Time to stand up for democratic principles….
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New York City, the largest city in the United States, with a population of 8.4M people or 2.5% of the country, just chose a young progressive democrat, Zohran Mamdani, in a landslide as their lead Democratic candidate for mayor. The Democratic Party elite, despite being in popular decline, has decided to line up against him… Raise foot, load pistol, aim at foot, pull trigger.
I’m sorry, in this time of partisan chaos and an accelerating wealth gap, the noncommittal center will not hold. A growing percentage of this country is simply unable to make ends meet and are desperately casting about for a way forward that will fulfill the promise of their country: economic security, due process, freedom to speak their minds and to elect people they feel represent them in getting that job done. Bernie’s mass rallies in the midwestern states have shown us that many Americans are looking for someone who understands their plight and will fight for their interests and the common good.
Some Americans will still cling to their narrow ideologies on the right or left, but most of us watch with fear what’s going on nationally and want to work for a reunification that celebrates and strengthens us all, starting with economic security.
We rattle on about MAGA Republicans who don’t have the courage to stand up for their constituents against Trump and his camouflage cabinet of tech-elite billionaires. But it’s time now to call out our own nervous-nellie, “centrist” Democrats like Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and the others who deter or outright refuse to support Mamdani. They, too, are funded by tech-elite interests.
We must remind them that, since FDR, the strength of the Democratic Party has been that it stood for the common good rather than the further enrichment of elites. In FDR’s time, the elites were monopolist industrialists. Today it’s the tech-elite — Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison et al — who pay homage to “democratic values” but, in reality, believe they can manage our lives better than we can and should manage them for us. So much for the common good.
Some of the old-line Democrats have gone so far as to endorse Eric Adams, the disgraced current mayor of New York City who has just announced he is running again in November even though he is under federal indictment for conspiracy to defraud the United States — one count of wire fraud; two counts of soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals, and one count of soliciting and accepting a bribe. Is this what the Democratic Party has become?
My only wish is that Mamdani had not called himself a “democratic socialist.” “Socialist” has no real meaning in today’s society and is easily used by opponents to tag him as some Marxist politician. I understand what he’s saying and he clarified it himself on Fox News, “To me it means that every New Yorker has what they need to live a dignified life – it’s local government’s responsibility to provide that.” He said he would achieve this with a rent freeze on the city’s 2.3 million apartments, free childcare starting at six months, free buses, and a $30/hour minimum wage by 2030 — $30/hour is the current calculation for a livable wage for New Yorkers. The federal minimum wage in the United States in 2025 remains $7.25 per hour. Who in the country much less New York City can live on $15,000 a year?
My problem with the term “socialist” is that it is now most often used derogatorily, at least in this country where it has for many years been synonymous with communism. Whereas its spectrum of vernacular meaning includes a description of the popular Scandinavian economies wherein high taxes are used cost-efficiently to fund a social safety net. A majority of Scandinavians have, in other words, a shared belief in funding the common good.
“Socialism” is already being used widely here in political broadsides against Mamdani, with the clear intent of associating him with past figures like Marx, Engels, and Trotsky rather than many progressive economies that now exist around the world.
What will put this country on a better footing? Not the tech-elites, who will use their vast wealth and influence to fight any form of progressive taxation of their wealth or effective regulation of their businesses. Mamdani, by contrast, has suggested a 2% tax on the top 1% of New Yorkers making more than $1M a year. To put this in perspective currently just 34,000 households (or 1%) account for 35% of all earnings in the Big Apple. He has also proposed raising the top corporate tax rate to match neighboring New Jersey’s at 11.5%. These two reforms in NYC would alone bring in $10B, funds that could be used to invest in a social safety net for poorer New Yorkers.
The other attack strategy now being used against Mamdani is to accuse him of “antisemitism.” In the recent primary campaign for mayor, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo did not shrink from attacking him as an “antisemite” and even “a Holocaust denier.” Since Cuomo was roundly defeated by New Yorkers, Republicans are trying to paint Mamdani as the poster child of a Marxist, terrorist immigrant, consistent with Trump’s meme. And some Democratic politicians are joining forces with them, as I’ve noted.
New York’s business leaders and Wall Street elites are in a swivet about Mamdani’s rise and it remains to be seen how they will respond.
Meanwhile, President Trump has broached the subject of stripping Mamdani of his U.S. citizenship after Andy Ogles, a Republican from Tennessee calling him “little Muhammad,” demanded his citizenship be revoked, claiming with no evidence that Mamdani concealed his support for “terrorism during the naturalization process.
Admirably, Senator Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat, recently wrote on his Bluesky account, “Trump will stop at nothing to protect billionaires and price gouging corporations, even racist bullshit like this. Zohran won because he ran a campaign laser focused on putting power back in the hands of working people. And that’s a threat to the Mar a Lago crowd.”
Quite simply, the way forward for this seemingly lost Democratic Party is to listen to its constituents. Since the Obama era, the party has been in popular decline, in large part because it seems they are trying to play both sides of the interests that support them… voters and megadonors. There comes a time in our lives when we must choose. History has proven that we cannot be all things to all people as the Preamble to our Constitution says:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Happy Independence Day.
–Bill Schubart
