“The oligarchs are panicking,” said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Cheat. I bet the answer is going to be to cheat.
The US Democratic party is the definition of illiberalism .
FWIW, Cuomo is currently working outside the Democratic party and running as an independent, given that Mamdani is the Democratic nominee. He’s trying to subvert the choice of New York Democrats who chose Mamdani by splitting the vote so a Republican will win instead.
For me, the roots of illiberalism in the DNC go back to the Bush v. Gore 2000 Supreme Court decision, and the choice by Democratic leadership to just give up on fighting it. From there, the leadership became fully disconnected from the party base in terms of what the party was supposed to stand for. That was the beginning of a pattern: keeping things calm for donors instead of actually fighting for the people who vote for them.
Obama came next. He presented himself as hope and change, but when it mattered he sided with billionaires and Wall Street after the crash. The gap between what he promised and what he delivered made the frustration worse.
Then came Bernie in 2016 and again in 2020. Both times he showed there was real energy and hunger for something different. Both times the DNC made sure he would not be the nominee, first with Clinton and then with Biden. The message was obvious. The process inside the party would always bend toward protecting the establishment.
Biden, gone, their approach leading directly to Trump back in the White House, and Democrats are once again circling the wagons instead of reckoning with their own failures. Now they are lining up against progressives like Mandami who actually represent the grassroots. The cycle keeps repeating. The leadership consolidates power, the base gets ignored, and the gap between the two grows wider.
For me, the roots of illiberalism in the DNC go back to the Bush v. Gore 2000 Supreme Court decision, and the choice by Democratic leadership to just give up on fighting it.
It goes a bit further back than that. For as much hate as the Clinton’s get for shit that doesn’t matter, the real reason to despise them is because they helped popularize Third Way politics in America as an answer to temporarily relieve the relatively new gridlock we started to experience in the 90s in Congress.
Thirdway promoted compromising across the aisle with conservatives for policy that benefited both parties, allowing Democrats to claim victory via leaders initiative. In reality it just allowed conservatives to dictate exactly what policy they wanted to pass and reshape the democratic party in their image. When a party prioritizes compromise over all else, then you really don’t control anything.
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Clinton pushed heritage foundation plans with government downsizing, NAFTA, super predator narrative, and more.
Sure, but those things weren’t specifically eroding the, at least alleged, small d democratic integrity of the party, which is the illibralism I speak of (not that other, larger aspects of the USG aren’t illiberal).
My point is largely, that the (big D) Democratic Party is (small d) democratic in name only; it bears the trappings and refuses the principals. And Cuomo is a part of that. He’s more like the similar to the illiberal mess which is the currently leadership of the DNC. And the leadership of the DNC is confirming that with their failure to support/ endorse Mandami in this race.
What’s especially fucked up is that he would probably consider a Republican win a long term victory. I’m reminded of how, in the UK, the Blairite wing of the Labour party through Corbyn under the bus so that they could stop the party moving left. Maybe Corbyn would’ve never stood a chance at the election, but sabotage from within his own party means we’ll never know
