Democratic Voters Want Their Leaders to Stop Running From Zohran Mamdani

[DFW]

22. The party leadership should indeed get with their nominee unless he is really repulsive, which is far from the case here

The first time I ever voted, I voted Republican, and I am still proud of it, 54 years later. I was living in Philadelphia, and the thoroughly corrupt Democratic city machine nominated the repulsive, corrupt police commissioner, Frank Rizzo for mayor. As a 19 year old Nixon-hating Democrat, I was disgusted, and voted for the Republican candidate, a mild-mannered bureaucrat named Thatcher Longstreth. Rizzo bragged of his admiration for Nixon, and switched to being a Republican soon after he was elected mayor. Rizzo used to carry his Billy club in his cummerbund on formal occasions, in case he came across any anti-war (1971, so Vietnam) protesters, the bashing of whom he encouraged.

I find phrases like "Democratic Socialist" and "Fighting Oligarchy" to be tired sloganeering, but accept that they turn some people on. They are not tenets on which anyone has ever governed, let alone successfully, but Different Strokes for Different Folks.

Unless Mamdani really lets loose with some awful, totally unacceptable utterance, he deserves the chance to run as the primary's outcome chose. Yes, I have read his past statements that will upset some Jewish voters, and not just mildly. But we can't hang every such past utterance around every Democrat's neck like an albatross. As mayor of NYC, he is not going to shut down delicatessens or forbid kosher bakeries, and he is not going to rename Fifth Avenue "Avenue of the Ayatollahs." A mayor of NYC can't do that on his own, anyway. We need to get a grip. If elected, he'll either do well, or he won't, but the party has chosen its standard bearer in this election, and fighting some petty internal war over it will neither improve things, nor change the outcome.