Democratic Party leaders must choose voters over billionaires

Authoritarians who are openly working to dismantle our shared system of government are on the verge of succeeding. Because of that, in every election up and down the ballot, the only important question is which candidate will defend democracy.

Zohran Mamdani did a remarkable thing last month in defeating a former governor to become the Democratic nominee in the race for New York City mayor. He secured the most votes of any primary candidate in the city’s history. Inspiring people to vote is critical to saving democracy.

And in the process of galvanizing folks, the democratic socialist scared the crap out of Wall Street and its buddies — which is another reason to get excited about his candidacy.

Instead, too many high-ranking Democrats appear too worried about angering their wealthy donors to do the right thing. They are effectively enabling the MAGA insurrection.

In explaining why he isn’t endorsing Mamdani, for example, U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-NY, said, “We don’t really know each other well.”

There are other serious candidates on the ballot in the general election, and we don’t want them to win. There’s Democrat-turned-independent Andrew Cuomo, the former governor Mamdani beat in the primary. Cuomo faces sexual harassment allegations from multiple women and should not hold office again.

There’s also the city’s current mayor, Eric Adams, another Democrat-turned-independent and, if not a crook, at the very least a shameless MAGA lapdog. Adams escaped a Biden-era federal corruption indictment after making what appears to be a backroom deal with President Donald Trump.

And there’s Republican Curtis Sliwa.

If you care about defending democracy from Trump, Mamdani is your candidate. It’s that simple.

“Hey my fellow Democrats, wake the fuck up,” screamed the headline on a recent podcast from former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh. Walsh, a former Republican who helped give us Trump, is these days a repentant Democrat. Walsh insists the Democratic Party is big enough for a conservative like him and a socialist like Mamdani.

“I don’t give a fuck where you stand on the minimum wage,” he said in his podcast. “I don’t give a fuck what you think about government-run grocery stores. I don’t give a damn about whether you support forgiving student loan debt. I don’t care where you are on the Middle East.”

“Our very democracy and the rule of law in this country is teetering. Teetering. All I care about right now is this,” Walsh said.

Young voters rise up

But Mamdani, like liberal independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who have both endorsed Mamdani, supports policies the billionaires don’t like. You know, things that would make life more affordable for New Yorkers, paid for with taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

The billionaires, who are actively participating in the destruction of our democracy, pump money into many Democrats’ campaigns to keep them from moving to the left. They pumped money into Cuomo’s primary campaign.

Democratic voters in New York City supported Mamdani anyway, in record numbers. He drew people to the polls who hadn’t voted four years earlier, The New York Times found. It’s especially noteworthy that young people showed up to vote for him, because that doesn’t happen often.

Democratic Party leaders like to talk about young voters. But when they have to choose between their young constituents and their billionaire donors, they almost always side with the oligarchs.

Many of those young people see what the Israeli government is doing to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and feel outrage. They’re furious that our own government, through both the Biden and Trump administrations, has armed this slaughter. I share their anger.

In that context, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, falsely claimed during a radio interview that Mamdani had “made references to global jihad.” Basically she parroted conservative, racist talking points.

And she was wrong. Mamdani was asked to denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada.” He declined. That’s it.

To some that phrase is a call for violent uprising. To others it’s a plea for international support for Palestinians in their struggle for liberation from a government that intends to extinguish them.

Mamdani has defended the slogan as a call for human rights for Palestinians. He has denounced violence.

Americans allow a great deal of nuance for Christians who all read the same, often-violent Bible. And potentially violent phrases permeate our colonizing society, like the lyrics “from sea to shining sea” in the song “America the Beautiful.”

Written in 1893, the song envisioned a united nation from Atlantic to Pacific. But it’s no accident that the lyrics were written near the end of the United States’ war against indigenous groups across the West — its final conquering of the territory that is today the continental United States.

You can interpret these lyrics as a peaceful and glorious vision for the United States or as celebration of violent colonization.

We should afford the same nuance to immigrants like Mamdani and folks from other places. No culture is a monolith.

Gillibrand apologized to Mamdani, but, like so many other powerful New York Democrats, she has yet to endorse him.

America is changing

While some Democrats search for ways to derail Mamdani’s candidacy, the authoritarians are executing a meticulously crafted plan to derail our democracy that they call Project 2025. Every day the Trump Administration is doing damage to the federal government that cannot be fully undone. We must unite now to retake our government and limit the damage, so there’s still something to rebuild.

America is changing, one way or another. The fascists would turn this into a nation where white culture dominates and all else must submit to it, where the patriarchy rules and women must submit to it, where a king rules and all of us must submit to him.

We won’t have an independent Congress or judiciary. We won’t have a free press. We will lose our rights. We will be slaves to the capitalist machine that makes the billionaires richer. That is their vision.

Mamdani, by contrast, wants to freeze rent and build affordable housing. He wants the city to own grocery stores focused on keeping prices low rather than profiting. He wants to make public transportation and child care free. He wants to raise the minimum wage and create a new public safety agency that will focus on mental health and crisis response.

And he’ll pay for it, according to his website, by raising the corporate tax rate to 11.5 percent, matching the rate in neighboring New Jersey. That will raise $5 billion in new money. In addition, he will implement a new tax of 2 percent on the wealthiest 1 percent of New York City residents, those earning more than $1 million annually.

If New York City voters want to experiment with moving in this direction instead of embracing authoritarianism, I think that’s fantastic.

The billionaires have already trimmed all the fat from our federal government. The federal workforce has remained relatively stable since 1960 even as the nation’s population has nearly doubled. That means the federal government’s share of the nation’s workforce has decreased and become more efficient.

Meanwhile, Republican policies have shrunk the middle class. Folks across the United States are desperate for help. The gigantic welfare-for-oligarchs bill Trump just signed into law will make it worse. They’ll be cutting into bone.

Get off the fence

Mamdani isn’t a good fit for voters in some places. Southern New Mexico’s Second Congressional District, for example, would laugh at a candidate like him, so we’re instead represented by Gabe Vasquez, a Democrat who takes a more moderate approach to most issues and is representing the district well.

But Mamdani could be a great match for the nation’s center of commerce and finance, which is a critical front in the war for the future of the United States.

Jeffries, Gillibrand and other Democrats who are trying to defend our democracy without upsetting their billionaire overlords need to get off the fence.

Democrats must build a massive, diverse movement for democracy. It has to be big enough for folks like Walsh and people like Mamdani, or we will fail.