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Notes -
Zohran Mamdani won three US House of Representatives seats last week. Claire Valdez in NY-7, Brad Lander in NY-10, and Darializa Avila Chevalier in NY-13 each won the Democratic primary after being endorsed by Mamdani, knocking-off two incumbants in the process. These are all 80-20 Democratic districts, so there is no realistic chance of any of them losing in the November.
Darializa Avila Chevalier is the one still making headlines a week later. She is, as far as anyone can tell, an actual communist. Rumors are that she personally founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest when she was a student there in 2016. Her stance on policing? She's against it.
Center-left politicos are currently melting down that someone like this won and is being accepted by the party apparatus. Credit to them for denouncing socialism I guess, but did they not know who their base is? Did they completely forget all of those "defund the police" chants from 2020? Did they not know that those people vote Democrat?
Some people want to kick Chevalier out of the party, bless their hearts. This wouldn't work even if it were feasable. Democrats need votes from leftists to be competative nationally. A party at war with its own base cannot stand.
I don't think she can be kicked out, seeing as how she's DSA not Democrat. But I also think she's not going to do much more than make a few fiery speeches, possibly try a few stunts and get slapped down for them (like early career AOC did) and settle down to cultivate a political career (like AOC did). She was selected by the same king-makers (the Justice Democrats) who got AOC and a slate of others elected, so my take on all this is: (a) it's New York, this sort of stuff will run locally but not nationally and (b) she will not, in fact, rock any boats; she'll work on keeping her seat by keeping on the right side of the college-educated white liberals who elected her.
If I'm being cynical (no, me?) expect an appearance in a couple of years time at the next Met Gala with her own designer togs emblazoned with the right-on messaging just like Sandy from the block 😁
The DSA win has already flipped Newsom on the wealth tax (he opposed it before, he supports it now); Hakeem Jeffries has already feted them. The Democrats know this is the future of their party.
Newsom is triangulating, not flipping. He opposes a state wealth tax that is actually on the ballot and has a real chance of passing; he supports a national wealth tax that is entirely theoretical and will not be passed anytime soon (hopefully...). This allows him to deflect future primary criticisms of him being in the pockets of billionaires by saying it's just the badly implemented and foolish state level tax he opposes.
He doesn't actually care about wealth taxes as a policy one way or another, except insofar as they help or hinder his way to the White House. But his current strategy balances the competing stories he's selling to donors and primary voters in a reasonable way.
All accounts of Newsom I've heard from Democrats who would be close enough to him to know - which isn't many, to be fair - has him pegged as an empty suit with no beliefs of his own that will say whatever is necessary to gain power. This was criticism levied against prior Democratic POTUS candidates Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, neither of whom succeeded in their runs. Presuming that these accounts about Newsom are true, surely Newsom himself knows the relatively low recent success rate of Democratic POTUS candidates with this kind of personality. So I'm left wondering what his play for the POTUS is, since it's been considered essentially common knowledge that he would run in 2028 since at least 2024 (the oft-repeated claim that Trump's election in 2024 means the end of democracy in America notwithstanding). Perhaps he will shock the world and just not run in 2028 and is playing 4D chess to set himself up for a successful 2032 or 2036 run?
Yeah, my view is that he was really obligated to Biden who swung the party behind him and supported him all the way during the recall election that failed. Newsom might have managed that on his own, but Biden's support was the signal that everyone better settle down and stop making waves for the rest of the Dems.
Ambition, since he is a politician. Vanity, since he's Gavin. Yearning for more, since the governorship is as high as he can get and that's term-limited. Manoeuvring for influence and moving into a position where he's a string-puller in the party at large, perhaps. He's still young in political terms, maybe if he figures the Clintons are on the way out eventually he wants the new dynasty to be the Newsoms?
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