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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.
Also in the news, Scott Wiener gets harassed out of a trans pride parade.
I can't find the full version of the video, but there's a bit where someone says something like "You've done a lot for the gay community, but...", where the lot is stuff like protecting 24 year olds who have sex with 14 year olds.
THAT GUY isn't far left enough anymore.
From a leftist perspective, Scott Weiner has a questionable record on Israel. He’s funded by J-Street and supports providing Israel with “defensive” weapons.
Given the opinions of the base, one really would expect the left-flank of the party to take a harder line on this.
tl;dr: the left is in an existential crisis because of Israel.
I wanted to write a post on the recent shifts in lefty rhetoric. The big one is 'This isn't Woke 1.0 anymore'
To define a few terms for convenience sake. The 'base' is the politically active far left portion. The 'establishment' is the more 'moderate' one. Popular examples of viewpoint representatives of the 'base' online are Vaush and BadEmpanada. Popular examples of the establishment are Contrapoints, PhilosophyTube and Destiny.
The big shift from the base can be described thusly: Performative woke stuff is out. You can no longer signal that you are in favor of soft social causes that are otherwise irrelevant to broader critiques of capitalism and colonialism or similar lefty theology. This might hold interesting connotations for transgenders as an untouchable priestly class in leftism. But in practice this just means that there have been some genuine changes at the grass roots level. And they are putting Palestine first as a purity test. The base is making this adjustment due to a series of genuinely devastating political losses.
You can say it begins with the Biden admin not standing up to Israel after Oct.7. The base got to feel what it's like when their representatives and institutions don't go along with them. This was a thing the base really cared about. But the establishment ignored for, at the time, seemingly no good reason. Come election season, Harris doubled down on this 'don't ask don't tell' position on Israeli overreach. This made the base even madder. If folks remember a few weeks back, the infamous 'Election Autopsy Report' that the DNC didn't want to release, the base was projecting whole heartedly that they lost because Harris was soft on Israel-Palestine. So not only was the base getting ignored, they also believed they were losing because of it.
To make matters worse, Trump started doing things this term. DOGE, along with the USAID thing happened. It was the first sign that the left as a whole was starting to lose grasp on just what was going on. The first symbolic defeat they've felt in a long time. The right was genuinely running a victory lap waving around all the ridiculous lefty causes that had been receiving millions of dollars. Hating Musk and lighting Teslas on fire was, as far as political activism goes, ineffective at actually achieving anything, even if just rhetorically or cathartically. Alongside this ran legislative defeats like the passing of the OBBBA and the ICE apocalypse alongside Trump admin actions against colleges and campuses. Those were principally establishment defeats, but the base got to pay the price.
Lets put ourselves in the shoes of the base. After having been gassed up through propaganda that Trump was going to make the sky fall down, there are now people from their ranks that are dead. Some jailed for a long time, and others permanently damaged, either physically, mentally or professionally from participating in lefty activism, with nothing to show for it. At the same time the base has not just been losing internally to the establishment, but they've also been watching the establishment lose externally to the right.
What's worse, they're now competing for space online against the likes of Theo Von, Tucker Carlson and similar, who have been filling the moderate 'I like healthcare and dislike Israel' void on the right/center. At the same time they have no leverage over the more extreme right wingers that occupy X and alternative streaming sites. This is a far cry from the 2017-2020 years where the left could exert pressure on the media landscape at will. A clear example of their loss of power.
Now, why can't the establishment just mend things with the base? Why are they huffing and puffing about the extremists in their own backyard? Why can't they give them institutional cover like they once did? Outside of the right genuinely becoming stronger due to a lack of censorship, there is a one word answer: Israel. The establishment can't compromise any more on Israel. They have to vote yes when Israel asks for arms. They have to stand up and clap for Netanyahu. And the base is redefining itself around the singular cause of Israel bombing children in Gaza being a bad thing.
There's no more intersectionalism. There no more 'sit down a black woman is speaking'. The base has slowly realized that organizing around words and ideas is stupid. You need something concrete as a barometer. And they are slowly enforcing that the actual program is not gay sex, protesting for black criminals or men in womens sports, but dead children in Gaza. And if you don't get with the program, regardless of who you are or identify as, you can be dismissed on those terms.
Will this last? I don't know. The establishment has usually managed to reign everything in come election year. But it might be that with changing demographics on the ground, and the reckless actions of Israel, that the American left is genuinely swirling down the drain of a third world communist toilet because they can't say no to infinity immigration and Israel.
Why?
Because they have power and can't afford to be that stupid.
Israel may be unpopular, but Palestine is genuinely run by an evil regime that would behead every American if they had the power to do so. And it's not just a bad regime, its popular. If you have power you can smile nicely at the "queers for Palestine" people, but you still have to keep the reality in your head that not only would those people be beheaded in Palestine, you probably would too
I’m not asking why these Dem leaders are not taking a clear stand with Hamas against Israel. I’m asking what perceived tangible political risk is there in them parting ways with the Israel Lobby and refusing to yield to them anymore.
The voter base hates Israel, but the donor base still generally likes Israel (at least the theoretical concept of Israel, not necessarily the current government). Imagine the political blowback from pissing off
The Media,
Big Tech,
Big Finance, and
Lawyers
All at the same time.
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