I Want to Afford to Dream

Thank goodness for Zohran Mamdani - the rent IS too high!

Sorry, this is going to have some run-on sentences because run-ons are about passion and politics is life which is passion so …

I was having a conversation with Stu this week where he pointed out that I am, generally, somewhat depressed in July, and generally always a little bit depressed around his birthday. He was right, it’s generally a habit, and I’m not quite sure where it comes from. A dislike of summer heat? Growing up in a drafty old house that didn’t have A/C? Having summers that stretched out in the house that I grew up in where concepts like a “beach house” were a fantasy? Truly, I’m not really sure. But I do find July 4th hard — especially as our country feels as if it’s in a slow civil war, to quote Jeff Sharlet (an incredible writer who’s been on the sinking America beat and I just want America to figure out how dumb it is and to make a big shift towards equality so he’s writing about a new topic like … puppies), and the Heritage Foundation is winning, enriching billionaires, you know, like, 300 people basically, and pushing their concept of fuck you, especially anyone who doesn’t fall in my strict requirements for existence, I got mine Christianity on all of us as we get poorer and lose out on freedoms, options, and possibility. It is, in short: really depressing!

Afford to dream … that’s exactly it!

But there is one bright light out there, at least in the realm of politics, and that’s Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor. He won in a landslide in previous weeks, going from 1% polling to crushing the former state governor who had generational name recognition and it’s a marvelous story. What’s exciting about it, to me, is that he ran on actual ideas about how to make New York City more affordable for people. He also felt — and this is important — like he was running because he wants to make people’s lives better. Running for mayor of New York City is, often, kind of an insane choice, and it attracts egos. You never end up satisfying anyone, running the de-facto capital of the world, and it is not a position that tends to lead to bigger things. (Andrew Cuomo’s clear oh, I guess I’ll use my huge funds to buy mayor as a comeback position after stepping down due to credible sexual harassment accusations even though he doesn’t live in NYC, it was merely a use of his endless electoral funds as a stepping stone to running for president, was extra gross, to be honest. And my nervous system is so sick of having to tolerate sexual harassers demanding a comeback, forgiveness, the whole lot. It’s exhausting!)

Zohran was, is, the kind of out-of-nowhere Democratic Socialist member who was just a state Assembly backbencher stuck in Albany likely making some decisions but getting not enough done and a long-shot mayoral campaign was either going to get Zohran or the DSA more attention and notice and was probably the initial idea. But he was, as befitting his childhood nickname, nonstop. Every week videos were popping of Zohran actually all over New York City, talking to people and asking them where they were at, respectfully. It felt as if he was part of the community.

Jimmy McMillan you have always been right & Democrats should learn from his example.

You know what Cuomo was doing the week of the election? He had a breakfast event somewhere in suburban Long Island. He couldn’t even bother to be in New York City proper that morning. That is not the move of a person who is part of his community.

I knew Zohran had a chance, though, as the guy managing his communications, Andrew Epstein, also ran the state Assembly campaign of my local representative, Emily Gallagher, and she managed to upset a 40-year incumbent even though she was without significant DSA support or the support of the Hasidic community, who make up a huge part of the votes in my specific district. Gallagher’s campaign was very focused on its message and at the time, if I recall correctly, it was I’m young, energetic, I have ideas, this guy is old — and her opponent found himself flatfooted, and went on into retirement. Zohran’s campaign had similar focus and simple messaging. And unlike most politicians (most are total dorks) Zohran is gifted with charisma and confidence, the type that comes from being a former aspiring rapper following in the wake of Heems from Das Racist. He also has the kind of face that scrunches up happily with dimples when he smiles, which is frequent.

Das Racist will be reunite for the inauguration. Heems knows “like, 7 women.”

Considering the last ten years, I can’t even tell you how meaningful it is to have someone running for significant political office where his first pitch is “we need to make things affordable for people.” He is relentlessly on message and frankly, right now, while the wack, wack spotlight is on him, it’s even more impressive how he’s verbally taking all sorts of random shots and accusations and turning it back on How New Yorkers Need Politics That Work For Them, Actually.

But despite the fact that a tiny shred, a glimmer, really of hope and possibility that someone with power will actually try to pass laws that help people and promote equality when the earth and society is full of resources, we can have enough, and this capitalist individualist bullshit is making us lonely and angry and killing us — well, there’s been some backlash to Zohran’s win. And what I’ve found wild is that it is coming from establishment Democrats. The very centrist establishment that is currently failing to do anything to counter the current federal administration gutting the country out of anything that makes America great.

I knew, intellectually, that centrist Democrats are basically 1970s Republicans who are ostensibly on my side, and yet, again and again, in the past 25 years, they have done what feels like very little to actually fight against the scary realities in this country involving the far-right and various extremes — billionaires, evangelicals, silicon valley — that end up in lockstep. As a result (a cynical part of me thinks that the dems campaigned on Oh No Roe May Fall for WAY too long and then RBG died and then …), my daughter has less rights than I did growing up. Health care is farther away. The rent is too damm high and ownership is a mere fantasy. AI is coming for jobs in humanist industries and AI is coming for my child’s schooling and I have literally heard people in power say things like “well it’s here so we should get used to it,” as opposed to anything like fighting or even acknowledging how ruinous all of this is for the state of our environment.

And then this Democratic establishment is going all in on … fighting Zohran? On being weird about his win? On rank, racist Islamophobia? On attacking him due to his consistent and morally clear position on Palestine, leading to various opportunistic politicians who are not Jewish claiming that everything is antisemitic? On … not actually doing anything federally so that terrible bill passed and now Americans have less opportunity to pull themselves up via education and loans because they’re trying to make sure that college, already outrageously priced, is just for rich kids? Well no wonder none of these people ever campaigned on the fact that Americans need access to health care, jobs are but a mirage so why is health care tied to it, and not offering health care to people who pay taxes is a cruel joke. Meanwhile insulin, which keeps my husband alive, has gone up 1000% in price over the past twenty years. Salaries, mind you, have not risen 1000%.

This opposition is very clarifying. The establishment was all ready for the next mayor of New York City to be a has-been who had to leave his job because he was sexually harassing the women he worked with, affecting their careers and their lives and using taxpayer money to further harass them via the courts, they told us to get over it and now they’re trying to smear the guy who won — when what I find striking about the guy who won is his moral clarity.

There hasn’t been moral clarity with the Democrats for a long time. Establishment Democrats have been trying to paint themselves as the good guys but commit heinous acts of hypocrisy all the time. It’s all grandstanding. The lack of moral clarity from the DNC, from Chuck Schumer, from Kamala Harris’ presidential run that couldn’t even acknowledge the uncommitted movement, the fact that a genocide has been live streamed for two years, it’s partially why we are where we are right now. I always felt like Joe Biden was who he was, but the underlying rumors of him being “too old” and dealing with dementia felt, at the least, like there was a huge lie in front of everything even though he was doing his best — or maybe that was who he hired? I just don’t know. (I’m so angry at him and his administration because at the end of the day, they didn’t protect America from this current iteration, even though they talked a big game about it. The ego outstripped the service.)

The thing is, when it comes to scandal, historically, if you were a “good guy” scandal often will stick to you. I suppose it has to do with the media, because then there’s a story. If you’re just a rank hypocrite all the time, scandals are like water off a duck’s back. It’s horrible, but it’s true. I want to be happy about Zohran’s win but the last standing newspaper is trying, really hard, to imply that we should all be angry because he had that third culture kid’s confusion as to where he came from and it was on his college admissions forms? A scandal that they’re running with in order to “scoop” an avowed white supremacist whose hobby is trawling through data in order to attack colleges on DEI terms? And Zohran’s category check didn’t even help him get into the school where his dad taught? No, not today. I do not care. He is going to be the next mayor, and he’s going to help people. Eric Adams raised my rent by a lot. I hope Zohran doesn’t.

I am never writing about politics again for a variety of reasons, other people do it better and have the metabolism for it, I am but one normie disappointed woman who just wants everyone to have health care (honey?)! I want to be writing about culture but my god culture is dire right now — I could have gone to a movie tonight but truly, WHAT MOVIE DO YOU WATCH IN THE THEATER RIGHT NOW — and unfortunately, much of that is downstream from politics!