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Today’s election day and I’m not going to take anything for granted. I want to write a little bit about Mamdani derangement syndrome.
First, Elon Musk and Donald Trump endorsed Andrew Cuomo — talk about misreading the room and throwing a drowning man an anchor. This thread captures the energy, click on the replies for more:
Bottomless Pit of Screams Endorses Cuomo.
— Maureen Johnson (@maureenjohnsonbooks.com)2025-11-04T02:11:19.605Z
Second, Abagail Spangberger took time off from her lackluster campaign for Virginia Governor to say this:
“Why is it that everybody keeps thinking somebody running in a city, admittedly an enormous city, that that is the deciding race?” she asked.
When asked what she made of Mamdani declaring at an October rally in Manhattan that he had already won the battle over the soul of the Democratic Party, Spanberger’s mouth twitched into a smile.
“Then maybe,” she said, “he should be a Democrat.”
Acknowledging when pressed that Mamdani is in fact the Democratic nominee, Spanberger said that for all the talk — including from within the Democratic Socialists of America itself — about the DSA’s growing power, she doesn’t see democratic socialism on the rise.
She argues there’s a level of dishonesty in some of the big promises Mamdani is making that she worries could hurt Democrats with voters long term, saying the reason she doesn’t have a Mamdani-style proposal for government-run grocery stores is “because I couldn’t ever pass it.”
“People do want us to be aspirational and dream big. They also don’t want us to lie to them,” she told CNN. “When you have a party that makes promise after promise, and then say, ‘Oh, we passed it in the House, it’s not our fault’ — vulnerable people believed you. Maybe he is going to get Albany on board with totally refinancing public transportation. But there’s a lot of people who believe him.”
[…]
Spanberger argued that many polls show her more likely to break 50% in her state than Mamdani is in his city.
The hubris on display here is monumental. First, the only poll that matters is going to come out at the end of the day today, how about showing a little humility instead of measuring the drapes? Second, I guess that candidates can’t make promises unless there’s an ironclad certainty that the promise can be fulfilled? Since when has that been true? Finally, Spanberger’s opponent is anti-abortion, and says that firing people for being gay isn’t discrimination. In other words, the Republicans didn’t send their best. And yet latest polls show Spanberger with only a 55-45 lead.
The ego of these mediocre “moderates” in the Democratic Party is something to behold. Their vision — to the extent that they have one — is tiny, incremental change, accepting the gridlock of the status quo, and shitting on anyone who dares to think that we need to shake things up. And man are they nasty. Compare and contrast Spanberger’s comments with Mamdani’s in the same CNN piece:
Mamdani’s campaign did not respond when asked about Spanberger’s comments. But asked at an event on Friday about whether he wants Democrats to have room for more moderate campaigns in Virginia and New Jersey, where US Rep. Mikie Sherrill is running with a similar approach to Spanberger’s, Mamdani was conciliatory.
“Absolutely, I think that this has to be a party that actually allows Americans to see themselves in it and not just be a mirror image of just a few people who are engaged in politics,” he said. “To me, what binds all of us together is who we are fighting to serve, and that is working people.”
These “centrists” are, on the whole, mediocre politicians. Yet their sense of entitlement is off the charts, and when a more left-leaning Democrat has the temerity to win a primary, they either sulk and hold back endorsements (Jeffries did for a long time and Schumer still hasn’t endorsed) or attack (Spanberger). Of course, they’ll get no penalty from the media, since the media’s appetite for criticism of Democrats by Democrats is a bottomless, gaping hole.
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