NY STATE OF MIND

The state is a microcosm of the good and bad in a Democratic Party that sometimes seems more intent on torching itself, not the vile GOP

I’ll start with the good news today, because we could all use about three tons of that right now: It was another very good night for the people of New York City Tuesday, who not only have an NBA champion for the first time in 53 years, but a mayor who is finally championing them and not the evil corporate barons like Donald Trump who have spent the past 53 years robbing them blind.

Turns out, all three candidates who got the endorsement of Mayor Zohran Mamdani in the city’s Democratic primary Tuesday won their races.

Now there’s a man who knows how to spend his political capital wisely by backing people who will back him to help fulfill his campaign promise to return New York City to the people who live there and make the place tick, while slapping back the insidious outsiders who have been cleaning their clocks.

As always, the gifted Mamdani kept it simple when appraising the party’s latest success by telling the AP: “It is simply a matter of electing better Democrats (who will) put working people back at the heart of politics.”

Read that again, because working people have not left the Democratic Party in droves lately, the party has left them. Even the politicians who will argue they haven’t, seem to have no clue how to get that message across, which I’ll never understand, and am long past forgiving.

Maybe they should just shut up and listen to Mamdani, who has proven he knows how to reach people and scratch an itch that has been making their lives miserable for decades: unchecked wealth and power.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and (fill in the repellent name) are eating us whole, and leaving the crumbs for our children. They are consolidating, bribing and threatening … They have never once asked what they could do for their country, only what they can do to it in order to stuff full their absurdly bulging bank accounts.

Already I am seeing predictable nonsense the past 36 hours from anti-Trump Republicans, leaky establishment Democrats, and gutless liberal warriors, who are scared to death of Mamdani and his power. They are breathlessly warning the rest of us about having the audacity to vote for our interests, and against their obedient milquetoast candidates who stand for the status quo, seek middle ground with a party fueled by bigotry, and fall hard at the feet of the billionaires who got us into this mess in the first place.

These people were long ago brainwashed into thinking there isn’t a better way, and are content to just settle for whatever scraps they can get from the white-collar pirates, who are looting us — and them — blind.

Rest assured that just as soon as it is safe to do so, these phonies, some of whom were Tea Partiers who did everything they could to blast Barack Obama’s shooting star out of the sky, will be back telling us Republicans really aren’t that bad, and if you send ‘em some money and to Washington, they’ll be more than happy to beat down these silly Lefties who have the audacity to think that everybody deserves affordable healthcare, decent wages, and a better way of life.

Do not trust these lost souls, who think as little of everyone else as they do of themselves.

Going after these billionaires with blunt force is a political winner for Democrats everywhere, and I just don’t know why it is so hard for them to understand it — and more important implement a clear and cogent strategy for cutting these greedy creeps down to size.

Too damn few have too damn much money in the world’s richest city, and Mamdani is showing the courage to take down these robber barons like another New Yorker, Republican Teddy Roosevelt, bravely did more than a century ago.

That used to be the American way, and can be again if Mamdani and a growing number of other left-leaners across America are lifted up by the so-called leadership of their out-of-touch and ineffectual party instead of cut down.

Just two years ago, Democrats were unable — or simply refused — to frame the real issues affecting real Americans like Mamdani has. Instead of clear messaging we got convolution. Instead of party unity we got bickering and back-biting which led to arguably the worst election results in United States history when the racist, corporate Epstein Republicans won the Executive, the House and the Senate going away.

That should have sent shockwaves through the Democratic Party. Instead, it just plugged itself into another dead socket, hauled out rumpled, dull talking points (excuses), and hid in their offices to wait out the attack, while the rest of us shivered in fear and blinding anger.

Such leadership.

Oh, and they are still pointing fingers at each other as I type this. There are books to be written and scores to settle, you see. They have been hogging the cracked spotlight of the Democratic Party long enough. If they are really interested in helping, they can do that by taking a bow, and going away.

Take the Democratic “leader” in the Senate, for instance, who happens to be another New Yorker. Chuck Schumer is somehow even less popular than Trump. Do you know how hard that is to do right now? Even a mosquito bite is more popular than Trump.

Hell, Schumer couldn’t even bring himself to endorse his fellow home-stater, Mamdani, last November, because apparently winning is only secondary to filling his bottomless pockets with corporate money from dirty places like AIPAC, which have Trump and his boss, Benjamin Netanyahu’s, best interests in mind, not New Yorkers’.

These two loathsome men are the most corrupt and dangerous people in the world right now.

At least yet another New Yorker, the too-clever-by-half Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, had the decency to endorse Mamdani at the last minute, but only after he backed himself into a corner with no other choice.

Jeffries said this after Mamdani had delivered for Democrats yet again Tuesday night:

“The mayor and I agree to strongly disagree about some of his endorsements, and he’s got work to do in terms of the conversations that he’s going to have with members of Congress moving forward.”

That’s a funny way of congratulating the guy who has a pulse on his city, and the Left-leaning voters across America.

So why are we allowing all this …?

It has to be one of the haughtiest things I have ever seen in politics. I have not talked to one Democrat who supports Schumer in leadership.

Not ONE.

How about you?

Chuck Schumer is hurting his party, not helping it, and even the most tone-deaf Democrat has to hear this. Schumer simply isn’t budging, though, because he doesn’t care what the voters think.

Think about that. He-does-not-care.

Stripping Schumer of his leadership position would send the clearest signal yet that Democrats really are interested in moving forward, instead of perpetually being stuck in neutral. Their stock would rise, and they would be sending a clear message that they are finally listening to their constituents.

There would be no downside.

Instead they worry over guys like Mamdani who are upsetting all these billionaires by crashing their parties, while protecting guys like Schumer, who stuffs himself at the buffet table with all their ill-gotten goodies.

It isn’t hard to see what’s going on here, but that makes it no less galling.

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(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.)

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(That’s an AP photo of Democratic congressional candidates Claire Valdez, Brad Lander, and Darializa Avila Chevalier with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, adorned in his NY Knicks jersey at a rally last Thursday. All three got Mamdani’s endorsement and all three won their races Tuesday.)

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