Tag Archives: DSA

New York Became a One-Party State. What Did New Yorkers Get in Return?

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New York voters went to the polls on November 3, 2026, and delivered another sweeping victory to the Democratic Party.

Governor Kathy Hochul won reelection. Democrats retained control of both houses of the state legislature, while candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America won additional seats in Congress and Albany.

The Democratic dominance extends to local government. In White Plains, the capital of Westchester County, the mayor and all six Common Council members are Democrats. In the rest of Westchester, Democrats hold 15 of 17 county legislative seats and the county executive’s office. Statewide, Democrats run the largest ten cities, control the governorship, both legislative chambers, both U.S. Senate seats and most of the congressional delegation.

Twenty years ago, New York had competitive two-party government. Today, Democrats dominate virtually every level of government, while democratic socialists increasingly challenge the party establishment.

What has this political transformation delivered, and where will the 2026 election take the state next?

Twenty Years of Political Transformation

In 2006, Republican George Pataki was governor of New York. Republicans controlled the State Senate, Democrats controlled the Assembly, and Michael Bloomberg, elected mayor of New York City as a Republican, was serving his second term.

Divided government required negotiation and compromise. Republicans offered an alternative to Democratic leadership. No longer.

That year, Democrat Eliot Spitzer won the governorship, ending 12 years of Republican control. In 2018, Democrats captured the State Senate, giving the party unified control of state government beginning in 2019.

Another transformation was already underway.

In 2018, democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated Congressman Joe Crowley, one of the most powerful establishment Democrats in Congress. Her victory demonstrated that socialists could defeat entrenched Democrats in districts where winning the party primary effectively guaranteed election.

In 2025, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary and went on to win the general election.

The 2026 elections extended that transformation. DSA-backed Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier won congressional seats after defeating establishment Democrats in their primaries. Socialist-backed candidates also won additional seats in the State Assembly and Senate.

Political Transformation Became Public Policy

New York’s changing political leadership was accompanied by a substantial shift in government policy.

In 2006, the state’s minimum wage was $6.75 an hour. By 2026, it had reached $17 in New York City, Westchester and Long Island. The state’s highest marginal personal income-tax rate rose from 6.85% to 10.9%, excluding additional New York City income taxes.

New York expanded abortion rights, allowing abortions after 24 weeks to the moment of birth. The state legalized recreational marijuana, eliminated cash bail for many criminal offenses, strengthened tenant protections, expanded paid family leave and adopted ambitious climate mandates which contributed to rising electricity prices. It also imposed additional regulations on employers, landlords and businesses.

These changes were largely enacted by establishment Democrats, not democratic socialists. Yet the DSA’s growing influence suggests that the party’s internal opposition considers two decades of progressive legislation insufficient and wants to expand government’s role further.

Spending More, Learning Less

Public education provides one of the clearest measures of government performance.

New York public schools2005–06Latest
Students enrolled2.82 million2.53 million
Annual spending per student$15,240$31,130
Fourth-grade mathematics score238234
Eighth-grade mathematics score280271
Spending figures compare fiscal 2006 with fiscal 2024 in nominal dollars. Enrollment and academic assessment years differ slightly. Mathematics scores are from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

New York more than doubled annual spending per student, an increase substantially exceeding inflation, while enrollment fell approximately 10% and mathematics performance declined. The state now spends more per student than any other without producing superior academic outcomes.

Higher Costs and Greater Dependence

New York collects more state and local taxes per resident than any other state. Housing remains extraordinarily expensive, and homeownership is increasingly difficult for families facing high property prices, property taxes and living expenses.

The strain is visible in migration statistics.

In 2024, approximately 415,000 New Yorkers moved to other states, while roughly 285,000 Americans moved into New York from elsewhere in the country. The result was a net domestic loss of approximately 130,000 residents.

New York also relies heavily on high-income taxpayers, many of whom have the financial means to relocate. Their departures could place increasing pressure on the state’s ability to finance its commitments.

Those commitments are substantial. In February 2025, approximately 6.9 million New Yorkers, or 35% of the state’s population, were enrolled in Medicaid. Total Medicaid spending reached approximately $115.6 billion in state fiscal year 2025, including federal funding.

Medicaid and school aid have gone from 38.3% of the state’s budget to 50% over the past twenty years. It is going to continue to grow because of the leftward movemovement of government, squeezing out economic development, infrastructure and public safety.

The continued departures of residents and businesses will accelerate the pain.

A Change in Direction or an Acceleration?

The 2026 election did not produce a change in direction. It strengthened a political movement seeking to accelerate the state’s existing left-wing policies.

Higher spending requires greater revenues. Higher taxes and living costs may encourage more residents and businesses with the means to relocate to leave. Those remaining may become increasingly dependent on public assistance, requiring still more government spending.

The political cycle could reinforce the economic one. As the electorate changes, candidates promising expanded public programs may become more influential, while those advocating lower spending and taxes struggle to gain traction.

New York may be entering a political and economic cycle in which disappointing results produce demands for more of the same policies, while the residents most capable of financing them increasingly choose to live elsewhere.

The Devil Has a Winning Smile

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The devil does not wear horns, a red cape and carry a pitchfork. That would make him far too easy to recognize.

In his 1942 book The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis imagined a senior demon, Screwtape, instructing his nephew Wormwood on how to corrupt an ordinary man. The secret was not some spectacular act of evil, but a succession of seemingly harmless compromises.

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

Lewis was particularly perceptive about politics. Screwtape advised Wormwood to encourage either extreme patriotism or extreme pacifism. The ideology was unimportant. What mattered was making political allegiance more important than moral conviction.

“Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man.”

Lewis wasn’t warning that people would choose the wrong political ideology. He was warning that they would make their ideology the measure of right and wrong.

In 2026, Screwtape might find his work considerably easier.

Consider Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed. The winning smiles, easy confidence and appealing promises of affordable housing, healthcare and social justice. Their supporters feel they are participating in something noble, standing up for the poor and vulnerable, making the world a better place.

A diverse group of protesters holding banners that read 'Socialism Beats Fascism' and 'New York City Democratic Socialists' during a demonstration in an urban setting.

But what happens when the people delivering that appealing message embrace allies who traffic in antisemitism and use such language themselves?

In Michigan, El-Sayed campaigned with Hasan Piker, whose statements about Jews have drawn widespread condemnation. Cenk Uygur’s Rebellion PAC subsequently promoted an advertisement blaming American support for Israel for rising grocery prices and other economic hardships. Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens called the advertisement antisemitic and demanded that El-Sayed condemn it.

El-Sayed said the advertisement was produced independently of his campaign and that he disagreed with its contents. But when Stevens continued pressing the issue, she was told to stay away from campaign events. She ultimately endorsed Republican Mike Rogers.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called her decision a ““despicable betrayal,” and other Democrats joined the denunciations. The political establishment was more interested in punishing Stevens for breaking party ranks than confronting antisemitism.

That is precisely the danger Lewis identified.

First, supporters overlook objectionable rhetoric because they believe in the larger cause. Then they defend the politicians who tolerate it. Eventually, they attack the people who refuse to make the same exceptions.

Each compromise makes the next one easier.

This is not simply the familiar horseshoe theory, in which the far left and far right meet at the extremes. Tucker Carlson and Hasan Piker occupy different political worlds, yet both have promoted troubling rhetoric about Jews and become mouthpieces for El-Sayed. Lewis understood the deeper problem: political allegiance can corrupt moral judgment from either direction.

And here is where his story takes on a new dimension in 2026.

In The Screwtape Letters, Wormwood was assigned to corrupt one man. Today, political movements and social media can turn individual moral compromise into the mass propagation of moral compromise. Supporters rationalize objectionable rhetoric, persuade others to accept it and reward those who join them. Each newly persuaded follower can recruit thousands more.

Evil no longer advances one conscience at a time. It multiplies.

Lewis’s Patient ultimately escaped the demons. But in today’s politics, the danger is that the Patient never realizes he has become Wormwood himself.

When you support a Nazi, you are not clean when leaving the polling station. “Allegiance to party” has a ring of Nazi Germany for a reason.

Smiling Democratic politicians rally behind Abdul El-Sayed after fellow Democrat Haley Stevens endorses Republican opponent for Senate because El-Sayed’s campaign was awash in public antisemitism

Turning Deep Blue New York, Purple

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The Democratic Socialists of America have discovered that the shortest path to socialist political power runs through the Democratic Party’s safest districts. Their ambitions extend beyond winning elections. They seek to transform American capitalism, foreign policy and the Democratic Party itself.

DSA’s National Political Committee celebrated Chris Rabb‘s congressional primary victory in Philadelphia as a win in “the deepest blue Democratic district in the country.” In districts where the Democratic primary effectively determines the general election, a disciplined socialist organization can acquire political power using electoral majorities built by generations of traditional Democrats. Rabb said of his win ““that the era of establishment politics is coming to an end.”

DSA is remarkably candid about its objectives. Its National Electoral Commission advocates building an independent mass socialist party with a program that will allow the working class to “end capitalism.” Nationally endorsed candidates must support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. DSA leader Sydney Carlson-White celebrated Rabb’s victory as “bringing an anti-Zionist, anti-AIPAC, anti-capitalist voice into Congress in the bluest district in the United States.”

Rabb’s backers included:

  • Democratic Socialists of America
  • Working Families Party
  • Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
  • Hasan Piker

Hasan Piker, the influential socialist commentator who campaigns alongside many DSA candidates, is explicit about the political strategy. Describing the Democratic Party, he declared, “That’s a weak party. That’s a party that you can seize. That’s a party that you can take advantage of.“

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani demonstrates how far that movement has advanced. His victory brought a democratic socialist into one of America’s most prominent political offices, while DSA-backed candidates subsequently defeated established Democrats in congressional primaries.

DSA-backed Zohran Mamdani went on to win deep blue New York City’s mayoral race

The Democratic Party provides the ballot line and historically loyal electorate. DSA supplies the candidates, volunteers and ideological discipline.

In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul faces Republican Bruce Blakeman. Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than two to one, and Hochul entered October with a substantial polling advantage. Mamdani has endorsed her, as have various far-left politicians including Rep. Nydia Velázquez, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Can the Democratic Party continue accommodating an organized socialist movement committed to ending capitalism and advancing anti-Zionism while assuming that traditional Democrats will continue delivering overwhelming electoral majorities?

NY Governor Kathy Hochul with NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani

A narrowing Democratic margin could send a powerful signal that the party’s safest territory is becoming more competitive. The political consequences could extend beyond one election, influencing candidate recruitment, party alliances and the willingness of Democratic leaders to accommodate DSA’s agenda.

DSA has made its intentions unmistakable. Piker has described a party ripe for seizure. The movement has demonstrated that it can defeat Democratic incumbents and turn those victories into growing political power.

Jews in New York have historically voted Democrat by wide numbers are turning to Republicans due to the al-left seizure of the party

Moderate Democratic politician will tell you in confidence in private: New York Democrats should vote for moderate politicians in the primaries and for Republicans in the general election to turn New York purple, to create a wall against the tide of vile hatred stemming from the far-left flank taking over the party.

Related:

The DSA Is Systematically Coming For Zionist Jews (August 2023)

From Shut Up to Get Out

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There is a progression from intimidation and expulsion.

  • A heckler’s veto prevents you from speaking.
  • A chilling effect teaches you to remain silent.
  • Self-concealment teaches you to hide the identity that makes you a target.
  • Constructive exclusion makes the environment sufficiently hostile that you stay away or leave.
  • Forced expulsion completes the progression: someone else decides you must go.

American Jews have been moving through these stages over the last decade.

Don’t Speak

In 2015, Israeli philosopher Moshe Halbertal came to the University of Minnesota to lecture on the ethical obligations of militaries to protect civilians. Protesters repeatedly interrupted him, delaying his lecture for about half an hour as police removed them.

It was a classic heckler’s veto: make enough noise and the speaker cannot speak.

Eventually, Halbertal did.

Over time, intimidation becomes more efficient. People learn the consequences of speaking and begin censoring themselves. The expectation of the heckler creates the chilling effect.

Then the intimidation moved beyond speech.

Hide Who You Are

In May 2021, Hamas launched thousands of rockets at Israel and antisemitic incidents surged concurrently in the United States.

Aaron Keyak had served as Jewish engagement director for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and would become the State Department’s deputy special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. His advice to frightened American Jews was extraordinary: “If you fear for your life or physical safety take off your kippah and hide your magen david.”

The Jew walking down the street had given no speech and joined no protest. His Jewish identity itself made him a target.

The response from the highest levels of government was self-concealment: take off the kippah and hide the Star of David.

This was 2021, more than two years before the October 7 massacre.

Stay Out

After the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel, the progression took over the Democratic Party.

Dana Nessel is Michigan’s attorney general, the state’s chief law-enforcement officer and its highest-ranking Jewish state official. This June she decided to stay away from the Michigan Democratic Party convention. “I don’t feel safe going,” Nessel said. She feared being chased, harassed, yelled at and booed because, she explained, “it’s been happening to me.”

Consider where the progression had reached: Michigan’s chief law-enforcement officer felt safer staying away from her own political party’s convention out of fear.

And Nessel is not alone.

Earlier in the summer, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht left the Democratic Party and became an independent. Wecht is Jewish, was elected as a Democrat and had once served in the leadership of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. “Acquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party,” he wrote. “I can no longer abide this.”

Nessel stayed away. Wecht walked away. Revulsed by what they saw happening inside the Democratic Party.

Get Out

The next stage has already begun.

In 2024, anti-Israel artists protesting at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts issued a list of demands. Among them: remove all “Zionist Board members and funders.” While the institution rejected the demand, its Jewish interim CEO, Sara Fenske Bahat, subsequently resigned, saying the climate surrounding Israel and Palestine in the Bay Area had become “untenable.”

The demand itself crossed the line into the final stage: Get them out.

If one needs proof, consider how the alt-left treated one of its own, NYC Mayor-endorsed politician Brad Lander. He was tossed from a far-left political rally in August 2026 because he was a “Zionist,” even though he is highly critical of Israel.

Democratic politician Brad Lander – supported by NYC Mayor, DSA’s own Zohran Mamdani – tossed from a rally because he is a “Zionist”

The heckler’s veto was already an assault on a basic American principle: everyone gets to enter the public square and speak. What has grown from it is far uglier and deeply un-American:

Don’t speak.
Don’t be seen.
Don’t come.
Get out.

This is intimidation being rewarded with territory. Each retreat gives the intimidators another piece of the public square: the microphone, the street, the political convention, the institution itself.

And this poison is now flourishing inside the Democratic Party.

A party that claims to champion minorities and protect people from intimidation now has a Jewish attorney general afraid to attend its own convention, a Jewish state supreme court justice who concluded that Jew-hatred had become sufficiently tolerated that he could no longer remain a Democrat, and an anti-Israel DSA-mayor-endorsed Jewish politician run out of the streets of New York.

That is disgraceful. It is frightening.

The American answer to intimidation is to protect the person being intimidated and confront the intimidator. Nobody should gain control of a microphone, a street, a political convention or an institution by making someone else afraid to enter it.

Leaders of the Democratic Party should understand what is happening inside its own tent. The heckler’s veto has metastasized into something deeply toxic and deeply un-American.

The hecklers no longer simply want to only decide what Jews may say. They want to expel Jews from the room.

The Depravity of Antisemitic Socialism Has Become a Movement

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From his perch at The New York Times, Thomas Friedman wants to be “very clear” about Hamas. Instead, his formulation gets the moral order backwards.

“Hamas is a terrible organization,” he writes, “first and foremost for Palestinians.”

Hamas is not primarily a terrible organization. It is a terrorist organization whose foundational ideology targeted Israel and Jews.

Hamas said so itself. Its 1988 charter declares that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” Article 7 invokes a religious tradition about Muslims fighting and killing Jews. Article 13 rejects negotiated settlements: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.”

October 7 was the depravity of those words turned into action. Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel, attacked civilian communities, murdered families and kidnapped hundreds of people. Terrorism was not an unfortunate byproduct of Hamas rule. It was the method of an organization whose charter had openly described its enemy and objective.

Nor was Hamas imposed upon Palestinian Arabs. In the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, voters handed Hamas 56% of the seats in parliament — 74 of 132 — and control of the legislature.

October 7 did not sever that political connection. In December 2023, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 72% of Palestinians believed Hamas’s decision to launch the October 7 attack was correct, including 57% in Gaza and 82% in the West Bank. Even in October 2025, 53% still called the decision correct.

That context makes Friedman’s criticism of Western Hamas apologists particularly revealing. He calls the “free pass” Hamas receives from some pro-Palestinian progressives “shameful.”

The issue runs much deeper than shame.

There is a straight line from a charter describing the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews, to terrorists carrying out a massacre in Israel, to people defending the decision to launch that attack. The depravity lies in the ideology, the terrorism committed in its name and the willingness to celebrate or excuse it afterward.

And that depravity has migrated into American politics. The Democratic Socialists of America and radical left-wing university professors describe Israel as a colonial project and Israelis as “colonialists,” a framework to erase the distinction between combatants and civilians and recast violence against Israeli Jews as “resistance.” This movement is no longer confined to demonstrations and campuses; DSA member Zohran Mamdani has ridden the democratic-socialist movement into the New York City mayoralty and is now helping other left-wing candidates like Mohamed El-Zayed in Michigan win office.

Friedman’s formulation reverses the danger. Hamas becomes “terrible” rather than terrorist. Palestinians become its primary victims rather than a population which supports Hamas. And those in the United States and elsewhere who give Hamas political cover are merely “shameful.”

That formulation grants absolution to terrorists and their knowing supporters.

The endorsement and celebration of mass violence against Jews — a tiny minority-minority — is becoming a motivating force in American politics. That should terrify Thomas Friedman. It should terrify every decent American.

Because when a movement can watch the mass murder of Jews and explain why their killers were engaged in “resistance,” the problem is no longer simply Hamas.

The depravity has become a movement.

The Beginning of the End for the Establishment-led Democratic National Committee

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For a decade, Democratic leaders have sought to preserve control of their party. Each decision made sense in the moment. Together, they have steadily eroded the confidence of both the activist base and, increasingly, the donor class.

The first crack appeared in 2016.

Bernie Sanders inspired millions of Democrats with a vision that challenged the party’s Clinton-era consensus. Yet the Democratic establishment rallied behind Hillary Clinton. Leaked DNC emails and the resignation of Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz convinced many progressives that party insiders—not Democratic voters—were choosing the nominee.

And maybe the DNC’s action could have been excused had Hillary won. But she lost to Donald Trump.

Rather than disappear, the Sanders movement organized.

In 2017, former Sanders organizers founded Justice Democrats with a simple mission: elect a new generation of progressive Democrats and replace incumbents they believed had become too close to corporate donors. The movement was no longer asking for influence. It was organizing for control.

A year later, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated Joe Crowley, one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress and a presumed future Speaker of the House. At the same time, the Democratic Socialists of America expanded from a fringe organization into a national political force.

For years, party leaders dismissed these victories as isolated upsets. They can win in Brooklyn. They can win in Berkeley. But they cannot win statewide.

So the Democratic establishment continue to abuse its base. It lied to the country that President Joe Biden was fit for office long after it was clear he was not. The party leaders then coronated Vice President Kamala Harris to be the party nominee for president without a vote, in what many viewed as an act of treachery.

And now, Michigan has proven that the local alt-left phenomenon is much larger than the DNC pretended.

Representative Haley Stevens was exactly the kind of pragmatic, mainstream Democrat the party once expected to lead its next generation. Her defeat by Abdul El-Sayed, backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, suggests the insurgency has moved beyond city councils and safe House districts. It is now capturing statewide nominations in one of America’s most important swing states, predominantly with the support of young people who are turning out to vote in record figures.

Now even the donors are beginning to revolt.

According to a recent Politico report, major Democratic donors are openly questioning the direction and competence of the Democratic National Committee. Fundraising has weakened. Confidence has faded. One longtime donor summarized the mood in four words: “It’s beyond embarrassing.”

At the same time, the party’s ideological center has moved toward jihadists.

For generations, military support for Israel during wartime against those seeking its destruction was a bipartisan assumption. During Israel’s current multi-front war against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran itself, most congressional Democrats voted to block or condition additional military assistance. A position that would have been unimaginable when Barack Obama entered office has become increasingly mainstream within today’s Democratic coalition.

Trashing Israel has even become a primary tool to get out young voters on social media.

The struggle inside the Democratic Party is no longer about one primary, one chairman, or one election cycle.

The DNC establishment that repeatedly tried to manage its succession is undergoing a hostile takeover by the far-left. The donor class got the message and is leaving. Only older lifelong Democrats seem blind to the transformation of the party, or unable or unwilling to vote Republican to turn the tide.

Related:

Hamas and the DSA: Ideology + Grassroots Mobilization to Power + Destruction (January 2026)

Racism In The Old and Antisemitism In The Youth (February 2024)

New York’s Supermajority: The Real Election Is the Legislature

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Worried about New York City Mayor Mamdani’s politics going statewide and national? You need to do a lot more than show up to a protest with placards.

New York is not simply a Democratic state. It is a Democratic supermajority state.

The governor, Governor Kathy Hochul is a Democrat. Democrats hold 41 of the State Senate’s 63 seats and 103 of the Assembly’s 150 seats—more than enough for a veto-proof supermajority in the Assembly and just one seat shy of one in the Senate. The practical result is that currently, Republicans have little ability to force negotiation or compromise. The state’s most important political debates now occur almost entirely within the Democratic Party.

That is critical at a moment like this.

When organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) succeed in electing candidates or moving Democratic primaries to the far-left, the effects are no longer confined to activist circles. Ideas that gain traction within the Democratic caucus can become state policy without needing bipartisan support. Whether the issue is criminal justice, taxation, housing, energy, education, labor regulation, or Israel policy, the decisive battle is often the Democratic primary, not the general election.

This does not mean every progressive proposal becomes law. Democratic legislators disagree on many issues. But a supermajority means there are fewer institutional checks when one faction gains influence.

For New Yorkers who want a different direction than being advanced by the DSA and NYC Mayor Mamdani, the answer is not simply to oppose legislation after it is introduced. It is to change the composition of the Legislature itself.

That is why a relatively small number of competitive districts carry outsized importance this year.

Competitive legislative races do more than elect a senator or assemblymember. They build volunteer networks, raise money, increase turnout, and strengthen candidates throughout the ticket.

Congressman Mike Lawler’s race in the Hudson Valley is a prime example. His campaign in New York’s 17th Congressional District is again expected to be one of the nation’s most competitive House races. A strong Republican legislative effort in the region can reinforce his campaign, just as a strong Lawler campaign can help Republican candidates for the State Senate and Assembly. The same dynamic applies across Long Island, Staten Island, and other competitive suburban districts.

Congressman Mike Lawler (R-NY17)

Among the key legislative opportunities Republicans will target are suburban Senate districts on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, along with competitive Assembly districts in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, Staten Island, Monroe County, Onondaga County, and the Capital Region.

Every election cycle, voters are told that one legislative seat cannot make much difference. In New York, the opposite is true.

A handful of seats in New York’s election can determine whether the Legislature remains a near-unchecked trifecta supermajority allowing radical far-left motions to become law or becomes a body where broader consensus is once again required. Those races will shape not only who governs in Albany, but how New York is governed.

Coalitions Don’t Survive Purity Tests

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One of the more curious developments in American politics is watching mainstream Democrats increasingly tailor their positions to satisfy activists who still refuse to support them.

The answer lies in understanding the difference between a coalition and an ideology.

A coalition exists to win elections. It is broad by design. People disagree on taxes, immigration, foreign policy, and the Middle East, yet work together because they share enough common ground to govern. Coalitions ask one question: Can we work together despite our differences?

An ideological movement asks a different question: Do you believe what we believe?

That distinction changes everything.

Purity tests are not an accident of ideological movements; they are their natural consequence. If your goal is to advance a comprehensive worldview, disagreement is no longer just a different opinion but evidence that someone has failed the test.

This helps explain the relationship between the Democratic Party and organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America. The Democratic Party is trying to hold together one of the broadest electoral coalitions in America. The DSA is advancing an ideology. It has shown little hesitation about opposing Democratic incumbents who fail its litmus tests, whether on capitalism, Israel, policing, or other defining issues.

Israel illustrates the divide clearly. Within a coalition, someone can support Israel’s defensive war while criticizing particular government officials or military actions. Within an ideological movement, those distinctions may not be enough.

That is why the political response of some mainstream Democrats is so puzzling. They often behave as though they are negotiating with another coalition partner. They are not. They are seeking approval from a movement whose purpose is to distinguish believers from non-believers. Incremental concessions rarely earn lasting acceptance. They simply establish a new baseline for the next demand.

The DSA’s own long-term political vision underscores the point. It has argued that America’s two-party system should ultimately be replaced by a multi-party parliamentary democracy. That is an entirely coherent position for an ideological movement. But it also reveals why the tension is so persistent. A movement that seeks its own distinct ideological party will naturally find itself in conflict with a broad coalition whose purpose is to assemble majorities among people who disagree on fundamental questions. The friction is inevitable.

Perhaps the better response for mainstream Democrats is not to seek the DSA endorsement at all.

Every endorsement tells voters something about shared values. If an organization rejects your belief in a market economy, your support for the Jewish State’s continued existence, or your willingness to govern through compromise rather than ideological purity, why should the DSA’s endorsement be considered a prize? A politician should not be embarrassed to say, “We simply have different visions for the country.”

In fact, the willingness to disappoint ideological movements may be one of the clearest signs that a politician still understands the difference between governing and evangelizing.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) is a mainstream Democrats who has not been bullied into positions at odds with his belief

There is a lesson here for the pro-Israel community as well.

Politics rewards participation, not nostalgia. Elected officials respond to the people who organize, communicate with their offices, volunteer, build local networks, and vote. If supporters of the U.S.-Israel relationship want their voices heard, they must become a consistently visible part of the political coalition—not merely assume their support will be taken for granted.

Building coalitions by attempting to contort to the demands of extremist ideologues will be a painful exercise to watch. And to live with. It has made many Democrats feel abandoned by their party as it chases the far-left which despises most of the coalition.

Coalitions are built by persuading people who disagree to work together. Ideologies are built by deciding who belongs. The Democratic Party will remain a relevant governing party only if it remembers which one it is.

Related:

Hamas and the DSA: Ideology + Grassroots Mobilization to Power + Destruction (January 2026)

The Revolutionary Theology Has Gone Operational (December 2025)

How New York City Was Lost

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There was a time when many New Yorkers dismissed the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as a fringe movement. Their rallies were loud. Their rhetoric was provocative. But surely the city that built Wall Street, welcomed millions of immigrants, and was attacked on September 11 would never hand real political power to a movement whose rhetoric after October 7 shocked so many Americans.

Rally in Times Square the day after the massacre of 1,200 people in Israel and abduction of 251.

Yet here we are.

The new mayor is part of the DSA. DSA-backed candidates continue to win elections across New York City.

This is not merely a debate over tax rates or rent control. After Hamas murdered more than 1,200 Israelis on October 7, the New York City chapter of DSA helped organize demonstrations almost immediately afterward. Slogans and statements in Times Square celebrated the attack as “resistance” and chanted for it to continue “long live the Intifada!” DSA-NYC had long argued that Israeli civilians should not be viewed as innocent because they were participants in a “settler-colonial” society.

One might have expected that such rhetoric would permanently marginalize it. Instead, it grew. How?

Because its opponents fought the wrong war.

Organizations such as AIPAC concentrated enormous resources on defeating individual candidates where the ground game already indicated it could win. Sometimes they succeeded spectacularly. Millions of dollars were spent. Headlines proclaimed another victory over the anti-Israel Left.

But every expensive primary also reinforced the story DSA wanted to tell.

They were no longer simply neighborhood activists. They became the underdogs standing up to a wealthy political establishment. Every television advertisement became another fundraising email. Every outside dollar became another recruiting tool. Every victory over one candidate left the movement itself intact and often stronger.

AIPAC won campaigns but DSA built a movement.

Politics is ultimately about culture before it is about elections. Elections simply reveal where the culture already stands.

While establishment organizations measured success by defeating a particular candidate, DSA measured success by opening another neighborhood chapter, training another organizer, recruiting another volunteer, and persuading another generation that its worldview represented justice.

The results are now visible. A virtual sweep of DSA candidates in New York this week.

New York did not suddenly become socialist. It was organized into becoming more receptive to socialist candidates over many years. One neighborhood at a time. One group at a time.

J Street spent considerable time and effort over the past few years bashing AIPAC to build better alliances with the far-left. Now that multiple anti-Israel extremists have entered office while effectively echoing J Street’s smears of AIPAC, the left-wing “pro-Israel” group stayed mum and didn’t print a single press release.

That should be the lesson – not only for those who support Israel, but for anyone concerned about the city’s future.

Money can influence an election. It cannot substitute for a movement.

If New York is to change course, it will not happen because one organization writes larger checks. It will happen because people who believe in liberal democracy, civic responsibility, pluralism, and the moral distinction between murdering civilians and defending them begin organizing with the same patience and persistence that their opponents have displayed for years.

Jacobin lead is that Socialists defeated “AIPAC, racism” before anything else

Cities are not lost in a single election. They are lost one neighborhood at a time.

Related:

Overwinning (Sept 2025)

Names and Narrative: Violence

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Even a word as straightforward as “violence” can no longer be exchanged among people who strongly disagree.

On October 7, while Israeli families were still being burned alive in their homes, while women were being brutalized and dragged into Gaza, while children and grandparents were being taken hostage, the Democratic Socialists of America issued a statement expressing solidarity with Palestinians and calling for an end to violence.

Read that sentence again.

Solidarity with the side carrying out the massacre whicle simultaneously being opposed to violence.

Under any normal understanding of language, those two positions cannot coexist. Even if one sides with Palestinian Arabs doing the slaughter, one cannot deny that killing 1,200 people and taking over 250 people hostage is anything but violence.

Yet for much of today’s activist left, there is no inconsistency because violence has been redefined.

Violence is no longer judged by the act itself. It is judged by the political identity of the actor and the victim. Violence against the oppressed is evil. Violence by the oppressed is resistance.

That single inversion explains nearly everything.

It explains why people can chant “globalize the intifada” and insist it is not a call for violence. Because intifada, in their lexicon, is not violence. It is justice.

But words have histories. And intifada has a very specific one.

The fact is that the Second Intifada was not a symbolic protest. It was suicide bombings on buses, massacres in cafés, shootings in markets, families murdered at holiday tables. The later “stabbing intifada” turned sidewalks and bus stops into hunting grounds. The “car intifada” transformed vehicles into weapons aimed at civilians.

So when Jews hear “globalize the intifada,” they do not hear an abstract call for liberation. They hear a political tradition with a body count. They hear the globalization of a tactic that has repeatedly targeted Jewish civilians.

That is why the argument over this slogan so often goes nowhere.

Congressional committee on the phrase “Globalize the intifada” on June 24, 2025

One side hears history. The other hears ideology. One side sees violence in the act itself. The other sees violence only when the “wrong” people commit it.

The socialist-jihadi moral framework launders murder into resistance and terror into liberation, because the victims are placed on the wrong side of the political hierarchy.

October 7 exposed with horrifying clarity that while the massacre itself was monstrous, the reaction to it revealed something even deeper: a political culture that could look directly at burned families, raped women, butchered children, and kidnapped grandparents and still speak of “ending violence” while standing in solidarity with those who had just committed it.

And when Jews and decent people watch those same people – in the same breadth – call for following the charge of a young aspiring politician named Zohran Mamdani to redefine both violence and “peace” in the cause of annihilating the oppressor class, they have reason to fear.

The sanitation of violence against certain undesirable groups – Zionists for example – was voted into power in New York City. With easy smiles that come from people who have long internalized that eradicating “oppressors” is a noble cause in which bloody hands do not stain the oppressed.