Today's Political Nihilism

What the NYC mayoral race tells us about the state of politics at large

I live in New York City. Some say it is a hundred years old. We recently held a primary election to determine who would be the democratic candidate for mayor. When the race began, political heir and mega-grump Andrew Cuomo was the presumptive winner and nominee. Despite $8.3 million in donations from former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, endorsements from noted saxophone player Bill Clinton, and gerontocratic future hall-of-famer congressman Jim Clyburn, Cuomo lost.

The guy who won, Zohran Mamdani, is a Muslim democratic socialist. What should be praised as a cool-as-hell underdog story and a testament to grassroots campaigning is instead a confirmation of the Democratic party’s deep-seated nihilism.

Few know this, but on September 11th, 2001, members of Al-Qaeda, an Islamic terrorist group, hijacked 4 commercial airliners and crashed the first two into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, located in downtown Manhattan. Probably before too, but especially after, New York City had a mean case of Islamophobia that’s never fully dissipated. This, and that Mamdani supports Palestinian sovereignty, has people acting pretty kooky about his nomination.

Have you ever had a friend or family who when you played a game with them and won, they decided afterward that for whatever reason, it didn’t count? Maybe the sun was in their eyes, their intrusive thoughts were too loud, or the game was rigged because some unexpected outcome? The Democratic party is this person.

So far, most of New York’s most prominent politicians have refused to officially endorse Mamdani, who won the party’s primary fair and square. This list includes governor Kathy Hochul, Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, and house minority leader Hakeem Jeffries. Despite its irrelevance to city-wide politics, the Democratic party’s insistence on supporting Israel’s unjust war in Gaza also means Mamdani has gone astray of party orthodoxy.

In addition to the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, former democrats Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams–the city’s current mayor–are both running as independents. Cuomo has a documented history of being a sex pest and a smattering of corruption issues. Adams also has his own potpourri of corruption charges.

These leaders of New York’s government are faced with a difficult decision: endorse one of the corrupt fellas, neither of which won the primary for said endorsement, or the guy who has no corruption charges and won the primary race. That this is a decision, rather than a reflexive endorsement, tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party’s devotion to its own processes and published standards.

Remember when Trump ran for president the first time and the second time and all the Democrats got torqued because of his sexism, or because of his corruption? Endorsements of Cuomo and Adams by some Dems, coupled with reluctance to embrace Mamdani, reveal these prior complaints to be empty partisanship. Taking into account Dems’ aforementioned support for Israel’s senseless, famine-inducing war in Gaza, we are now fully in the era of nothing mattering on either side of the aisle.

Nihilism is a symptom of despondence. Despondence in this case comes from years devoted to notching a record low approval rating, controlling no part of the federal government, and losing to Trump twice with out of touch presidential campaigns. It’s easy to feel sorry for life’s despondent creatures. Bambi when his mother is shot. Endangered Pandas. The dogs in ASPCA commercials featuring Sarah McLachlan. Unlike the dems, those creatures didn’t graduate to nihilism out of their despondence, they persevered.

Not to mention, those doe-eyed sweeties didn’t shape their policies to appeal to the donors with the largest pockets, or to some monolithic-yet-impossible-to-find political center that if only we stopped giving voice to the progressive left would rejoin us en masse to squash MAGA.

Despite being deeply personal, nihilism hurts others. This is especially true when it’s infected an entire political party whose goal is to obtain the reigns of government. We see this manifested in the hypocritical political stances I describe earlier: Dems are in favor of the U.S. perpetuating a genocide in Gaza (but present as anti-violence), corruption only matters when its someone on the other side of the aisle doing it, and women’s voices should only be heard if it negatively impacts an opponent, not if it could hurt Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral chances. With this nihilism revealed, we discover the Democratic party’s views on these subjects are virtually similar to their opponents, the Republicans.

A recent interview with presidential aspirant and hair-gel sommelier, Gavin Newsom, encapsulates perfectly what I mean. In this snippet, he calls Donald Trump '“the leading socialist of our time.” In less than a minute, Newsom manages to apply ‘socialism’ as a pejorative for members of his own party and for Donald Trump. Taken in this context, Zohran’s primary win reveals the extent to which neither party wants to listen to the will of democratic voters. Instead, they both just want everyone to know how icky the word socialism is.

With many similar political stances, the battle to win voters becomes rhetorical. It’s easy to see why Republicans are successful. They provide a clear enemy (immigrants, trans people, DEI, social programs, red dye number 40, etc.), explain how that enemy is hurting people, and then share a plan for fixing the issue. Democrats can’t propose plans that help people because that would be…you guessed it, socialist. Rhetorically, this leaves them their only viable option: to shake their fists and tell us they’re not MAGA. How’re they different than MAGA? We’ll just have to take their word for it.

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P.S.: While we’re on the subject of Sarah McLachlan, Resident Advisor recently did a story on the song she did a feature for in 2000 with Tiësto. ‘Delirium’. It’s excellent.

P.S. Part 2: Joe Wrote recently did a piece looking at this from a different angle and dives a bit more into the political theory aspect of things. I highly recommend it.