People who never take the bus are worried it could be free

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign to become NYC’s next mayor is getting national attention for a reason, no matter how often centrist pundits insist there are no national lessons to be drawn from it. As I wrote on Monday, everyone knows on some level that Mamdani’s likely win is a massive rebuke to the tired politics that are pulling the Democrats down. 

I also want to flag reporting by my Salon colleague Russell Payne, which I built so much of my article on. Russell really shook the trees to show how many centrist Democrats were willing to work with Republicans, at least for the moment, in their desperation to stop Mamdani. Which is terrible: They would actually rather side with fascists than accept a campaign that empowers young progressives to fight for what they believe in. 

Yes, there are other elections today

Obviously, the New York City mayoral race is likely to be the big news coming out of today’s off-year elections, but there are a couple of others I want to highlight. In New Jersey, the gubernatorial election is almost a photo negative of the NYC campaign. Democrats there took the advice offered by the centrist consultant class, running Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a bland moderate and military vet who’s good at raising money.

Yet Sherrill finds herself in a dead heat with Republican Jack Ciattarelli, who came within a few points of beating Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy four years ago. Donald Trump’s unpopularity should be dragging his party down, but people are so fed up with milquetoast, donor-placating Democrats that their party’s approval is even lower. Focus-groups participants may tell pollsters they want “centrists’ in the abstract, but in practice, those people reinforce every negative stereotype people have of Democrats as weak, ineffectual and more interested in rich donors than working-class voters. 

The stakes today are high, because if Mamdani overperforms expectations, that will make it even harder for the consultant class to keep up the narrative that the best strategy just happens to be the one that dovetails with their desire for candidates to focus on fundraising — and on paying their consultants. 

Granted, Former Rep. Abigail Spanberger is way ahead of her Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, although Spanberger also presents herself as an old-school moderate. But Virginia is being hammered by the federal shutdown and Earle-Sears has scared voters with how cuckoo-bananas she is.. 

Democrats can’t bet that they’ll be saved by MAGA extremism every time out, as evidenced by Trump’s two wins. They have to suck it up and start running candidates who are eager to win, not just frightened mice who lose because they’re too afraid to take risks. 

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Trump’s starting to cave on the shutdown

Let’s keep the good vibes going: Trump seems to be losing patience with the government shutdown. He treated his “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday like a triumph, but he actually ended up sowing more chaos among the GOP by telling them to kill the Senate filibuster in order to end the shutdown. Republicans have been pretending this whole thing is Democrats’ fault, as if people won’t notice that the GOP controls both branches of Congress. Trump undermining their lies in public was tasty.

That largely happened because he’s too unfocused to filter his own thoughts, something he’s always been bad at. It also suggests that Trump knows that he is losing the shutdown fight. Over the weekend, Politico reported that Trump just assumed Democrats would cave in quickly. They didn’t, and now he’s freaking out. 

His demand that Republicans end the filibuster wasn’t a one-off. He also turned to Truth Social to repeat his calls for changing Senate rules in order to pass a budget and end the shutdown. I suspect that’s also why the Trump administration decided not to appeal a federal judge’s orders to use contingency funds to pay for SNAP. In theory, Republicans desperately want to end food assistance. But the optics of starving old ladies and babies while Trump throws opulent parties were getting to be too much. 

There was a lot of anxiety about Democrats’ decision to fight here, since no one knew how the shutdown might end or what a win would look like. However, “nothing ventured, nothing gained” is an aphorism for a reason. That’s even more true in an era when you’re up against fascists, who constantly roll out outrageous tactics that often fail, on the grounds that even winning 10% of the time is still advancing your goals. 

No, this isn’t over, but with Trump getting fussy, I suspect Republicans may have to give up soon. So yeah, it’s an optimistic week at Standing Room Only! 

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What we're reading this week

• “What’s the Matter With New Jersey Democrats?” Alex Shephard, New Republic

• “The Firewall Against Nick Fuentes Is Crumbling,” Ali Breland, Atlantic

• “Trump returns to ‘60 Minutes’ and CBS News — because of Bari Weiss,” Sophia Tesfaye, Salon

• “It’s My Party and I’ll Leave When I Want To,” Rebecca Traister, New York

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