxy for geographic ideology: a plurality of voters in both the Upper East Side and Upper West Side ranked Andrew Cuomo at the top of their mayoral primary ballots, as did East Midtown, parts of the Lower East Side, and the wealthy edges of the West Village. Zohran Mamdani was strong in places where the rent is cheaper and voters are younger, including Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown West, the East Village, and Murray Hill.
There are a plethora of potential candidates for NY-12, from across the ideological spectrum. Nadler’s protege, west side Assemblyman Micah Lasher, is likely to run, as is his colleague Alex Bores, who represents much of the east side and fits the mold of progressive professional. City Councilman Erik Bottcher, a Mamdani ally, is also contemplating running, and I’d bet we’ll see a campaign from Councilwoman Julie Menin, a longtime moderate politico and wife of real estate magnate Bruce Menin.
There are real policy differences between these potential candidates, and given the way Mamdani’s primary victory upended city politics and shocked wealthy donors to their core, it should be one of the most expensive House primaries in history.
A decent comparison would be the race for NY-10 back in 2022. Rep. Dan Goldman squeezed out the narrowest plurality thanks to his own personal wealth and enormous contributions from Wall Street and the pro-Israel lobby. That issue is going to play far more prominently next year, and the NY-12 race — with its prominent Jewish population — will be a good test of just how far the pendulum has swung on Israel.
Economic populism will also be on the ballot. NY-12 has some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, but the crumbling economy and near-impossibility of getting an affordable apartment in the city has increasingly impacted middle and upper-income residents. The relentless attacks on proposals like free buses and freezing rent in stabilized units have sharpened the ideological stakes of the mayoral race, which will offer an early indication of just how hungry the Democratic primary base is for economic populism.
The clip below is what those Democrats are afraid. Good luck to them.
Recruitment: A new story in Politico explores the Democratic Party’s purported effort to recruit “normal dud” to run for office. This is good news! The story focuses on Iowa Rep. JD Scholten, who was forced out of the Senate race by the DSCC weeks ago, which makes it a bit awkward and indicates how much work there is to be done. You can read my piece with Scholten about his effort to connect Democrats with normal dudes right here.
And so it begins: I spent much of the first half of this year writing about the specter of balkanization in response to the growing fascism of the federal government. First up: regional health associations and state laws that circumvent the CDC’s new anti-vaccine limitations. States haven’t worked their way up to ordering resistance to the military occupation of blue cities, but you’ve got to start somewhere.
War on children: Republican states embracing the anti-vax fervor and even one-upping the federal government are making a political mistake: In Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis is working to repeal all school vaccine mandates, 82% of residents actually support requiring young kids to receive inoculations against childhood diseases.
Missouri: Republican legislators took a step toward passing a constitutional amendment that would make it far harder for voters to amend the constitution via ballot initiative. They do face one big hurdle: voters will have to approve the constitutional amendment. After a decade of voting for initiatives to pass progressive policy like Medicaid expansion and a minimum wage increase, that’s going to be a challenge for Republicans.
Bravo: A number of prominent Republicans in Louisiana have asked the Supreme Court to uphold the state’s Congressional map and uphold Act II of the Voting Rights Act. The state GOP recently dropped its defense of its map and asked the Supreme Court to overturn the VRA.
Trade imbalance: As if tariffs haven’t taken enough of a bite out of foreign trade, now customs officials in Seattle have seized $500K in counterfeit Labubu dolls, denying the people access to affordable little gremlins.
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is it more genocide!? i know you evil weak losers love genocide !!
It is definitely time to turn the page on the old, blue dog Democratic Party. they have a choice to make: follow their young leaders and pass the torch, or die as a Party.
If they look at the votes they missed in past elections, it is the votes of the workers, blue collar workers, whom Hillary threw away with pearls like "who else are they going to vote for?", suggesting that they have to vote D because Trump was so bad.
Calling them "low education voters" was a stroke of super stupidity. Well, yes, Trump is terrible but they showed her by voting for Trump. The Democratic Party has to rebuild the alliance with blue collar workers and their Unions their traditional allies.
The platform should be unabashedly pro-Union.
The old guard looked for new political allies in all the minorities, and they aren't totally wrong, but they need to remember that all minorities WORK, usually for low paying wages, so when you support all blue collar workers and Federal workers, you still support minorities, so you get a "Two for" . You still do not abandon the minorities.
Cuomo and Adams are also the look of corruption,, and if you want to defeat Trump, don't support those two, because Trump will attack you on them while himself escaping unscathed for much worse.