An interesting battle is taking shape in New York City, pitting the embattled Mayor Eric Adams against disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Both men maintain Ds next to their names, both men want a part in shaping the future of their party, but the two aren’t running in the same primary. Adams is running as an independent.
Seen up close, this looks like a simple calculation by a man whose busted-up political machine would be overpowered by Cuomo’s old allies. Viewed from a distance, however, we see a real shift in the leftward lurch of the Democratic Party — and what could be the first major 2025 battle of the party’s civil war.
This isn’t the kind of split that happens when things are healthy. Democrats like Adams were welcome in the party just a few years ago.
Think back about nine years ago (an eternity, I know). Republicans were in a panic. The brash and crass orange man from Queens was cruising toward victory while Gov. John “I’m the prince of light!” Kasich (R-Ohio) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) fought a desperate running battle to turn the tide.
Meantime, former President George W. Bush quietly mused that he might be his party’s last president, D.C. chattered on delusionally about how to take the party back in a convention fight, and prominent Republicans quietly looked to a divided Democratic Party for their own future.
Back then, men like Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) seemed like the right flank of the new Democrats. In an age of President Barack Obama’s culture-shifting black messiah ascendancy, his former chief of staff cut a no-nonsense, corporate-friendly, budget-conscious, law-and-order contrast.
For those predicting a Democratic Party dynasty and Republican extinction, an eventual Democratic split seemed inevitable. Americans, they reasoned, simply aren’t
that progressive. And in that split, men like Andrew Cuomo would go with the Emanuels of the world.
Cuomo was a Clinton man. Remember: In his early 30s, he was President Bill Clinton’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He tacked to the left during New York’s gubernatorial primary and later supported late-term abortions and no protections for babies who are born alive in failed abortions, but still earned the ire of the left (and a primary from a “Sex and the City” actress angry about his stands against illegal immigration and legalized drugs).
But with the inevitable victory of neoliberal Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the last remaining “moderate” wing of the Democratic Party collapsed. The mood was shifting; “pussy hats,” “shout your abortion,” and transgenderism were all the rage, with no appetite for moderation. After two successful but embattled terms, Emanuel sensed impending defeat and changed course to decline to run for a third.
And then COVID. And then George Floyd. And before you knew it, men like Cuomo were saying, “America was never great,” sending the sick to nursing homes, and “reforming” policing to fit with radical activists’ demands.
The party once set to dominate the foreseeable future was losing touch with basic reality and, as its unpopular time in the White House dragged on, was even prosecuting its own for apostasy.
Adams is no gem. He’s the kind of guy who can
effortlessly compare himself to Christ on the cross and his enemies to Adolf Hitler in a single breath. He’s got a complicated relationship with the police, a strange personal life, and a penchant for race-baiting over the dumbest, most minor things.
But he fought President Joe Biden on illegal immigration, so they trumped up a bunch of completely ridiculous charges against him and tried to ruin him. Now, in
his announcement address, he sounds almost Trumpian in his attacks on the hyper-liberal anti-policing and bail-reform politicians and activists in his city.
This isn’t the kind of split that happens when things are healthy. Democrats like Adams were welcome in the party just a few years ago. One New York Times piece from the summer of ’21 touted his “diverse coalition,”
reporting on “his support from a traditional Democratic coalition of unions and Black and Latino voters.”
Notice: Those are the very voters Democrats have lost or are losing! But they prosecuted this man for not toeing the line. And now the disgraced politician who long ago lost his reputation for moderation and presidential potential is returning from exile to knock him out.
It’ll be good viewing to see where it all ends up, but the next battle of the Democrat civil war — and one of the first major electoral ones — looks to be on. And right now, moderation is out of style.
Blaze News: Mayor Adams ditches Dem primary, then takes aim at the ‘deep state’
Ruy Teixeira: Democratic delusions aren’t going away any time soon
The New York Times (2021): How Adams built a diverse coalition that put him ahead in the mayor’s race
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Opinion & analysis, Politics