And when you don’t, eventually people vote you out. A few days ago, I came across a list of things New York City’s Mayor Mamdani has done since he was elected; I’ve added two items to the list (and changed the order and wording slightly):
- Froze rent for 1 million apartments (roughly 2 million people)
- Convinced New York to allow the city to raise property taxes on secondary housing owned by non-residents valued at over
15 million dollars* - Cut subway fares in half for low-income riders
- Fully funded NYC parks
- Added $680M for public schools
- Launched free child care for 2-year-olds
- Banned deceptive subscription practices
I can see how Democratic centrists and moderates–who aren’t the same thing!–could oppose the first item on ideological or political grounds as being bad policy or too radical. But I think everything else on the list is something any Democrat could have and should have done, including the pied-a-terre tax (if a Democrat can’t tax an expensive property owned by someone who doesn’t even live there, and therefore can’t vote, then whom can they tax?). Yet the previous mayor, Eric Adams, didn’t do any of these things, and frankly there is no reason to think a Mayor Cuomo would have either. The failure is not one of ideology, but of execution.
As I said previously when discussing recent primary results, 43% of primary voters in D.C.’s Ward 3 are not democratic socialists, and certainly not DSAniks. There is a lot of anger at professional Democrats everywhere for talking the talk, but not walking the walk. To regain that trust, they are actually going to have to do things–and, yes, some of those things might even be performative (shudder).
Because it’s clear to many Democrats, including this one, that they could have and should have done things that were in their power to do, and did not. That’s why if you’re voting in a primary for a federal office (unlike this member of the mainland colony known as the District of Columbia), you need to vote for candidates who will remove the impediments to doing their jobs, like ending the filibuster and Supreme Court reform, along with D.C. statehood (because two more Democratic senators and one House member makes it harder for the occasional Democratic asshole to grind things to a halt).
It’s not the only reason they’re losing primaries, but you must do stuff when you can. We don’t need more Democrats who like holding office but aren’t actually willing to govern.
*It’s worth noting that many of these properties, due to weirdness in how property is assessed, are assessed well below recent sale prices.
mikethemadbiologist