Yves here. Welcome Jared Holst back, who had graciously let us feature his work; he’s back to posting again. Below, Jared examines the New York City major elections as a microcosm of what ails the Democratic Party. Naked Capitalism has made nihilism the focus of articles, for instance, Curro Jiminez on the role of nihilism in the Israel-Iran conflict and at Google in pursuing AI growth.
Jared’s piece went live before the news broke that conservative pundit and friend/ally of Trump, Charlie Kirk, had been fatally shot at a speech at a Utah campus. Trump and Musk have come out guns-a-blazing, blaming the “radical left” and promising a crackdown. It’s not hard to imagine, even though it is almost certain that Mamdani’s followers had nothing to do with this murder, that he will be a focus of retribution.
By Jared Holst, the author at Brands Mean a Lot, a commentary on the ways branding impacts our lives. He explores contradictions within the way politics, products, and pop-culture are branded for us, offering insight on what’s really being said. You can follow Jared on Twitter @jarholst. Originally published at Brands Mean a Lot
I live in New York City. Some say it is a hundred years old. We recently held a primary election to determine who would be the democratic candidate for mayor. When the race began, political heir and mega-grump Andrew Cuomo was the presumptive winner and nominee. Despite $8.3 million in donations from former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, endorsements from noted saxophone player Bill Clinton, and gerontocratic future hall-of-famer congressman Jim Clyburn, Cuomo lost.
The guy who won, Zohran Mamdani, is a Muslim democratic socialist. What should be praised as a cool-as-hell underdog story and a testament to grassroots campaigning is instead a confirmation of the Democratic party’s deep-seated nihilism.
Few know this, but on September 11th, 2001, members of Al-Qaeda, an Islamic terrorist group, hijacked 4 commercial airliners and crashed the first two into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, located in downtown Manhattan. Probably before too, but especially after, New York City had a mean case of Islamophobia that’s never fully dissipated. This, and that Mamdani supports Palestinian sovereignty, has people acting pretty kooky about his nomination.
Have you ever had a friend or family who when you played a game with them and won, they decided afterward that for whatever reason, it didn’t count? Maybe the sun was in their eyes, their intrusive thoughts were too loud, or the game was rigged because some unexpected outcome? The Democratic party is this person.
So far, most of New York’s most prominent politicians have refused to officially endorse Mamdani, who won the party’s primary fair and square. This list includes governor Kathy Hochul, Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, and house minority leader Hakeem Jeffries. Despite its irrelevance to city-wide politics, the Democratic party’s insistence on supporting Israel’s unjust war in Gaza also means Mamdani has gone astray of party orthodoxy.
In addition to the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, former democrats Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams–the city’s current mayor–are both running as independents. Cuomo has a documented history of being a sex pest and asmattering of corruption issues. Adams also has his own potpourri of corruption charges.
These leaders of New York’s government are faced with a difficult decision: endorse one of the corrupt fellas, neither of which won the primary for said endorsement, or the guy who has no corruption charges and won the primary race. That this is a decision, rather than a reflexive endorsement, tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party’s devotion to its own processes and published standards.
Remember when Trump ran for president the first time and the second time and all the Democrats got torqued because of his sexism, or because of his corruption? Endorsements of Cuomo and Adams by some Dems, coupled with reluctance to embrace Mamdani, reveal these prior complaints to be empty partisanship. Taking into account Dems’ aforementioned support for Israel’s senseless, famine-inducing war in Gaza, we are now fully in the era of nothing mattering on either side of the aisle.
Nihilism is a symptom of despondence. Despondence in this case comes from years devoted to notching a record low approval rating, controlling no part of the federal government, and losing to Trump twice with out of touch presidential campaigns. It’s easy to feel sorry for life’s despondent creatures. Bambi when his mother is shot. Endangered Pandas. The dogs in ASPCA commercials featuring Sarah McLachlan. Unlike the dems, those creatures didn’t graduate to nihilism out of their despondence, they persevered.
Not to mention, those doe-eyed sweeties didn’t shape their policies to appeal to the donors with the largest pockets, or to some monolithic-yet-impossible-to-find political center that if only we stopped giving voice to the progressive left would rejoin us en masse to squash MAGA.
Despite being deeply personal, nihilism hurts others. This is especially true when it’s infected an entire political party whose goal is to obtain the reigns of government. We see this manifested in the hypocritical political stances I describe earlier: Dems are in favor of the U.S. perpetuating a genocide in Gaza (but present as anti-violence), corruption only matters when its someone on the other side of the aisle doing it, and women’s voices should only be heard if it negatively impacts an opponent, not if it could hurt Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral chances. With this nihilism revealed, we discover the Democratic party’s views on these subjects are virtually similar to their opponents, the Republicans.
A recent interview with presidential aspirant and hair-gel sommelier, Gavin Newsom, encapsulates perfectly what I mean. In this snippet, he calls Donald Trump ‘“the leading socialist of our time.” In less than a minute, Newsom manages to apply ‘socialism’ as a pejorative for members of his own party and for Donald Trump. Taken in this context, Zohran’s primary win reveals the extent to which neither party wants to listen to the will of democratic voters. Instead, they both just want everyone to know how icky the word socialism is.
With many similar political stances, the battle to win voters becomes rhetorical. It’s easy to see why Republicans are successful. They provide a clear enemy (immigrants, trans people, DEI, social programs, red dye number 40, etc.), explain how that enemy is hurting people, and then share a plan for fixing the issue. Democrats can’t propose plans that help people because that would be…you guessed it, socialist. Rhetorically, this leaves them their only viable option: to shake their fists and tell us they’re not MAGA. How’re they different than MAGA? We’ll just have to take their word for it.
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That’s a keeper!
Yes, that was great. Please circulate.
Done!
It’s good to have some giggles in the politics.
Most sensible political commentary in a long while. One quibble: seems to me that it is reins of government not reigns of government.
Read it again. I think the double meaning is great wordplay.
I thought of that but went ahead anyway. Perhaps I have seen ‘reins’ and ‘reigns’ misused too many times or it might be the retired English teacher surfacing.
Appreciate the call out! I wish I were clever enough to say it was word play, I just need a better editor (I’m my own editor). Thanks for reading.
Mamdani strikes me the same way Obama did, too smooth to be real. In Garland Nixon’s recent conversation with Joti Brar he mentioned that he looked into the candidate’s wife. Being a former police investigator, he felt qualified to do that, and surprisingly found no evidence that she ever existed prior to 2022. Just saying.
Mamdani might well become AOC with a Y-chromosome. He is starting out as a rising left-wing political star, but if and when he takes office, he might tone down his anti-zionist, pro-labor, anti-poverty rhetoric, and then become another spineless political careerist and DNC lapdog like AOC did.
I am guessing he has already gotten “The Talk” from various DNC insiders, and Sanders probably urged Mamdani to back off from the Israel issue after their meeting because of Sanders’ unjustified loyalty to the DNC despite its abusive relationship to Sanders.
I hope that Mamdani comes through on his campaign promises. The problem is that it is also likely that he was told that he will be made an example of like JFK or Charlie Kirk if he persists with his anti-establishment agenda, and I am sure that local chapters of the Uniparty could easily invent some bogus felonial charges to send out law enforcement to arrest him for and put him in jail.
The Democratic Party is actually quite effective at stopping people or movements it doesn’t like when it really wants to.
I contributed to Mamdani’s campaign and affixed a small Superman but with a ‘Z’ logo to my car. When I read that Black Jesus called him I peeled it off.
Robert Hahl: If Wikipedia can create an entry with this much information on Rama Duwaji, who is by and large a private citizen with little public presence, then Brar might have done a tad more investigating:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama_Duwaji
If I can outdo a police investigator with three minutes of DuckDuckGo searches, I no longer have to wonder why U.S. police forces can never solve any crimes.
Even better, here’s a Wayback link to an article from 2020:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201202223548/https://scenenoise.com/New-Music/egyptian-rapper-felukas-new-project-fights-for-womens-equality-in-islam
It has been hilarious watching the Democrat Establishment go nuts over Mamdani. As we all know, in US politics nihilism in defense of anti-socialism is no vice. The NY Dem machine that took out Cuomo not long ago is doing back-flips trying to hide their preference for him over the “socialist” usurper. Among the many hypocritical “players” in NY politics is Al Sharpton, who is being courted for support in this endeavor.
But since we are on the subject of words – namely the deadly S-word and its usage in smearing any political aspirant as a commie fifth-columnist (along with the M-word in Mamdani’s case) – and also of Al Sharpton, I hope Mamdani’s recent attempt to “moderate” his language in deference to some Jewish “feelings” isn’t a sign of things to come. Here is Glen Greenwald’s very relevant comment on this issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ibTTDZ1dTk
Greenwald has been a strong supporter and defender of Mamdani. But his uneasiness is warranted. He received a plurality of the Jewish vote in his primary victory. Why is he seeming to back off now? Greenwald’s two main political examples are noteworthy: Corbyn and Trump. Which one tried to be conciliatory to his unscrupulous political enemies, and what happened to him? I’m not trying to make the perfect the enemy of the good here, and I understand the need for, um, “compromise” in politics. But as Greenwald says, people want authenticity. The Party machine and its backers obviously do not. So what happens next?
Nihilism may be a bit strong since it implies the leading Dems were deliberately out to tear down the party rather than such a result being collateral damage from their rampant self dealing.
But tear down they have as seen in the weak response to Trump’s truly anarchistic presidency. I guess you could say those Dems were out to tear down socialism but when did we ever have that? The welfare state that we did have was meant to keep the commies at bay.
Good luck to Mamdani.
Nihilism is not directly destructive to institutions. It’s a rejection of principles. It’s exactly the correct word.
Here’s the encarta dictionary definition
ni·hil·ism [n ə lìzzəm, n ə lìzzəm, níhi lìzzəm]
noun
1. total rejection of social mores: the general rejection of established social conventions and beliefs, especially of morality and religion
2. belief that nothing is worthwhile: a belief that life is pointless and human values are worthless
3. disbelief in objective truth: the belief that there is no objective basis for truth
4. belief in destruction of authority: the belief that all established authority is corrupt and must be destroyed in order to rebuild a just society
5. Ni·hil·ismRussian political movement: a political movement in late 19th-century Russia that sought to bring about a socially just new society by destroying the existing one through acts of terrorism and assassination
This sounds conscious destructive intent to me. Whereas the Dems claim they are upholding worthy values even as they undermine them.
de-nihilist!
De-nihil–not just a river in Egypt. Ok I’ll stop.
Nihilism has positive meanings among the negative, so I do wish people wouldn’t throw it around just as a synonym for meaningless and destructive intention. Nihilism can be not a rejection of meaning and principles, but a rejection of the idea that meaning and principles are imposed by a non-human necessity such as by God or objective rules. One can be a nihilist and still have principles, but a nihilist wouldn’t claim that they are objective. I wish there was a more common word for a rejection of principles that didn’t trash Nihilism, but the word is something like anarchism, which gets used to mean destruction and chaos, when it just means “no rulers”.
I remember when another “socialist” from NYC appeared in government claiming they were against genociding Palestinians and letting all the rich oligarchs continue their reign of terror in the world.
Mamdami = AOC2.0
Bait and switch is of course a clear possibility. But considering the other options…well we might as well give him a chance to prove he isn’t running that scam. (Not for nothing, and the roadblocks to the agenda may mask his abandonment of it. Yet we might actually see some real fighting for it, and as one not Manhattan city voter pointed out, Mamdani came to his neighborhood which none of the other Democrats did.)
I just talked to someone bemoaning what the city would be like if Mamdani won. They reluctantly had to admit that the two independents running had far more to do with the problems of the city we had been discussing prior to them admitting Mamdani scared them. And even further on had to admit that factoring in in the known to be problems and bad for NYC policies the only logical choices were the two who had not been either Mayor or Governor. I did stick the knife in when I added that they were also the ones who did not have a record of being for sale to the largest bidder among other corruption.
Mind you I have also recently told someone who knows my pox on both their Houses feelings that I believe Mamdani should be thankful that the big Democrats in NY have so pointedly avoided endorsing him. They are increasingly unpopular and this is probably helping him, an endorsement would tar him as just one of the useless toadies. People forget that Cuomo faced two primaries where the City metropolitan area is practically the only reason he survived. If Cuomo’s loss was the lightning bolt wake up call it should have been for the state Democratic bigwigs, they are flailing in denial. Personally I think Hochul will have a much larger problem than currently expected in November, and if either Schumer or Gillibrand were facing a Democratic Socialist in a primary anytime soon they would also be toast. People are not happy and they are more and more aware that the current office holders offer nothing. (And as someone who deeply wants Cuomo to disappear and never be heard of again, I want to thank the clueless bourgeoisie of Long Island for trying to interfere so obviously. That’s helping too.)
It’s reasonable to suspect that Mamdani might turn out to be a sheepdog of progressives but until then if he is saying what I want to be said then I can support him.
In the mean time the freak-out reaction of the Donorcratic Party to him, as Jared ably set out (welcome back, Jared!), is useful demonstration of their position.
I don’t think it’s necessarily nihilism to believe in money and power, in that order. That seems as American as apple pie to me. At the same time I don’t think the priorities are really different in the Republican Party so how come they seem to do better in the ways Jared described? Well, perhaps as the party openly into money and power they don’t need to act like abject phonies.
The Democratic Party made their bed with big donors and neocon queen HRC. Given the party’s loyalties, their accidental or intentional campaign slogan of “Look at the other guy…” fits and explains the DP to a ‘T’. This is unchanging. It has been said that the DP is where progressive ideas go to die. Absolutely. The best thing for the electorate would be for the DP to disappear in the hope that an actual progressive party can arise.
IMO, short of removing every DP leader, consultant, and lobbyist the Democratic Party is a fifth column dead-end for genuinely progressive, people based policies.
Various progressive party wannabes should try getting themselves into existence now so that they can compete to fill the vacuum left if the Democratic Party dies.
Also, various New Deal Reactionaries ( ” We want our New Deal back!”) might try conquering the Democratic Party from within step by step and try to get enough power to conduct Stalinesque purges of all the Clinton-Pelosi-Obama-etc. type personnel from out of the Party. I suppose New Deal Reactionaries trying to conquer the Party from within could run on the concept of “impeaching” and “repealing” Project 2025 and specifically repealing the Big Beautiful Bill in all its aspects. They could call it the Big Beautiful Repeal and see if it is a power-building vote-getter.
Different people can start trying different things.
What’s important to understand is that the “Democrats” ceased being a political party in any traditional sense beginning with Bill Clinton’s shock plurality victory in 1992, when traditional Democrats mistook GHW Bush’s Gulf War polling as guaranteeing his reelection. Clinton governed as a GOP-lite Reaganite independent of traditional Democratic constituencies, which he had thoroughly alienated by 2000.
In 2008 Barack Obama was able to leverage massive funding from his billionaire patron Penny Pritzker to fool those alienated Democrats hoping for change from the GOP-lite Clintons into believing that he adhered to their values. Obama, like the Clintons, is a pathological narcissist who never created a political organization beyond the one designed to promote him personally, and OFA disappeared after he left office.
OFA sucked up all the cash and bankrupted the DNC by 2009. It was rescued by the corrupt Clinton Foundation and is now a private club run for the purpose of enriching a half-dozen political consultants adjacent to the Clintons. The Wilding vs. DNC litigation showed us through testimony how the DNC suppressed the will of party voters to twice subvert their ability to even vote for Bernie Sanders.
The refusal of establishment “Democrats” to support the candidate nominated by voters is evidence that they are no longer in favor of democracy. They are the party of Inverted Totalitarianism devoted to sucking up contributions large and small in order to enrich the consultants who anointed them.
What or who is OFO?
If you mean OFA ( Organizing For Action), that Obama created as a velcro decoy roach motel to lure in democrat supporters, here is a wiki about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizing_for_Action
Velcro Decoy Roach Motel. Hah! So true!
OFA started as “Obama For America” Obama’s 2008 fake-out Howard Dean-style “grassroots” fundraising operation designed to disguise that his true funders were billionaire Penny Pritzker and Goldman Sachs.
I was in the room in late 2008 (probably because I was Treasurer of a government worker PAC) when the state OFA chair announced that it would be re-branded as “Organizing For America” in 2009. We were informed that Obama wasn’t interested in what the grassroots wanted and that our job was going to be getting the grassroots in line to support Obama’s FIRE-friendly agenda — Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate. I ran.
After the 2012 election OFA again was re-branded as “Organizing For Action” which was a more nakedly access-peddling outfit à-la the Clinton Global Initiative, but people weren’t buying what OFA was selling and it pretty much went dead in 2014.
Many were disillusioned by OFA and stayed away from the Democrats in droves after they underhandedly crushed the Sanders movement in 2016, contributing to rise the Trump dictatorship and the intervening corpse-presidency of Genocide Joe.
If you like the phrase velcro decoy roach motel, feel free to use it and spread it around to see if it takes hold and spreads further by itself.
Through linguistic experiments like this do we embiggen the language, or at least try to.
Indeed. Circling the wagons and staying the course by the DP’s leaders is an enduring legacy from 2016 for me. Now time goes by and nothing has changed except perhaps the DP base has become even more subservient. Nevertheless, I think the name “Democratic Party” is starting to become a tangible problem for the DP. I mean, every utterance is a joke. I suggest they officially change their name to the “Ironically Named Democratic Party.” I think they might reach more people that way…
“Donorcratic” Party from above seems to be a jeeringly good nickname. Possibly rebel Democrats like that guy in Maine trying to get in a position to run against Collins might use it in phrases like ” I am a Democrat, not a Donorcrat” and see where that goes.
Doesn’t this link within the links in today’s links complicate the Kirk narrative:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/3383410/charlie-kirk-trump-antisemitism-crackdown-free-speech-rights-under-attack/
(Full disclosure: I just heard of the guy today.)
The Dems only objective is to serve their big-money donors and keep the money coming in. If they can do this without winning an election, so much the better, since, if they win, they have to make up excuses for why they cannot actually implement legislation they claim to support. They are true experts in feigning incompetence and failing in a way that just happens to please their donors.