The Democratic primary is just the preseason, in that it does not count at all. A clear-eyed view of this is essential for successfully building coalitions and avoiding catastrophes: what Max Weber and John Maynard Keynes have to say to overenthusiastic supporters of Zohran Mamdani…
It is reasonably well known as these things go that since the first Trump administration, I have been a firm believer that those of us write social Democrats or left neoliberals who wish good things for America in the world have no live political options, except to pass the baton to those on our left. We should then give them good advice. We should hope they do not drop the baton. We should hope that they run in the right rather than the wrong direction, but until the center right possesses any ac executiontors with political force who are neither grifter, morons, fools, nor cowards, that is our only option if we seek to accomplish good things for America and for the world.
However, this morning I confess I wince, very strongly wince, at the headline and the vibe here. I pick on John Ganz because he is (a) hard-working and knowledgeable, (b) intelligent, and (c) good-hearted:
John Ganz: What It Took To Win <https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/what-it-took-to-win>: ‘Thoughts on Zohran Mamdani’s Popular Front…. We were told…. We were told repeatedly…. And we were told…. The lesson Mamdani and his strategists evidently took… was that… [there was] an opening for another kind of protest politics entirely, one that was constructive and positive…. There was an entire universe of motivated voters (and, importantly, volunteers) out there just waiting to be reactivated: Veterans of Bernie 2016, 2020, Warrenistas, and all the civic movements of the 2010s…. Mamdani does well in the middle, which in New York, with its high cost of living, stretches well into the six figures…. Unionized wage laborers, junior white-collar professionals, and small business owners. Say what you like about their feasibility, the major policy portions of Mamdani’s campaign were about cost-of-living issues, and he targeted a coalition that goes across cultural and racial backgrounds but were all struggling to build decent lives in New York….
The old civic associations’ power to control and mobilize the electorate has been steadily weakening…. The “machine”… pre-dates even the labor union, the radio, and television!… Mamdani mastered the new and dominant form of civic association: the Internet…. Politics is ultimately about speaking in public. Find someone with powers of self-expression and you’re in business….
The electorate doesn’t really exist until election day, and the politician and his or her campaign are actively creating that electorate. All political errors, from the level of action to analysis, are based on reifying the situation, believing in a static, factual situation that cannot be changed. And all great political successes are based on the opposite: the art of the impossible; believing in a chance for something new…
But: “Winning” a Democratic-Party primary wins you nothing.
The primary election is a choice process in which people who regard themselves as Democrats together—by whether they turn out or not and who they then vote for—select a candidate to put forward to the general electorate for its consideration on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. John Ganz should thus not be enthusing about “winning”, “something new”, “great political success”, “creating the [primary] electorate”, a “a coalition [of]… all struggling to build decent lives”, “protest politics… constructive and positive”, “universe of motivated voters… and volunteers”, and so forth.
John should be looking backward: Did this process select a candidate who is in the sweet spot with respect to properly balancing (a) the likelihood that the general-election voters will in fact approve the Democratic Party’s candidate to be Mayor of New York City, and (b) the likelihood that that candidate as Mayor will build governmental-bureaucratic coalitions to implement policies that will successfully advance the good parts of Democratic-Party values and preferences? And John should be looking forward: (c) What needs to be done, starting today, to maximize the long-run policy and governance wins should we be lucky enough to find Zohran Mamdami mayor of New York City come next year?
