Two quick points about Mamdani that we need to remember. First, it’s easy to see Mamdani’s victory as one data point, lost amid a sea of other data points. But Mamdani’s victory is a continuation of what I called the Nevada Moment, back in February 2020. The Nevada Moment was the moment when Bernie Sanders decisively won the Nevada primary, powered by a coalition of Latino, Asian, and union voters, with many younger immigrant voters persuading their parents and grandparents to vote for Bernie, despite their skepticism. That moment was immediately overtaken by Biden’s victory in South Carolina the following week, when an older Democratic establishment rallied behind Biden to close ranks against the left, and then covid, when the […]
A new book about Biden’s decline and the 2024 campaign has tons of damning quotes from Democratic Party insiders. Apparently, Biden’s inner circle did a lot of covering just how far gone he was during the campaign. One insider tells the authors of the book, “It was an abomination. He stole an election from the Democratic Party; he stole it from the American people.” You’ve got to admire the moxie. Everyone’s always stealing an election from the Democrats. In 2016, it was the Russians. In 2024, it was the candidate they were supporting. This whole discourse is the ne plus ultra of a party that loses and loses yet always finds someone else to blame. Even if that someone else […]
My Salon column this morning on Joe Biden and the Jews has generated a lot of conversation, at Salon, on Crooked Timber, and on my Facebook page and others. I want to address here four objections to the column that have been made. 1. A few commenters have claimed that I completely misinterpreted Biden’s comment. Biden wasn’t saying, they claim, that American Jews have no guarantee of their safety save Israel but that Israeli Jews have no such guarantee. What’s more, I alone have come up with this far-fetched reading, ignoring for my own reasons—a desire for “clickbait,” one commenter said—the more obvious interpretation of Biden’s remarks. There’s a few problems with this claim. First, and most obviously, Biden’s remarks were first reported by […]