8 months ago, I wrote in my article Making Your Canada that Canada was headed for a fundamental political crisis which would shake the very foundations of Canadian nationhood. That this crisis would test Canada’s willingness to sustain its existence even at the cost of lower living standards and economic disruption. That this crisis would be brought about by American import tariffs used as a blunt-force weapon of continental domination. That based on my own interpretation of Kari Polanyi Levitt’s Silent Surrender, that decades of American-Canadian economic integration had laid the foundation for this crisis to happen. I said that the resolution of this crisis would determine the future of Canada. At the beginning of Trump’s second term, this crisis began to unfold, pending the resolution of ongoing trade talks.

This crisis has arrived.

Over the weekend, the Canadian government withdrew from trade talks with the United States. Despite signals earlier in the week that a final deal on the future of US-Canadian trade relations was imminent, talks have fallen apart. American import tariffs of 50% will soon be in effect on Canadian goods, which Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to match dollar for dollar. These tariffs will raise costs for consumers in the United States, they will hurt border communities, and businesses will fail. But make no mistake, the worst of the trade war will be felt in Canada, which is far more reliant on trade with the United States than the US is on trade with Canada. Some experts estimate that 90,000 jobs could be lost, and economic growth (which was just below 2% last year), could retreat below 1%.

What is even more disturbing however, is the cause for why these talks failed. Carney accused American negotiators of introducing last minute demands, demands that would be unacceptable to any self-respecting Canadian government. No deal, he said, would be better than a bad deal. British Columbia Premier David Eby described these demands as making Canada an “economic 51st state.” What were the American negotiators demanding?

At the very least, they were demanding clauses severely limiting Canada’s ability to negotiate trade agreements with other countries, that Canada make constitutional changes effectively ending official bilingualism, that Canada end its subsidies for Canadian-made film and television, and that Quebec rewrite its own language laws. These alone are intensely aggressive, but it’s not entirely clear that these were the final extent of the demands. Comments by President Trump indicate that he wants Canada to dismantle supply management for dairy, eggs, and poultry, a longstanding Canadian policy designed to protect domestic farmers. Other reporting indicates American demands for right of first refusal on projects extracting Canadian minerals. There are also longstanding disputes over Canadian price controls on American prescription drugs sold in Canada. I expect more will become clear in the next few weeks, and it will shock us.

If adopted, these outrageous demands would represent the dissolution of Canada as a nation self-consciously separate from the United States. I’ll spell it out in simple terms: the American government would be forcing a diet of political, economic, and cultural policies favorable to select American interests and detrimental to Canadian ones at the point of an economic gun. It would reduce Canada to a semi-colony of the United States. I must note that these kind of deals have routinely been offered to post-colonial states in the past century in order to access profitable global markets, often these states are in no position to refuse. Canada is fortunate in that respect to be in more of a position to refuse.

What it also reveals is that Donald Trump’s annexationist rhetoric remains relevant as a signal of designs to end Canadian substantive sovereignty. If Trump’s demands were adopted, control over Canadian domestic affairs would be transferred from Canadian elected officials to the Trump Administration, which Canadians obviously had no role in electing. A 51st state in all but name. No self-respecting Canadian government could accept these terms, at least not without a fight.

It is easier for Mark Carney to refuse these demands now, because the pain has not yet set in. Given the pattern of negotiating with Trump, negotiations may resume at some point and the tariffs may again be delayed. But if these demands continue it is inevitable they will take effect eventually. When that happens, and especially if they remain in effect over a protracted period, it will mean considerable economic pain in Canada. It will be the Crisis of Sovereignty I warned about, whereby decades of economic integration with the United States makes Canada vulnerable to an all out economic attack, one that tests Canada’s willingness to continue to exist as an independent nation. In short, it will test whether Canadians are willing to accept less money in their pocket to remain a nation.

I have made it no secret that as a proud Canadian-American, I believe in the Canadian project. I also have faith that the vast majority of Canadians also believe in it, and are willing to undergo sacrifices to preserve it. But it is easy for me to say that. I live on the American side of the border. While many of my neighbors in my hometown of Brooklyn and especially in my current home of Vermont will be hurt by these policies, and this is squarely the fault of President Trump, it is not the same. In Canada, communities will have to endure serious economic sacrifices, and policymakers will be forced to decide who they can afford to help and who they cannot.

The entire situation makes me very unhappy, knowing that Americans and Canadians alike are being needlessly hurt and pitted against each other by egomaniacs in Washington. We all deserve better.

I know that economic pain that may be endured by Canadians will be hard, but I believe they are necessary. Accepting the outrageous and imperialistic demands of the Trump negotiators would be the highest betrayal of the Canadian people. Carney was elected on a patriotic platform of defending Canada’s interests and building up her independence. He could never agree to demands without burning his mandate to ashes. I’ve had disagreement with Carney on various items since I first wrote about him in January, but on this issue I believe he has made the right decision. Now his test is to withstand American diplomatic and economic pressure, which may become more intense. We will have to see how he handles it.

I also think that Manitoba’s New Democratic premier Wab Kinew deserves credit here. Before the deal officially collapsed and it seemed like Carney might agree to a deal of uncertain quality, Kinew was showing a very stiff backbone. He argued that the only way to deal with someone like Trump is to not show weakness or make undue concessions. He also astutely noted that Trump’s disastrous foreign entanglements and massive unpopularity at home gives Canadian negotiators leverage. Premier Kinew has always struck me as the man with the right values, but lately he has demonstrated a keen understanding of the politics of the entire situation. In this case, Carney took the position on Saturday that Kinew had already taken on Friday.

Carney’s decision to pull out of talks currently enjoys broad support. Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, who has never been fully comfortable with economic confrontation with the United States has offered him praise, NDP leader and left-wing critic of Carney Avi Lewis also commended Carney, and conservative Premier of Ontario Doug Ford has added his bellicose praise to the chorus of support as well.

I expect that politically, the Liberals will grow their already-massive lead in federal polling. Despite encouraging rhetoric from Poilievre, the Conservatives lack a unified commitment to Canada’s position in this crisis. Conservative MP, and personal friend of J.D. Vance, Jamil Jivani has already criticized Carney’s dollar for dollar counter-tariffs as an “overreaction.” Polls show that about half of Conservative Party supporters blame Carney for letting talks fail rather then blame Trump for his outrageous demands, and that a third of Conservative supporters actually think favorably of Donald Trump (compared to <5% for the other parties). Canadian voters will not take the Conservative Party seriously if it waffles on the issue of Canada’s sovereignty. The Conservatives, I expect, will continue to tread water in the 30-35% range, while the Liberals soar towards 45% and beyond. The NDP, for their part, remains on the margins, but is poised to claw back some of their 2025 losses due to Liberal environmentalists souring on Carney’s energy policies.

I will be keenly observing this crisis play out over the next few months. It is a very unpredictable business. It is entirely possible that Trump once again delays the tariffs and we enter another half-year of talks. It is possible that a deal will be reached soon. Or, there will be a year of ever increasing tariffs and economic pain that puts Canadian sovereignty to the test. Either way, I believe one thing is clear, Canadians will be tested: how much disruption are they willing to endure for the sake of their country?

This month, the United States celebrated the 250th Anniversary of its independence. In July of 1776 the American colonies dissolved their ties to the British crown. The instrument of this dissolution, the Declaration of Independence, was a remarkable document in the history of liberalism and republicanism, and great blow against empire. The Declaration itself was the product of a complicated coalition of New England merchants, well to-do attorneys, Southern slave drivers, Protestant dissenters, and enlightenment idealists. The signatories themselves could agree on little in terms of a universal moral message, only united by a shared exhaustion with British imperial rule. But one way or the other, Thomas Jefferson’s maxim that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” was cast in stone on the foundational document of this country. In a world of absolute monarchies, unchanging social hierarchies, and entrenched elitism, this was a very radical statement.

What exactly this phrase meant, and whether it had any real bearing at all, was contested from the beginning of the republic. Did “all men” only apply to the propertied class? Perhaps all white men? Did it include enslaved Africans, and if so what could possibly justify their continued servitude? Did it include women? Some posited that “all men are created equal” said nothing about universal human equality at all, and merely equated the respective rights of the British and American peoples rights to govern themselves. Thomas Jefferson himself at times seemed unsure of the full meaning of the revolutionary idea he had penned, simultaneously supporting the French Revolution while holding hundreds of souls in chains at his Virginia estate. What “all men are created equal,” meant, and whether republican government had any role to play in the North American continent, was not decided until over 80 years after Jefferson’s Declaration. It would require a Second Revolution to decide to fate of human equality in this country.

Many of the signatories of the Declaration, and later the Constitution, believed that they could afford to punt on the question of human enslavement for the sake of unity and political convenience. The Constitution was full of muddled compromises on the issue, ultimately protecting the institution of slavery without exalting it. Due to the declining profitability of tobacco and rice farming, they assumed the system would die a gradual, natural death and would not overly dominate the politics of the young nation. Many of the Northern states had already adopted policies to gradually emancipate enslaved peoples in their states, and there was broad consensus on the need to ban the practice from the Western territories. Their predictions were wrong.

The invention of the cotton gin supercharged the cotton economy, becoming a massive boon to human slavery. But it could not just exist localized to the American South. Like a cancer, it needed to spread to survive. To bring about this expansion, the slaveholding class radicalized, developing a new philosophy of slavery as a “positive good” instead of a “necessary evil.” They funded pseudoscientific phrenological papers about how the people they held in chains were some kind of subspecies. They articulated political theories like the “Mudsill Theory” that argued against “all men are created equal,” saying instead that in every society there must be an underclass who carries out menial labor and is whipped into compliance for the benefit of their betters. They invested in politicians. Yes, indeed, as the “slaveocracy” accumulated large amounts of wealth, so too did they accumulate large amounts of political power, successfully capturing the federal government in the mid-19th century. Presidents Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan all toed their line, and the Supreme Court was benched by their accomplices, most notoriously including Chief Justice Roger Taney, an avowed pro-slavery partisan.

Over and over, the preferred policies of the “slave power” were adopted in Washington: the expansion of slavery to territories captured in the Mexican-American War, the persecution of anti-slavery activists, and even forcing free states to comply with the capture of runaway slaves. It was never enough. In the latter part of the 1850s, the loudest pro-slavery voices (known as “fire eaters”) called for imperialist wars to acquire territories in Latin America for new slave territory, reopening the Atlantic slave trade, and yes, even pushed for forcing slavery on those states which had outlawed it already. Every time federal politicians were reluctant to agree to their terms, the slaveowner class and their appointed politicians threatened to dissolve the United States.

In 1860, that moment finally came: Abraham Lincoln was elected President on a wave of Northern discontent with the domination of their government by the slave power. If the Civil War was America’s Second Revolution, as I argue here, then the election of 1860 was its Storming of the Bastille moment — when the people realized for the first time the power they had in their hands. The new Republican coalition of German immigrants, family farmers, social reformers (most notably abolitionists), and urban merchants rallied to the polls and broke the stranglehold of the slave power on the government.

Not an abolitionist, Lincoln’s platform pointedly did not call for the immediate emancipation of those currently in bondage, only forbidding the spread of slavery to the West. But Lincoln and the slave power both understood that without expansion, slavery would die out. There were numerous “compromise” proposals made to avoid a civil war and concede to slaveholder demands, but Lincoln would not agree. Unwilling to accept anything short of absolute control, southern states began to secede before Lincoln was even sworn into office.

The seceding states formed the “Confederate States of America,” a nation whose philosophical foundation was a direct assault upon “all men are created equal.” The Confederates offered a very different ideological core for their project. This core was most effectively and famously summarized by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens in his “Cornerstone Speech” in March, 1861.

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

Alexander Stephens, Delivered in Savannah, Georgia on March 21, 1861.

Not only was the Confederacy founded in the defense of the interests of slaveholders, but as Stephens pointed out, it was the first state in world history to place white supremacy and African slavery as central to its reason to exist. It faulted the foundational documents of the United States for not embracing slavery enough, for offering any hope at all of universal liberty. The Confederacy and its landowner class which play-acted as European aristocrats, offered an alternative vision for the continent, a vision of unapologetic elitism, rapacious oligarchy, and an ascendant slave empire. The seceding states began seizing federal forts and armories to facilitate their exit, and by April of 1861 all-out war had begun.

Abraham Lincoln correctly identified that the fight between the Union and the Confederacy was part of a broader struggle between republicanism, rule of the whole people, against aristocratic elitism. If the Confederacy won, it would be a blow to the aspirations of free peoples across the world. It would mean the expansion of American chattel slavery across the hemisphere, and it would demonstrate the frailty of democracy. In his famous Gettysburg Address, he said exactly that when honoring the sacrifices of Union soldiers.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, Delivered in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863.

If the Union lost the war, it would be a terrible blow to the cause of human liberty all over the world. Those concerned with the struggle for human liberty on a global scale certainly agreed. Italian republican hero Giuseppe Garibaldi offered his full-throated support to the anti-slavery cause, Karl Marx wrote to Lincoln on behalf of the International Workingmen’s Association offering his praise, veterans of Germany’s 1848 liberal revolutions fought in the Union Army, and in Britain the working-classes threatened to go on strike if the government recognized the Confederacy — which Westminster did seriously consider. As for the Confederates, they demonized their opponents as part of a global conspiracy of immigrant radicals, Black activists, and left-wing intellectuals, “Red Republicans” bent on bringing an end to the elitist social order of the antebellum South. For their part, the Confederates were aligned with Napoleon III, who had dismantled democracy in France and was now trying to return colonialism to Mexico.

For the Northern public, the war had started as a matter of national pride and preventing open treason. The vast majority of the White population of the Northern states were unwilling to fight and die in a war based on eliminating slavery where it already existed. A majority were intensely racist. Only a few years before the war, abolitionist activist John Brown had attempted to seize a federal armory in Virginia, aiming to spark a slave revolt in the South. The vast majority of the Northern public condemned him and applauded his capture. But as the war continued, the revolutionary feelings of the average American accelerated. While abolitionist activists like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe moved public opinion on the home front, farm boys from the villages of upstate New York, Wisconsin, and Vermont and immigrant newcomers from New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia — most of whom had never been to the South in their life, encountered the barbaric realities of slavery in the South firsthand. They were horrified. They wrote home, telling their loved ones of the need to “ram red-hot abolitionism down their unwilling throats at the point of a bayonet.” The Song “John Brown’s Body,” extolling the abolitionist rebel as a sacred martyr, became a common marching song of the Union Army.

On the other side, the themes were the exact opposite. The majority of ordinary Confederate soldiers, even those who were poor and were not slaveowners, identified their cause with that of the slave system and White supremacy. As for slaveowners themselves, thousands joined the Confederate Army to defend the system of blood and chains that they profited from. The battle lines became ever-clearer.

In 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all enslaved peoples in the Confederate states to be free. For the first time, this explicitly placed the abolition of slavery at the center for the reason for fighting. It was not uncontroversial. There were desertions by the thousand from the Union Army, while anti-war sentiment was enflamed in the North. In New York City, anti-conscription riots plunged the city into anarchy that summer, in part motivated by racism and opposition to fighting a war to end slavery. But the war effort endured, with a new, more focused sense of purpose. The cause of Union was not just for its own sake, but for the destruction of the system of human enslavement and the evils it represented: the torture of millions of people, aristocratic elitism, and oligarchic opposition to the democracy. It would be either the Republic or Slavery. The war had become a revolutionary war, with the cause of “all men are created equal” at the forefront.

The Black population of the country played a direct role in the revolutionary struggle for their own liberation. The Emancipation Proclamation also allowed for the creation of all-Black combat regiments. Thousands of free Black men in the Northern states flocked to the recruiting offices to don the blue uniform of the Grand Army of the Republic. These men undertook greater risk than their White comrades, because if they were captured they would not be taken as prisoners of war. The Confederacy viewed armed Black soldiers as militants of the slave revolt they had always feared. They vowed to return captured Black soldiers to enslavement, and in some cases massacred them.

The Confederates were not wrong to fear insurrection from those they held in bondage. During the war, thousands of slaves ran away from their plantation-prisons. The intellectual W.E.B. DuBois later described this as a revolutionary “general strike.” Many took up arms themselves, joining the Union Army and returning home to liberate their brethren and dismantle the Confederacy. It was the worst nightmare of their former masters. When Black soldiers took the field, there was downright terror on the Confederate battle lines. The Civil War did indeed include a slave revolt.

Victory for the Union was far from certain. In 1864, many in the Northern public had grown exhausted with the devastating casualties, and were willing to accept a negotiated peace with the Confederates. Such a peace very well could have involved recognizing Confederate independence, ironclad protections for slavery’s continued existence, the forcible return of those freed by the Emancipation Proclamation to the South, or all three. President Lincoln feared losing re-election in that years’ presidential election to a Democratic ticket that would be willing to negotiate such a peace. Could the slave power ultimately be triumphant?

But as in 1860 when compromises were offered to protect slavery, Lincoln did not waver. He kept faith with his new top commander, General Grant, and continued the struggle. Later in the year, the war turned decisively towards the Union. Lincoln won a landslide re-election in November, buttressed by an estimated ~75% support from the Union soldiery, who formed the shock guard of the revolutionary coalition.

Lincoln spent the last weeks of the war pushing the 13th Amendment to the Constitution through Congress. The Amendment would mandate the immediate, uncompensated emancipation of all enslaved peoples in the United States. A position that was the sole property of a small circle of hard-working activists prior to the war, had become law. For me, it is the greatest moment in American history.

The war ended briefly thereafter, with a victory for the revolutionary forces and the overthrow and destruction of the slave power. President Lincoln was assassinated by a disgruntled pro-Confederate actor mere days after the surrender of the largest Confederate Army, shortly after Lincoln had given a speech pushing for expanding the vote to Black Americans.

The counter-revolution began almost immediately. Within weeks of Lincoln's assassination, the man who inherited his office, Andrew Johnson, began issuing pardons to former Confederate officials and returning confiscated land to the same slaveholding class the war had just defeated. Johnson, an anti-secession but thoroughly prejudiced Tennessee Democrat, set the tone for what “reconstruction” would look like in practice. Within a year, Southern legislatures, restored to power by former Confederates who had barely finished surrendering, began passing Black Codes, laws that reinvented slavery in everything but name: vagrancy statutes that criminalized unemployment, labor contracts enforced with the threat of imprisonment, and convict leasing systems that funneled freedmen straight from a courtroom into forced labor on the same plantations they had just been freed from.

For a decade, the revolutionary coalition fought back in earnest. Radical Republicans passed Constitutional Amendments enshrining voting rights and citizenship for freedmen over Johnson’s protests, sent federal troops to occupy the South, and, for a brief window, implemented the revolutionary ideals of multiracial democracy, something resembling the real meaning of “all men are created equal.” Black men voted, held office, and served in state legislatures and Congress in numbers that would not be matched again for a century. General Grant was elected President in 1868, sweeping nearly every Southern state with overwhelming support from Black voters living there.

But the counter-revolutionaries outlasted the federal government. They formed paramilitary organizations like the White League and the Ku Klux Klan, terrorizing freedmen and re-establishing white supremacy at the point of a gun. President Grant suppressed these insurgents with force, but over time the revolutionary attitude of the White Northern public subsided. Fewer and fewer were willing to make sacrifices for racial equality or multiracial democracy. In 1876, a contested presidential election resulted in a Republican President — but a withdrawal of federal soldiers from the South. In 1880, the Republicans won again, but this time without winning a single Southern state due to unhindered suppression of the Black vote. Republicans could now win the presidency while conceding the entire South outright, leaving little political incentive to fight for Black rights in the South. Pre-war Southern elites and new militant white supremacist organizations took back their authority with gusto, plunging the South into the so-called “Nadir of American race relations” that lasted from the late 19th century until the mid-20th century. It was a time of segregation, sharecropping, lynchings, and plutocracy. A more accurate term in my mind would be “violent apartheid.”

The success of Reconstruction-era white supremacist counter-revolutionaries had lasting consequences. Black people in the South could not exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote until the 1960s. In 1896, the Supreme Court blessed the whole system of white supremacy in Plessy v. Ferguson, giving racial segregation the force of constitutional law for the next sixty-eight years. Black people in this country were continuously denied basic dignity, leading to generational poverty and social fractures which persist to this today. The politics of inequality and supremacy did not disappear in the 1960s. The same reactionary impulse — that human equality is a dangerous fiction, that supremacy is the natural order rather than something to be dismantled, has never fully left American public life. It resurfaces under new banners, and it remains a live force in American politics today, still contesting the basic premise the Civil War was fought to establish. In some cases, it involves the flying of literal Confederate flags. We must remain cognizant of these forces which seek to repeal the gains of the Civil War, forces that are still among us today and occupy high places of standing in our government. Even now, it begins with the destruction of the progressive gains of the 1960s, including the judicial dissolution of the Voting Rights Act. How long before human equality itself is under fire?

The revolution had tremendous positive accomplishments. Prior to the Civil War, the notion of “all men are created equal,” was not truly decided. It could be easily molded to fit various agendas. But in the Civil War, the fate of the idea was determined. The battle lines were cast in stone. On one side, President Lincoln and the revolutionaries argued that “all men are created equal” was a promise of universal equality for all people. That it had something to say about the inherent dignity of all, and that all should be born free. On the other side, the Confederates argued for elitism, for the principles of tyranny. That “all men are created equal” was a dangerous lie, and instead a minority should rule and the masses should be ruled. That Black people were not humans, and that their slavery was not just justified but sacred. Some, like Southern sociologist George Fitzhugh, went so far as to argue that slavery should even be extended to poor White people.

In the end, human equality won. Without this victory, the triumphs of the Civil Rights movement, the labor movement, and other social movements for human dignity would not have been possible. They relied on the fundamental idea that all humans are born equal to one another. That all people are born free. With a Confederate victory, these ideas would have been seriously contested. At best, they would have been cordoned to part of the country while victorious slavery violently expanded across the hemisphere. At worst, human equality would have been discredited everywhere. Without the Union victory, we could not speak of the deeds of Dr. King, or the accomplishments of United Farm Workers, or the 14th Amendment, which today protects the basic rights of millions.

The Second American Revolution broke the power of the slave owners, it created the basis for victorious human freedom, and it laid the groundwork for generations thereafter who would fight for justice. That fight continues today. Today, we stand on the shoulders of American revolutionaries. 250 years after our Declaration of Independence, let us vigilantly guard the historical accomplishments of our forefathers and continue to fight for the notion of human equality at home and abroad.

I want to apologize for the one-month break on content. Work has been busy and truthfully I have been suffering from writer’s block. But I hope this piece was worth the wait. I was always a big admirer of Abraham Lincoln, even when I was a child, but I want to thank longtime reader and supporter Peter Haines for inspiring my interest in Civil War-era American history as a young adult. I hope you will appreciate this piece!

Until next time!

I always get nervous on election day.

During the campaign, you can always tell yourself that there is more time. More time to talk to voters, more time to make strategic decisions, more time to look over the numbers and justify to yourself why a specific outcome is predetermined to happen. But on election day, there’s no more time. The climax is here, and when the vote totals inevitably appear on the New York Times results page, there is no escaping or avoiding their conclusions. This is the final verdict.

On Tuesday the 23rd, this is just about how I felt. I had written an essay on this very page explaining why I viewed Brad Lander’s victory over Dan Goldman as inevitable, but that didn’t stop me from worrying. When I was handing out pamphlets at the polls, everyone who indicated their displeasure gave me another reason to doubt. When I walked over to the Lander election night event, I couldn’t help but be anxious.

As it happened, these feelings were short-lived.

The race was called only a few minutes after polls closed, with early ballots giving Lander an insurmountable advantage that was only expanded by election day votes. The event quickly turned into a party, and by the time Mayor Mamdani and Congressman-elect Lander arrived for their victory speeches, the mood was euphoric. It was a very special evening.

(Thanks to Brad for throwing his hat in the ring! I felt a real sense of pride volunteering for him. I also should thank the campaign team — including Brad’s family! — for their unbelievable work. They earned it. And of course, the voters also deserve a thank you.)

On this page, I’ve kept my focus on my own congressional district, but there were a lot of other competitive races Tuesday night. In nearly all of them, progressive candidates were victorious. Whether it was Eli Northrup winning an Assembly race in the Upper West Side, David Orkin defeating Eric Adams ally Assemblywoman Jennifer Rajkumar in central Queens, or Jessica Ramos going down to defeat in her Jackson Heights-based Senate district after endorsing Andrew Cuomo last summer, it was a banner evening for the New York City left. Brad Lander’s win was the one closest to my heart, but it was hardly the only one. So today, I’ll talk about what happened and what it means going forward.

In my last commentary on the subject, I argued that the failures of the Biden Administration, the shock of Trump’s return to power, and the ineptitude of Democratic leadership had created a crisis of credibility for the Democratic Party establishment. Subsequently, new attitudes have become dominant among Democratic voters which I described as follows:

I argued that while Representative Goldman may have been what Democrats were looking for in the pre-2024 political era, he was woefully out of touch with the party’s base in the present moment. Lander, I said, was in touch, and would therefore win.

I stand by my argument entirely, and I believe it has been substantiated not only by the results here in the city Tuesday night but also from results in primaries across the country. What I got wrong was just how massive the victory for Lander would be. I predicted Lander would win by 11.9%, when in reality he won by (pending some uncounted ballots) 31.8%. Yes, that’s right, Brad Lander won 65.8% of the vote, and Goldman won just 34%. You can imagine how silly I felt for worrying. It was an absolute Landerslide.

I correctly predicted that Lander would dominate with the middle-class liberals of Park Slope, his home and longtime political base. Did I necessarily expect that he would routinely notch 75% or more in Park Slope precincts? No, I did not. Nor did I expect him to get over 85% in the Gowanus housing developments that Lander himself helped turn into reality. In 2022, Goldman won a crowded primary by getting middle-class liberals to like him, if not love him. He was able to carry many precincts in Park Slope, but four years later: his credibility had evaporated.

In my last piece, I said Lander’s numbers in areas like Park Slope and Gowanus would be enough to claim victory, but I also indicated I’d be interested in seeing the results in areas outside of professional and middle-class bubbles. In 2021, Eric Adams and his backers in the county Democratic machines smashed liberals and progressives alike with overwhelming support from Black, Asian, and Hispanic working-class voters. In 2024, Donald Trump made significant inroads with many of those same communities. For those on the left, the question of how to rebuild trust with these voters has been central to the entire project of a progressive New York City. Mamdani’s primary coalition showed signs of improvement, but how would Lander’s candidacy resonate with them?

The answer? Pretty strongly. For example, the NYCHA projects in central Brooklyn that Adams won in 2021 with over 60% or 70% of the vote, Lander held Goldman to small majorities or won them outright. This despite Goldman receiving the support of nearly every NYCHA tenant association President in the district. In the working-class immigrant mix of Sunset Park, Spanish and Cantonese speakers alike chose Lander. I’d also like to specifically note Manhattan Chinatown, where Goldman launched his campaign and made a major focus of his efforts. This longtime hub for the Chinese-American community is being slammed by rising rents, leading to the dissolution of once tight communities, and poverty rates are among the highest in the borough. It can be hard to tell which blocks are still majority-Chinese and which are gentrified without an expert’s perspective, but from my look, Lander was competitive or in the case of some precincts, winning with massive majorities. You can check out the precinct-by-precinct map for yourself here.

As I see it, there are two major things to consider. Firstly, what these results mean for Mayor Mamdani, but also what they mean for New York City politics as a whole.

Regarding New York City, I see this as nothing short of the beginning of a new era in city politics. In 2025, Mamdani dramatically reshaped the electorate, bringing out thousands of voters who previously hadn’t shown up for municipal elections, including but not limited to South Asian immigrant communities, working-class Hispanics, and most of all: young renters. But many speculated that he would be unable to bring his voters to the polls without his name on the ballot, that like Donald Trump in midterm years he would struggle. I felt that way too, one of the reasons I had Lander only winning by 11 was because I felt that a lot of Mamdani’s base would stay home. This election puts that notion to rest. The Mayor has shown that he is willing and capable of mobilizing his supporters to change the makeup of the city’s elected officials, and now the City Council and state legislature will have to reckon with that. If I were the Mayor I’d feel more comfortable going into budget negotiations with the Council or in Albany.

But it’s not just about the Mayor. He is very popular in the city right now, with his favorability rating rising to 58% per the latest Siena College Poll, but if and when these numbers fall, it will not magically turn back the clock. The old political machines of this city are dying. Once powerful gatekeepers of political office are having their authority challenged. Once upon a time, the Brooklyn Democratic Party machine known simply as “County,” could handpick judges, legislators, Borough Presidents, and even Mayors. But on Tuesday not only could they not save incumbents in the Assembly, but they could not win civil court elections or protect themselves where it mattered most: progressive reformers successfully won a majority of district leader elections, meaning likely new leadership for the Brooklyn Democratic Party. I’ll note, the Mayor didn’t endorse in those elections.

In the past, machines derived their legitimacy and their power by providing public goods and community services to working people. County could help a constituent who only spoke Urdu navigate complex city regulations to open a small business, deliver a summer internship with the NYPD for a young man in Canarsie, they could even secure plum jobs in public school administration, in their heyday. Come election time, they’d be rewarded with votes. But the bargain has broken down. The socioeconomic world of today, dominated by the neoliberal breakdown of shared institutions and squeezed by the cost of living crisis, has left working people demanding solutions that bureaucratic favors can no longer provide. Meanwhile, County backed politicians like Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams that kept selling out working-class voters with rent hikes, public service cuts, and even deals with Trump. The machine started to look more and more like an organization focused on maintaining their own power at all costs. In many of the working-class and immigrant neighborhoods that once formed County's electoral backbone, voters are increasingly expecting structural change rather than transactional politics. That’s why the machine lost.

Need any more proof? Just look to New York Ten. Dan Goldman campaigned on his ability to deliver transactional wins. I was told by many Goldman voters how we needed his congressional seniority for our district. Dan’s campaign aired television advertisements on his ability to deliver functioning security cameras in NYCHA projects, and complete construction of offshore renewable projects in the face of fierce opposition from a White House captured by the fossil fuel industry. These are meaningful wins, but they were not accompanied by a message of structural change. Brad Lander promised not just to deliver improved functionality to public housing residents, but also to fight to end the systemic federal defunding of public housing on a national scale — and much more. This was a message of structural, large-scale change, with the credibility of a people-funded grassroots movement behind it. The results suggest that voters across class, racial, and geographic lines found that message worthwhile.

I wrote my thesis on Ukrainian peasants who took history into their own hands, went into the streets, and brought an end to old ways of doing things that had failed to deliver dignity, democracy, or decency. So let me leave you with this. The Democratic Party's peasants are her voters, they are storming the proverbial castle, and it's time for real change.

Daniel Sachs Goldman is going to lose his bid for re-election in New York’s tenth congressional district.

Yes, there’s two more weeks of campaigning to go, another debate, probably a dozen more news cycles purporting to have an impact on the race, but when it’s all over, when the ballots are counted, Dan Goldman is going to lose and Brad Lander is going to win.

Seven months ago (gosh that’s a long time), I wrote My Mayoral Prediction, giving borough by borough analysis of what I thought would happen on polling day. I won’t quite be doing that here. What I will be doing is discussing how we got to this point, why is Dan Goldman going to lose, and what it says about the future of the Democratic Party.

The District

New York’s tenth congressional district is one of the most Democratic in the country, having voted for Kamala Harris by a whopping 60 percentage points, which was actually a poor performance considering Joe Biden won it by 71 points. But this overwhelming Democratic majority can easily mask the multitudes that the district contains.

The Brooklyn portion of the district is dominated by the beating Brownstone heart of Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, and Brooklyn Heights, but it also includes diverse immigrant neighborhood of Sunset Park where Cantonese and Spanish intermingle, Red Hook which mixes projects and gentrifiers, and even a slice of Borough Park, which includes perhaps the largest concentration of ultra-Orthodox Jews outside of Israel.

In Manhattan, it contains the NYU campus, both East and West villages, the penthouses of Tribeca, the Financial District, and Manhattan Chinatown, which while increasingly gentrified remains a major hub for the Chinese-American community. Not to mention the historic Lower East Side, which while no longer a hub for Yiddish-speaking socialists, still has a radical bent.

The district sits at the confluence of the city, where multiple bridges and tunnels connect Brooklyn to Manhattan, subway connectivity is at its densest, and an endless wave of goods and people move every day. It’s truly at the center of the city, and now it’s at the center of a debate over the future of the Democratic Party.

In NY-10, various constituent groups of the Democratic Party tent are represented, whether it’s insular religious communities, immigrant machines, working-class public housing residents, upper-middle class liberals, young renters squeezed by the cost of living crisis, or well-entrenched wealth. Each of them will have a chance to deliver their verdict on the state of the Democratic Party this month.

Trump I, Trump II, and the Democratic Party

Ten years ago, Donald Trump swore into his first term as President on a cold Washington D.C. morning. Today, he is somehow still President of the United States, currently serving the second of his two non-consecutive terms.

In 2017, Trump inherited a Republican Party that while cooperative, was still staffed by cadres of the old Reagan/Bush establishment. But over the years, the party has transformed into a personality cult where Trump’s selected loyalists fill up the ranks of the party. Subsequently, his second term has proven to be a more radical, unrestrained, version of his first.

In his first term, Trump marched to the edge of war numerous times, but never quite crossed the threshold into all-out conflict. This time, he has plunged headlong into a disastrous war with Iran alongside Israel. The federal police state, which Trump has built up to facilitate his desired mass deportations, has been expanded and become more openly violent, including carrying out two summary executions in broad daylight.

But perhaps the most notable acceleration has been Trump becoming a more ruthless hatchet man for wealth redistribution from the bottom to the top. His so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” moved over one trillion dollars to the top 1% of earners, financed by cuts to social services for the poor and working-class. Trump has not been afraid to boast of his ties to the oligarchy, lining his inauguration ceremony with representatives of the new technological and financial elite, many of whom were former critics. Most prominently, Jeff Bezos, who Trump publicly feuded with in his first term, has become an ally, turning the once Trump-critical Washington Post into a far more compliant entity. Silicon Valley, once full of Trump foes, has converted to the cause, supplying Trump with campaign cash and being rewarded with deregulation for their cryptocurrency and AI pet projects. In his first term, Trump had performative, public feuds with the American oligarchy, in his second term he has handed them the keys to the kingdom.

Trump’s approach has evolved, but there have also been changes in the Democratic Party. Some of them have occurred independently of Trump, but many have transpired as a result of these developments in Trump’s politics.

When Trump won in 2016, it came as a shock to Democrats, but Hillary Clinton’s sizable popular vote win and Trump’s razor-thin margin of victory in key swing states could allow them to dismiss the outcome as an accident. If that was not enough, they could blame Russian interference or James Comey’s handling of Clinton’s email investigation for the result. It was not the fault of party leadership or emblematic of fundamental flaws in the Democratic Party. By and large, Democrats still trusted their leaders. Chuck Schumer and especially Nancy Pelosi enjoyed overwhelming support from Democratic partisans, and insurgent left-wing candidates were batted away in primaries, with a few major exceptions. The Democratic base was content to reward anti-Trump gestures like Trump’s first impeachment or Nancy Pelosi tearing up his State of the Union speech. This was the sort of “#Resistance” politics of the time. In the presidential primary, Democratic voters kindly declined Bernie Sanders’ offer of systemic change in favor of Joe Biden, who promised to do away with Trump and Trumpism for good and roll back the clock.

Joe Biden narrowly won the Presidency in 2020, but in his goal to throw Trump into the dustbin of history, he failed in the biggest way possible. One can debate the reasons why, but the outcome is indisputable. After failing to pass a substantive social agenda, COVID-era relief programs and the Administration’s own initial welfare initiatives expired, leading to massive increases in poverty during a global cost of living crisis. Later in his term, Biden backed Israel to the hilt even as their war in Gaza degenerated into genocide, despite ample warnings and opposition from his own voters. In the end, he was forced out by his own party in the middle of the 2024 election after a catastrophic debate exposed his inability to serve despite prior reassurances that all was well. A few short months later, Trump recaptured the Presidency.

This time, it could not be dismissed as an accident by the Democratic base. This time, the failure of the Democratic Party establishment was far too obvious and blatant to dismiss. What has emerged from this catastrophe is a Democratic base with very new attitudes towards their party and towards anti-Trump politics, an attitude that is unsatisfied with the party establishment, laser-focused on oligarchic domination of politics and the economy, and opposed to America’s longstanding alliance with Israel.

Whereas Democratic leadership enjoyed the trust of their voters during Trump’s first term, this trust no longer exists. Figures like Chuck Schumer have seen their standing with the base collapse, while establishment-backed candidates increasingly struggle in primaries, most prominently in Maine where the Schumer-backed incumbent Democratic Governor didn’t even get her campaign to the primary day, ultimately getting 20% against a previously unknown oyster farmer with a closet full of skeletons. The party establishment can no longer credibly claim to speak for its base.

In response to Biden’s failures and Trump’s brazen alliance with tech and financial oligarchs, Democrats have embraced increasingly radical solutions to the crisis of inequality and political corruption. Over 60% of Democrats now view “socialism” (however defined) favorably, while faith in the capitalist system declines. Bernie Sanders has travelled the country with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gathering bigger crowds than he ever did when he ran for President. Policies like Medicare for All, imposing new taxes on the wealthy, and refusing donations from corporate special interests are overwhelmingly popular with Democratic voters, and are increasingly required as litmus tests in primaries.

But the most seismic change may be the party’s changing views on America’s alliance with Israel. For most of the late 20th century, the Democratic Party was typically more pro-Israel than the Republicans, but criticism of Israeli policy has become more prominent in the party in the 21st century. But even as Benjamin Netanyahu’s direction for Israel increasingly forced Democrats to choose between support for the country and liberal values, most Democratic politicians remained aligned with Israel and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). During Trump’s first term, polls showed plurality support for Israel amongst Democratic voters, although it was waning. However, in the aftermath of the brutal destruction of Gaza, and Netanyahu’s success in getting Trump to commit to war with Iran, this support has been obliterated. Polls show that clear majorities of Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians than Israel, and oppose continuing military aide to Israel. As for AIPAC, it has become a byword for corruption and support for war crimes.

The Democratic base has changed. But what does this mean for New York’s Tenth congressional district?

Lander vs. Goldman

If this primary was happening during Trump’s first term, Dan Goldman would probably be a lock for re-election. In many ways, he is emblematic of the “#Resistance” heroes of the first Trump presidency. He was literally one of the lead counsels in the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump, an experience that he successfully parlayed into a congressional seat in 2022. His prosecutorial take-downs of Trump and his circle of criminals were a reliable applause-getter for MSNBC audiences and loyal Democrats across the country. His mainstream liberal politics were criticized by some on the progressive left, but generally were acceptable to most Democrats. But the developments of the last few years have exposed his weaknesses, and have become his downfall.

Goldman has seemed unable to read the room on what the base wants with regards to fighting back against Trump. In the New York One debate, Goldman took credit for Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election because of his diligent work in exposing Trump’s crimes in his first impeachment. A claim that while obviously irrelevant due to Trump being President again, also makes no electoral sense. In the same debate, he spent a lot of time talking about the subcommittees he would head, and the incrementalist progressive policies he would advocate for, in what I believe to be a misread of a public mood which craves a more militant attitude.

At a time when Democrats are increasingly skeptical of corporate domination of American politics, Dan Goldman continues to accept limitless campaign contributions from corporate special interests like American Express and Google. At the recent debate, he claimed he would “take money from anyone.” Goldman's team has claimed that the clip in question is selectively edited to make him look bad, but their argument that corporate contributions to his leadership PAC (which is shared with other Democrats, increasing Goldman’s influence on Capitol Hill) is meaningfully different from his squeaky-clean campaign account only demonstrates how out of touch they are. Goldman’s campaign finance casts doubt over any progressive promises he might make on economic issues, even more so when you consider that he has become a ready ally of the cryptocurrency lobby.

But the greatest divergence between Dan Goldman and Democratic voters is undoubtedly regarding Israel. Voters might have ignored or agreed with his pro-Israel views once upon a time, but not anymore. Goldman has stubbornly clung to an approach to the issue that voters have discarded to the past. He remains endorsed and supported financially by AIPAC, has refused to sign onto legislation that would end or condition the flow of weapons to Israel, and has refused to refer to the Israeli presence in the West Bank as an “occupation” or their actions in Gaza as genocidal. He has repeatedly condemned the right-wing excesses of the current Israeli government, but he has never agreed to any actions that might substantively alter America’s relationship with Israel from that of nigh-unconditional support.

Goldman’s views and practices are out of step with Democrats on a national scale, but they’re particularly out of step with Democrats in this district.

Brad Lander has been on the progressive edge of New York City politics for twenty years. As a City Councilor and as Comptroller, he has multiple times taken positions whether regarding abolition of ICE, single-payer healthcare, the term “democratic socialism,” or opposition to stop and frisk, that were one step ahead of the voters, and one mile ahead of establishment politicians. But this is his moment of vindication. His pledges to tax the rich, implement Medicare for All, opposition to weapons transfers to Israel, refusal to take corporate contributions, and pledge to push for the abolition of ICE are exactly what the voters are looking for. This is why Dan Goldman has tried to claim that he and Brad have the same position, or as tried to act as if he is actually more progressive than Lander. But these claims fall apart at the slightest examination.

Dan Goldman might have spoken to the wants of the Democratic base in their 2017 to 2021 incarnation, but today, it’s Brad Lander who represents what voters are looking for, whether it’s on corruption, inequality, or foreign policy. That’s why he is going to win.

A Prediction

As I mentioned earlier, this is a district that contains many elements of the Democratic coalition. The electoral contours of the result of this primary may be a signal for how specific constituencies of the Democratic Party feel about key issues. If I were to offer any prediction on that, here’s what they would be.

I expect Goldman to be strongest with the district’s wealthiest neighborhoods, specifically Tribeca and Battery Park City where left-wing economics are a threat, and where Zohran Mamdani was rejected by wide margins. Goldman may also do well in Dumbo and SoHo for similar reasons. I expect him to dominate with the Haredi and Orthodox Jewish voters of Borough Park, where support for Israel is strong. Goldman may also enjoy a favorite son bump across the Manhattan portions of the district more broadly.

I expect that Lander will dominate in his home base of Park Slope, which he has represented in some form or another for 15 years. He’ll receive similar levels of emphatic support across Brownstone Brooklyn, where social activism is deeply rooted. I predict that Lander will do well with the young professionals squeezed by the cost of living crisis who powered Mamdani’s campaign, in neighborhoods like Gowanus and the East Village.

That alone will probably be enough to get Lander across the finish line, but the most interesting question will be who will win with lower-income and immigrant voters in neighborhoods like Sunset Park and the NYCHA developments of Red Hook and Gowanus. Whereas in the past, progressive candidates in the Democratic primaries have relied more on college-educated liberals to win elections, one of the reasons Zohran Mamdani had such success was his ability to expand that appeal to lower income voters.

Goldman has campaigned hard on his ability to deliver for NYCHA residents and has spent a lot of effort in Chinatown, a neighborhood missing out on economic growth. But he’s also a multi-millionaire who is close to the special interests who have pushed for redistribution of wealth upwards. Lander is also a well-off (though not as well-off as Dan) white guy from a wealthier part of the district, but he’s got a stronger record on key issues. I’ll be paying close attention to these areas on primary day.

If I had to offer a specific prediction for the results, it would be this.

Brad Lander: 55.9%

Dan Goldman: 44.0%

I’ll be sure to revisit that after the election.

In short, Brad Lander is going to defeat Dan Goldman because he represents what Democrats are looking for in their leaders today, whereas Dan Goldman represents the past. I believe that Lander’s victory will be a signal for the Democratic Party of the future, a party that is more aggressive in confronting inequality, more critical of corporate domination of politics, and more willing to change America’s foreign policy.

Addendum

I am not an unbiased observer. I am as strong a Brad Lander supporter as it gets, not just because of large-scale narratives about the Democratic Party, but also because I have seen him up close for over 15 years, first as my City Councilor and then as Comptroller. I know he is a dedicated public servant who is in politics for the right reasons. Not only is he an excellent public servant, but he is an inspiration to me personally. As a Jewish-American, Brad Lander is a leader who inspires me and who I can see myself in. I will be proud to cast my vote for him later this month. I know he will fight for the most vulnerable in our society and across the world, deliver results for the district, and lead with empathy and a passion for justice.

Most important, please do not take my prediction as the gospel truth. Brad will need your help to win this election. If you live in the district, please find your polling site here. Early voting starts this weekend, and the primary is on June 23rd. It is important to make a plan to vote. If you have the time, please also consider volunteering. With your help, we can elect a representative who will work tirelessly to fight Trump and deliver a more optimistic and fair future for all.

Throughout the 65-year history of the New Democratic Party, the party has accommodated a broad big tent on one of Canada’s most divisive questions: whether Quebec’s should remain within Canada or pursue independence. Since the Quiet Revolution, the NDP has at times sought to hold both federalists and sovereigntists within a single political home, united by a shared commitment to social democracy. This balancing act was most clearly expressed in the 2005 “Sherbrooke Declaration,” which affirmed Québec’s right to determine its own future, even if that future lay outside Canada, while still expressing the hope that Quebec could remain within a unified Confederation.

That appeal reached its high-water mark in 2011, when the NDP won 59 of 75 seats in Québec. Hundreds of thousands of voters who had previously supported sovereigntist parties placed their trust in the New Democrats, briefly transforming the party into a bridge between staying in and heading out.

Today, however, those optimistic days feel distant. A symbolic figure of that era is now stepping away from federal politics. Alexandre Boulerice, a former journalist and trade unionist and the last NDP MP from the 2011 wave, has chosen to retire and run for the Québec National Assembly under the banner of Québec solidaire. QS shares much of the NDP’s social democratic platform on healthcare, public transit, inequality, and climate policy, but differs in its explicit commitment to Quebec’s independence. Boulerice is far from the first figure to move between the NDP and sovereigntist politics, but his departure nevertheless marks a significant historical moment.

I do not join those who seek to diminish Boulerice’s career or his record of public service. He has given fifteen years to the New Democratic Party and the party owes him a lot. But being honest, I feel a sense of hurt in seeing him step away from the NDP and into explicit separatism.

I believe in Québec’s right to self-determination, and I also believe it is valuable that the NDP has historically accommodated a range of views on this question. But I am also a federalist and a supporter of the Canadian project. More importantly, I believe that progressives have distinct and pressing reasons to be skeptical of Québec separatism. That is the case I want to make here.

Where I Come From

But first, a note on my background. I want to be crystal clear on my personal biases and perspective. My father was born, raised, and spent the first three decades of his life in Montreal. A son of the Irish-Canadian working-class, he had much in common with his French-speaking Québécois compatriots: hardscrabble living, Roman Catholic religion, the Montreal Canadiens, and resentment at Anglo-Saxon Protestant elites in Westmount. But - he was a Quebecer, not a Québécois. He did not grow up with the same stories of dispossession and oppression, he did not have sympathy for sovereignty, and he did not speak French as his native tongue.

It was this question of language that became most important. When new laws emerged elevating the French language, it was a salvation for the Québécois who had endured humiliation in their own country, but it was part of the reason my father and so many of his ilk left the province. I was born as a result of his exodus, and I was raised in New York City. Since childhood I grew up with the stories of the mistreatment of the maudit anglais, who were driven out by language laws. I inherited his disdain for the treatment of the Anglophone population and his fervent opposition to separatism.

Having said this, I may lose a lot of potential Québécois readers. Nobody wants to hear from a diasporic Anglophone about what he thinks about the future of Quebec. I don’t entirely blame you either. But I ask you to stick around for two reasons. First, that my views on the matter are more nuanced than they might appear. Secondly, I ask that you listen on the basis of common political faith. If you’ve come this far you likely speak the same language of social democracy that I do. I ask that you consider what I have to say on that basis.

The Evolving Politics of Québécois Nationalism

The modern Québécois nationalist movement emerged out of the Quiet Revolution, a period of immense social transformation in Quebec. During this time, the province secularized, urbanized, and asserted control over its economic system from distant English-Canadian oligarchs and social life from reactionary clergymen. As a result, a truly modern Québécois nationalism emerged that united the French-Canadians of the province not just by faith, local or parochial identities, or even by language, but by the notion of a nation - a united political community looking to be Maîtres chez nous (masters of our own house) after decades of repression.

This vision was expressed in the provincial government of Jean Lesage’s Liberal Party, which nationalized industry, secularized the state, and expanded democratic participation. Those who felt that the logical next step for this movement was souverainisme (sovereignty) organized in the Parti Québécois (PQ) under René Lévesque, which married the cause of independence with social democratic reforms. In this period, Québécois nationalism and the political left were deeply intertwined. Sovereignty was imagined as a vehicle for redistribution, for linguistic and cultural dignity, and for the construction of a distinct social model. Sovereignty and the ambitions of the political left moved in concert as twin expressions of a society striving at once for national dignity and social justice. When René Lévesque and the PQ came to power in 1976, they did so as proud sovereigntists and social democrats.

However, the ideological synthesis between sovereigntism and the left has steadily dissolved. Upon the narrow defeat of the 1995 sovereignty referendum, Parti Québécois leader Premier Jacques Parizeau commented that “money and ethnic votes” had been the cause of their defeat. This off-hand remark foreshadowed an ideological shift in the heart of Québécois nationalism from sovereignty as a vessel for social solidarity to sovereignty as a vessel for divisive, chauvinistic culture wars. As early as 2010, former Premier and PQ leader Lucien Bouchard was criticizing his own party for drifting to the right and an excessive focus on anti-immigrant politics. His warnings were very prescient. The current PQ under Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has abandoned progressive politics entirely, immersing itself in the right-wing omnicauses of today (Islam, wokeness, the radical left), raging against immigration, and advocating for the dismantling of Quebec’s mixed-market economy in favor of neoliberal reforms.

Whereas original laws meant to recognize the status of the French language served the interest of a popular majority who had been forced into unintelligible English employment contracts , among other indignities, new language laws passed by the nationalist government of the Coalition Avenir Québec and supported by the PQ serve to tighten the linguistic screws on non-French speaking low-wage migrant workers, Montreal’s long-standing Anglophone minority, and threaten the livelihood of indigenous people. Montreal’s cosmopolitan cityscape increasingly feels under threat by a narrow-minded brand of culture-war oriented nationalism. It is a far cry from René Lévesque’s maxim that “Est Québécois qui veut l’être” (Anyone who wants to be a Quebecer is one) defining the nation on a civic, not an ethnic, basis.

I can detect the counter-argument. Fine, you’ve convinced me that the PQ has become a right-wing party, and I won’t support them. But I’ll support left-wing sovereigntist parties like Québec solidaire and politicians like Boulerice who reflect sovereignty’s left-wing roots. I can support sovereignty without supporting what the PQ has become. Fair enough, I have made an argument that progressives should not support the PQ, but what about the notion of sovereignty as a whole?

This is a fair point. I will now make the case for why progressives should be skeptical of sovereignty as a whole, and more confident believers in Canada.

The Quiet Revolution and Canadian Federation

The conversation around sovereignty naturally becomes a conversation about colonialism and the legacy of the British Empire. After all, the modern Québécois nationalist movement emerged from a society in which French-speaking Quebecers often found themselves economically marginalized and subordinate to institutions controlled by others. For many sovereigntists, independence represented the final stage of decolonization: the moment at which a people would become fully masters of their own destiny.

Yet one of the most remarkable features of the Quiet Revolution is that many of the demands of Québécois nationalists for linguistic, social, and economic dignity were accomplished without political separation from Canada. Through the Quiet Revolution and the governments that carried its legacy forward, Québec asserted control over its economic development, expanded the democratic state, secularized public institutions, strengthened the French language, and dramatically increased Francophone representation in positions of power. The subordinate status that had defined much of the Québécois experience within their own province was overcome.

It is clear to readers that I have respect and admiration for René Lévesque in a way I do not for his successors who now lead the PQ. But I do not agree with his view that sovereignty was the only way for Québec to become masters of their destiny. The Quiet Revolution shows what is possible for Québécois life within Canada. The Quiet Revolution was, in many respects, a national liberation movement that accomplished many of its most important objectives from within the Canadian federation. It was a great example of the democratic possibilities within Canada.

Sovereignty: Looking Before We Leap

Today, the case for Québec sovereignty on the left rests on the belief that independence would enable the construction of a more just, egalitarian society, in contrast to the neoliberalism of the Anglophonic West. But in the present context, that assumption is far from certain. The question for progressives today is not whether Québec has the right to determine its future (it does) but whether separation would meaningfully advance the goals that define the political left: democracy, solidarity, and human dignity.

Firstly, I think it would be a mistake to automatically assume that an independent Québec would be more democratic or progressive than the rest of Canada or the United States. As I’ve discussed, the center of gravity in nationalist politics has profoundly shifted since the times of René Lévesque. In today’s world, differing social models have ceased to play a major role in the conflict between sovereigntists and federalists, between Canada and Québec. The conflict has instead transitioned entirely to the sphere of culture, identity, and belonging. This is turf where unanimity comes less easily to political progressives. Accordingly, there are socialists and neoliberals, progressives and reactionaries, internationalists and isolationists on both sides of the constitutional divide. Independence, in and of itself, guarantees no particular economic or moral outcome.

A sovereign Québec would not emerge into existence insulated from the same global political pressures shaping every advanced democracy: austerity, corporate power, right-wing populism, declining trust in institutions, and polarization around immigration and identity. In fact, we are already seeing this take place in Québec. There is little reason to believe that crossing an international border into a new republic would suddenly liberate Québec from these forces. If anything, smaller states operating within a highly globalized economy can become even more vulnerable to market pressures and capital flight, constraining the very redistributive ambitions that many left-sovereignists hope independence would fulfill.

But in my view, the most concerning thing about a sovereign Québec would be the effects it would have on the geopolitical environment of North America in the Trump era.

Donald Trump seeks to rewrite the rules of the international order and redraw the map of North America. He has put his belief in unilateral might-makes-right into practice in international trade as well as military strikes across the Middle East and Latin America. He has threatened Greenland and made no secret of his desire to end Canadian independence. Despite going back on some of his threats, he has continued to use tariffs as a tool of coercion, including when Canada defies the United States’ international line. The Trump administration has also entertained the possibility of backing separatists in Alberta, where minority far-right secessionist sentiments could be leveraged to break up Canada.

In this climate, what would Québec’s exit from Canada represent other than a vindication of Trump’s Putin-esque theories that Canada is a weak, “fake” country? What effect would Québec secession have on North America other than strengthening the hand of Trump’s imperialism? What would be the ultimate effects of these consequences in today’s unstable world? Without Québec, could the rest of Canada resist President Trump? Could the independence of Québec could result in more provinces exiting Canada? Even once Trump is gone, the United States — my home country — will continue to have one of its two major parties compromised by such hostility. The threat of expansionism won’t just disappear. Obviously, the threat won’t just be to Canadians outside of Québec either. An independent République du Québec would also have to reckon, by itself, with an expansionist United States. When I think about the prospect of Québec sovereignty in 2026, this is what I worry about the most.

I Believe in Canada

I’ll conclude this essay with an affirmation why Canada is worth believing in and fighting for.

Canada has never been a simple or easy project. In the face of the United States’ irresistible social, economic, and political gravitational pull, Canada must constantly justify its own existence. It is always one generation away from dissolution. It takes diligent and deliberate effort to sustain.

The nature of the Canadian project has changed and shifted over time. Many leaders have offered their own different visions of what the Canadian nation should look like. These visions have not all been admirable, fair, or worth defending - quite the opposite. But I come not to offer my own vision, at least not right now, other than to say that I believe in the project. I believe in Canada.

I believe in a multiracial, multilingual democracy that strives to be the best version of itself. I believe in the country that in the eyes of the world has become synonymous with fairness. I believe that this country is big enough, and has to be, not just for Anglophones and Francophones, but also for peoples of a non-European background, and for the First Nations people who were here first and are still here.

This is a country with significant social accomplishments. Despite not being nearly as wealthy as the United States, it has a longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, and a superior standard of living. This is a country where union membership is a facet of daily life and not the exclusive right of a few. It is a country where healthcare is a right of the people and not a prize to be won in a rat race. Canada is not a land of milk and honey or some kind of dreamland utopia. It has severe, frightening, burning injustices and social problems. But the struggle to confront these problems is part of Canada. That struggle is worth continuing together. This is a country worth believing in.

Canadians are becoming rapidly more confident in this belief. Since Donald Trump threatened to seize Canada’s sovereignty, to impose his will on them as he has on so many others, it has stirred a deep feeling in the hearts of Canadians. Polls have indicated a groundswell in national pride, a surge in belief in the Canadian project. This is a wave that has not been exclusive to English Canada, far from it. Polls also show that pride in being Canadian has grown in Québec. Crucially, polls have also shown that support for sovereignty has fallen to its lowest point in thirty years. But one doesn’t need to track polls to know this. Just turn on the next Canadiens game and watch the crowd of mostly Francophone Québécois sing the English and French stanzas of O Canada in one voice.

I’ll end by returning to my father, because I owe him my roots in Canada and in Québec. My grandmother was half French vrai souche and his Irish paternal side has been in Québec for over a hundred years. They are still in Québec today. For me, it is impossible to imagine Canada without Québec. It is not only a matter of reasoned political thought, but a matter of emotive, irrational feelings that can only exist between a man and his homeland.

When I was photographed at the ceremony renaming Burlington’s Church Street as “Canada Street” to encourage Canadian (and particularly Québécois) tourists to return to Vermont, I held a Québécois flag in my hands together with the maple leaf flag around my shoulder. Because they belong together. I hope they remain so.

I wanted to give a small update on what I’ve been up to lately, and how this could potentially impact my work here on Dilly Delaneying.

Since graduating from the University of Vermont in May 2025 I’ve had a more then a few twists and turns in my professional and personal journey. Each of them has been enriching, exciting, and worthwhile in their own unique ways. But I expect the next twist to be even more so, and for that, I’m turning my attention northwards.

I’ve joined Tim Ashe’s campaign for Auditor of Accounts of the State of Vermont as Campaign Coordinator. Tim is a really special public servant who has been a Burlington City Councillor, State Senator, President of the State Senate, and Deputy Auditor. He’s got a long record of fighting for those who society too often leaves behind: workers, the elderly, the sick, and the poor. I am proud to be on his team as he talks to Vermonters across the state about making state government work better for the people.

I expect to continue publishing on my monthly schedule, but it’s possible there might be some delays and if that’s the case this work will be the reason why.

Other than that, I was hoping to reach out to my readers about what kind of content they’d like to see moving forwards. In the last several months I’ve written about Ukraine, Canada, New York City, and more. What’s been the most interesting to you? Please let me know in the comments or by reaching out to me personally.

I hope everyone is well and enjoying the blossoms of spring.

In lieu of my usual conclusions of my articles where I ask you to subscribe, I’ll provide a link to Tim’s website where you can learn more about him

https://www.timashe.com/

Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, often speaks of a grand thread linking himself to the great Canadian conservatives of the past. Stalwarts of the Canadian Right like John A. MacDonald, Robert Borden, and John Diefenbaker - men of stature who built Canada. In this time of resurgent Canadian nationalism and confrontation with the United States, Pierre has tried to draw upon that heritage to promote his agenda. In a 2025 campaign video, Pierre lays out his vision for a sovereign, self-reliant, and united Canada by calling back to the east-west railway built by Prime Minister MacDonald. This railroad united Canada across vast, often hostile, geography and help preserve her political independence in the face of American continental expansion. After asking whether that railroad could even be built today due to out of control environmental regulations, Pierre then proposes to tear up these regulations in order to pursue massive new all-Canada energy infrastructure projects that will reduce dependence on American pipelines. As he speaks in front of a bust of MacDonald, it’s clear that he wants you to know that continuity between himself and his immortal ancestors is stronger then ever.

But that is simply not true. The ideological continuity that Poilievre spins between himself and Canadian conservative tradition does not actually exist.

The Roots of Canadian Conservatism

Firstly, it is important to define and contextualize what I mean by “Canadian conservative tradition.” For that, let’s start at the beginning with founder of the original Conservative Party of Canada and Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A. MacDonald. MacDonald’s political program was the “National Policy,” in which the state played a central and irreplaceable role. While some in the Canadian business class sympathized with the idea of joining Canada to the growing United States for reasons of economic efficiency, MacDonald subdued those interests by using the state to develop an independent Canadian economy with a combination of protective tariffs, state-mandated preference for trade with the British Empire, and state-sponsored transportation infrastructure. MacDonald saw a muscular, robust, and active role for the state in economic affairs.

Do not mistake MacDonald’s positive view of state intervention for political progressivism or sympathy with socialism. MacDonald was a staunch supporter of industrial capitalism, the British monarchy, and the British Empire. He was also a racial supremacist who placed Anglo-Saxon Protestants like himself at the top of the the social order. The Canada that John A. MacDonald wanted to build was one with an “Aryan character.” The railroad that MacDonald built to bind the country together was in large part built by underpaid Chinese migrants who had no place in the country they were building. The government he assembled was staffed with Orangemen who regarded the extension of the British Empire into the untamed American continent, and the subjugation of her “savage” peoples, as a sacred crusade. This commitment to hierarchy, order, and English tradition made MacDonald and his associates indubitably men of the political right, but a right-wing that was both pragmatic and committed to a concept of common good.

The National Policy remained dominant under MacDonald’s successors such as Robert Borden and R.B. Bennett. Prime Minister Bennett, under the stressful conditions of the Great Depression, took an even more expansive of the state’s role in the economy - including not just to develop production but also to alleviate crises and provide for the public welfare. Bennett even went so far as to declaring “the end of laissez-faire.” It was the Bennett government that created the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (precursor to the CBC), the Bank of Canada, and first initiated New Deal-style reforms to the economy.

The protectionist National Policy was mostly dismantled during and after the Second World War in favor of increased integration with the American economy, but Canada’s conservative remained a party of public services and common goods. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s first actions after winning a majority government included, “stepping up Canada’s already generous social welfare benefits, providing new government assistance for hard-pressed prairie farmers, [and] injecting fresh government funds to spur housing construction.”

Diefenbaker also tried to use the state to reverse the decline of Canadian trade with Britain despite prevailing market headwinds. Much like MacDonald, Diefenbaker was an avowed Anglophile, and he was never quite able to reconcile himself to the end of the British Empire. (I will also note that unlike MacDonald, Diefenbaker was an advocate for civil liberties and social equality, curtailing the death penalty, expanding the franchise to First Nations peoples, dismantling racial discrimination in immigration, and more.)

Conservatives such as MacDonald, Borden, Bennett, and Diefenbaker were joined together by a commitment to using public institutions and public services to bind society together and achieve common goods such as defending Canada’s fragile independence, developing her industry, agriculture, and culture, and even provide for the basic welfare of her citizens. Prosperity and profit for private industry were welcomed, and excessive government control was avoided, but neither commercial success or anti-government crusading were the central or overriding goals of their administrations. Their’s was instead the ethos of the “Red Tory,” who married thrift with a concern for the good of society as a whole.

Today, conservatism in Canada, and indeed across the entire English-speaking world, is defined by altogether different values. Values encapsulated best perhaps by Margaret Thatcher when she declared “there is no such thing as society.” The conservative emphasis on frugality and industry was taken to an absurd extreme to the point of being supplanted by an ideological obsession with free markets. Whether it was Ronald Reagan slashing federal grants to city budgets, Margaret Thatcher privatizing public assets, or even Donald Trump’s cuts to Medicaid, destruction of public institutions and public services became an end in and of itself. If as Thatcher said, there was no such thing as society and only individuals, there was no need for public institutions to bind them together.

So what happened in Canada?

“Blue Tory” - voices within the conservative party (then called the Progressive Conservative Party) advocating for a more robust commitment to free markets and small government grew in number with the rise of inflation in the 1970s and the collapse of the Keynesian consensus. In 1983 the Blue Tories finally got their man - employment lawyer and businessman Brian Mulroney - for the leadership of the PC Party. A year later, Mulroney was swept into power by a historic landslide. Once in government, Mulroney dismantled what was left of the National Policy, negotiated a free trade deal with the United States, cut spending, and privatized numerous state assets. But Mulroney’s commitment to right-wing ideological fixations was paltry compared to what was to come just over ten years later.

Ontario and the Rise of the New Right

If Canadian Toryism had one reliable redoubt, it was Ontario. The Ontario Progressive Conservatives, with the support of a coalition of fiercely Protestant farmers and Toronto businessmen, had governed the province uninterrupted from the end of World War Two until 1985. In that time they’d acquired the nickname the “Big Blue Machine,” for their skill at winning elections. The Ontario PC Party was a classic party of power, occupying a comfortable center ground - erring to the left or right as conditions demanded. Under Premier Bill Davis (1971-1985), they generally erred to the left as Davis expanded public commitments to healthcare, education, infrastructure development, and even environmental protection.

Davis also pushed for full funding for the province’s long underfunded separate Catholic school system - this was a step too far for many in the party who still marched in orange regalia on The Twelfth of July and loathed the “Papist menace.” It led to a split in the party causing the PCs to finally lose power in 1985 to the Ontario Liberals. In 1990, the Liberals and PCs shockingly both lost to the insurgent Ontario New Democrats. In the conditions of the early 1990s recession, the New Democrats under Premier Bob Rae were forced to implement an unpopularity austerity program that alienated many of their traditional supporters in organized labor.

In their search to return to power, the PCs chose Mike Harris to lead the party, a man who had sided with the right-wing in the party’s split over Catholic schools. Harris rewrote the approach of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, promoting a populist “Common Sense Revolution” which bemoaned overpaid bureaucrats, stuffy regulations, and burdensome taxes as the cause of Ontario’s economic and social woes. In 1995, he led a coalition of farmers, disenchanted organized labor, and the suburban middle-class to a decisive victory for the PC Party.

Mike Harris waged a war on public-everything - the like of which had never been seen before in Canada. The crown jewels of the Big Blue Machine such as Ontario Hydro, the Ontario Liquor Control Board, and Highway 407 were either broken up or sold entirely to private interests. Massive tax cuts were financed by tossing hundreds of thousands off of welfare rolls, and the shredding of public spending on healthcare, infrastructure, and education. Even the basic essentials of public goods, such as water safety testing, were privatized under Harris. Unsurprisingly, the privatization of water safety testing had catastrophic consequences for the public welfare, including an E. coli outbreak with multiple deaths. After handing the keys to his deputy in 2002, Harris went to serve as a fellow for the Fraser Institute, a free market think tank funded by the Koch Brothers, and American petroleum and tobacco interests.

I don’t believe any single story better encapsulates the displacement of Canadian conservatism better then the Mike Harris experience. He took the leadership of a party which had historically viewed the state as an important tool to provide public goods, mediate between classes, and bind people together, and transformed it into a battering ram against the very institutions and services it had built. There was no regard for notions of “public good,” there was only the question of how much government can we eliminate and how fast can we do it. Not only had Harris remade the PC party, he had remade what it meant to be a conservative.

After Harris was done, he went to work for the Fraser Institute, a think tank funded by the same people who made Reaganism and the Tea Party happen in the United States. Canadian conservatism, and its commitment to solidarity, subsidiarity, and social harmony had been replaced by American-style “greed is good” capitalism. Concurrently, the federal Progressive Conservative Party was surpassed as the main force on the political right by the Reform Party, a coalition of western ranchers, oilmen, and religious conservatives led by future Fraser Institute fellow and deregulation advocate Preston Manning. The Canadian conservative world had been changed forever.

Pierre Poilievre, who makes little secret of his hostility to the state, is cut from the same cloth as Mike Harris. His political career, starting in Preston Manning’s Reform Party, has been defined by adherence to free market fundamentalism and an instinctive suspicion of public institutions. Whether promising to defund the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, support for school vouchers, vows to slash public spending, or even the wholesale abolition of the Canadian welfare state, Poilievre has treated public institutions like carcasses to be butchered and state intervention as an obstacle to be overcome rather than as an instrument for constructive ends. Such an understanding of conservatism would have been deeply foreign to the progenitors of the Canadian conservative tradition, but it would be right at home in Mike Harris’ Ontario.

On the campaign trail and during parliamentary debate, Pierre’s pugilistic style and three-world slogans (Axe the Tax, Build the Homes, Stop the Crime, etc.) are right out of the Common Sense Revolution. Harris had his own snappy slogans, that being “Work for Welfare, Scrap the Quota Law, and Tax Cuts for Jobs.” Whether it was Pierre needling Justin Trudeau during Prime Minister’s Question time or Harris riling up crowds in Oshawa, both men marketed free market fundamentalism by framing it as an attack on know-it-all bureaucrats, welfare cheats, and smug liberal politicians - with great success. Unlike Harris, Pierre has yet to win a landslide victory, but despite losing the 2025 federal election, Poilievre expanded the Conservative Party’s popularity with industrial workers and trade unions, flipping multiple seats into Conservative hands for the first time in decades. Harris did the same thing with even greater success. Their shared populism was able to turn anti-government resentment into a cross-class coalition that redrew the political map.

It’s not just electoral strategy that Pierre emulates Harris on. In late 2024, where Conservatives enjoyed a 20-point polling lead and “Prime Minister Poilievre” seemed inevitable, those close to Pierre mused with glee about matching the pace and speed of Mike Harris’ cuts to the public expenditure. An acquaintance of political science professor Bryan Evans and former Harris Minister familiar with Poilievre’s thinking describing their approach as “going to come hard and fast from every direction.” Speed was of the essence, to blindside both the public and resistance from civil servants. The agenda? Simple, “an assault on the country’s collective assets and already tattered social programs, a renewed attack on unions, activist and Indigenous defenders, and a bonanza of deregulation and privatization that would make his billionaire backers cheer,” in other words a turbo-charged, nationwide version of the Common Sense Revolution.

Poilievre and Faux-Nation Building

The idea of “the nation” and “nation-building” is at the forefront of Canadian politics today. Every political leader is charged by the public not only on how to best defend Canadian sovereignty in the face of Trumpian aggression and tariffs, but also to articulate a vision for Canada’s future as a country. In such a climate, Pierre Poilievre has sought to present himself as a patriot of growth and self-reliance: a leader who would free the private sector, accelerate natural resource development, and make Canada richer, stronger, and less dependent on foreign powers. The essence of his nation-building is the deregulation of energy projects and business investment. But a nation is not merely an economic zone. It is also a political community, bound together by common institutions, public infrastructure, and a sense of shared fate that wealth cannot substitute for.

So when Poilievre tries to associate himself with conservative nation-builders of the past, remember that he remains committed to defunding the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, an institution built to sustain a common national life across vast distances and regional divides founded by Conservative R.B. Bennett. Recall that recently he’s come out strongly against Mark Carney’s proposal for the government to build a high-speed rail link between Toronto and Quebec City, which would join about half the Canadian population with easier transportation of people and goods. In each case, free market orthodoxy comes before investing in the shared institutions which make Canada Canada.

Canada’s conservative nation-builders understood that if markets were left entirely to themselves - if the country were viewed merely as a loose collection of competing individuals and private interests rather than as a society bound by common purpose - Canada could not endure. The continuity Poilievre seeks to weave between himself and those figures does not truly exist. His conservatism belongs less to the tradition of MacDonald or Diefenbaker than to that of Preston Manning, Mike Harris, and the Anglo-American money from groups like the Fraser Institute that reshaped the Canadian right in the late twentieth century. It is a different creed altogether.

Addendum

I am not a conservative, not of the Canadian tradition nor of the American tradition. My politics are that of a social democrat, and my pantheon of Canadian political icons looks more like Ed Broadbent, David Lewis, and Jack Layton then anyone from the Tory side of the aisle. However, I have long found something admirable in the older Red Tory heritage of Canadian conservatism. After all, the “red” in Red Tory comes not from the traditional red color of the Liberal Party, but the red of socialism. I admired its belief that markets must be tempered by social obligation, that public institutions can serve the common good, and that a country is more than the sum of private transactions. It was a mighty contrast to the conservatism I grew up with in the United States which prioritized seemingly unlimited fealty to corporate interests.

I found inspiration in the words of Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield when he said that “increasing the size of the GNP is important, but it is not in itself a sufficient goal for a civilized society.” I admired John Diefenbaker’s sheer will not only to fight for Canadian sovereignty but also to drag the Canadian Right, so long dominated by the racial discrimination of the Orange Order, towards social equality for all people no matter their ethnicity or faith.

When Pierre Poilievre took the helm of the Conservative Party, I had a feeling that this heritage, already long marginalized after the merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform Party (then called the Canadian Alliance) in 2003, was truly finished on a national scale. He has done nothing to dissuade me of that notion, what with his continuing obsession with dismantling Canada’s civic institutions and public services even in the wake of Donald Trump’s threats. It’s a tragedy, because this moment could really use a Conservative Party that took the Red Tory perspective seriously. It is a loss not just for conservatism, but more importantly, a loss for Canada.

Note: This review contains spoilers for “Mr Nobody Against Putin”

On a hot summer evening this past July, my father and I headed to Tribeca in Manhattan to see a screening of 2000 Meters to Andriivka. Andriivka is a documentary mostly composed of body-cam footage recorded by Ukrainian soldiers in combat as they attempt to liberate a small village in Donetsk oblast from its Russian occupiers. It was a sobering portrayal of the unforgiving, brutal, and unsentimental realities of war. It contrasted the endless sacrifices of the Ukrainian soldiery with the callous impatience of Western commentators who complained their progress was insufficient, that their work may not deserve Western support. It was anything but a feel-good story. After the showing, I had the pleasure of meeting and briefly conversing with Director Mstyslav Chernov on how to get Americans to care more about the Ukrainian war effort. It was a very meaningful evening.

Prior to the showing, there were a few previews, one of which was for My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow - a documentary on Russian journalists working for an outlet critical of the Putin regime in the run-up to the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the Q & A with the film’s producers after Andriivka, a woman who I assume to be Ukrainian or Ukrainian-American questioned the theater’s decision to preview that documentary in particular. Were they suggesting that Russians in the comfort of Moscow and Ukrainian soldiers in the mud of Donbas were comparable? Why was attention being given to the struggle of Russian opposition journalists even in a space ostensibly dedicated to Ukraine’s fight? Being familiar with Ukrainian complaints about Russian opposition politics, I sympathized with her feelings. But I understand even more so now that I have watched Mr Nobody Against Putin.

Before I criticize Mr Nobody I want to give it the flowers it deserves. The documentary is made up of footage recorded by Pavel Talankin, a videographer at a primary school in the city of Karabash - a mining town of 13,000 or so in the south Urals. The footage focuses on the rise in militaristic and nationalist education in his school following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At various points, Talankin records teenagers participating in grenade throwing practice, scripted lessons repackaging Putin’s historical theories about Ukraine for children, Wagner mercenaries posing with rocket launchers with the students, and lectures describing Russians who criticize the war as “parasites.” Mr Nobody provides an invaluable primary source regarding the transformation of the Russian education system to prepare children for war. It is worth considering the footage of 15 year-olds in military fatigues tossing grenades in light of current “peace negotiations” that Donald Trump speaks so often about.

I also want to praise Mr. Talankin. Putin’s Russia is one where opposition activists are routinely beaten or even killed for their words and actions. Talankin’s decision to publicly oppose the regime and privately record its propaganda efforts required courage and he deserves praise for that.

Before I delve into my criticism I want to establish something about documentary film. Over the course of two years, Talankin recorded dozens, maybe hundreds of hours of footage - but the nature of film means it had to be reduced to a crisp 90 minutes. What is included and what is not included represents deliberate choices by the filmmakers, as does the musical score, as does the editing, and so on. This becomes important when discussing this film.

The documentary demonstrates a very important fact about Russia today: that most ordinary Russians are not idealogical ultra-nationalists or enthusiastic militarists. There are some, like the gaunt history teacher who teaches Putinist propaganda with zeal, idolizes Soviet-era secret policemen, and receives a corrupt bonus of a new apartment, or the locals who organize a pro-war rally. But for most people it’s apathy and apoliticism that prevails. Talankin’s mother laments that men shooting at each other is just an inevitable fact of life, one of his students is mobilized for the war himself seeming neither angry nor joyous, and while it’s clear that most of Talankin’s students do not believe in the nationalist narrative they are spoon-fed, neither do they necessarily oppose the war. I’m not going after the children, the youngest ones especially really don’t know any better, but I will criticize the film for not criticizing the apathetic sentiments themselves. The filmmakers have claimed the film is supposed to be about the danger of “corrosive complicity” but I struggled to derive this from the film I watched. If it is supposed to speak for itself, I did not gather that, and in fact I derived quite different conclusions. I’ll give you an example.

The ending of the documentary is centered around the graduation ceremony for the class of 2024, right before Talankin plans his escape out of the country. After Talankin delivers a tearful farewell address which only he knows the true meaning of, we watch the students celebrate in slow motion as the Soviet-era nationalist song “Wide is My Motherland” is sung by a children’s choir in the background. It is a hopeful scene. It almost plucks at the heartstrings of patriotism. This struck me as an ill-fitting note.

I mentioned earlier that 2000 Meters to Andriivka was anything but a feel-good documentary. It was as somber, painful, and pitiless as war. While the film does include scenes of profound sadness, particularly the recording of a mother’s wails at a soldier’s funeral - I found this conclusion of the documentary to take a wildly different turn. What cause was there for optimism? I would like to say the a Russian spirit of freedom and democracy endures, but we didn’t see that. What we’ve seen is a generation of young people who don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other about their country’s descent into fascism, we’ve seen the town’s young men being sent off to die horribly and pointlessly, we’ve seen a generation educated for death. What are we celebrating? Are we celebrating the graduation? The graduation itself doesn’t seem that important. Is it indicating hope for Russia’s future in its youth? I find that difficult to believe after what I just watched. Are we celebrating Talankin himself? That strikes me as bizarre and self-centered. Is it solely a bittersweet goodbye from Talankin to his students? Maybe, but that strikes me as an odd choice to center the conclusion of the documentary on. Is it about his relationship with his students or his opposition to the war as said in the title? Scenes like these made me feel unsatisfied, I felt the documentary had chosen to avoid commenting on its subjects or more directly addressing the war itself.

This is where what is included and what was not included becomes particularly important to me. A brief scene is included where Talankin acknowledges that tragic conditions in Russia brought on by the loss of loved ones in the fighting are incomparable to the conditions in Ukraine, but other than that the Ukrainian people are barely ever mentioned. Obviously, this is a documentary where Russians are the primary subject, but I can’t help but get this sinking feeling that a film about the war in Ukraine is unwilling to talk about Ukraine. There is no scene were Talankin talks about the motivations for the war with his students, or even refutes the propaganda presented in the classrooms to the camera. Did no footage of that nature exist? I find that hard to believe. I can only speculate why it was not included. Now, to be clear, it’s obvious that Talankin is disgusted by the war, he tries to resign his job when the war starts rather then educate the youth for war - before changing his mind and filming it all - but the film seems to be unwilling to devote real time to the morality of the war itself. I disagreed with this choice. If we are to have a film about the Russian experience during this war, it should not shy away from harsh truths about the complicity of the ordinary citizen.

I now understand the complaint of the woman at my screening of Andriivka much more. When discussing Ukraine, Russia is always placed at the center, and Ukraine as the sideshow. It’s been this way for hundreds of years. Part of the reason I wrote my thesis on Ukrainian left-wing political history is to center Ukrainians in narratives about their own revolution. Even now, as Russia assaults Ukraine, even as Ukrainian soldiers struggle and die for their freedom, Russians are placed at the center. Nowhere is this centering of Russia better shown than that Mr Nobody won the Oscar for Best Documentary Film, and Andriivka did not even get a nomination.

Dear reader, I encourage you watch Mr Nobody Against Putin and come to your own conclusions. If you disagree, please tell me so. But when you’re done, I encourage you to go watch 2000 Meters to Andriivka if you want to learn more about the war in Ukraine.

Lastly, a note. Mr Nobody asks us what we would do if our country was waging a war of aggression under a government that violently suppressed criticism, where democratic opposition was not an option. It is a difficult question, and it is why I found it important to praise Mr. Talankin’s acts of defiance despite my criticisms of the film. After all, I cannot say for certain that I would not meekly adopt apathy in the face of such conditions to spare myself injury or misfortune. Today, in the United States, we may all have to soon ask ourselves this question and consider how we ourselves can avoid corrosive complicity.

New Jersey Devils star forward and game-winning goal scoring hero of the United States men’s Olympic Hockey Team, Jack Hughes, was asked about controversy emerging from the team’s upcoming visit to the White House - where President Trump was due to honor them for their gold medal. His response: “Yeah, we're excited. Everything is so political. We're athletes. We're so proud to represent the U.S. When you get the chance to go to White House and meet the president, we're proud to be Americans, and that's so patriotic…no matter what your views are, we're super excited to go to the White House tomorrow and be a part of that.” Hughes’ reply suggests that because he is an athlete, he is very far removed from politics. His upcoming visit to the White House then, has absolutely nothing to do with politics. Never mind that he and his Norris Trophy winning brother Quinn wore Trump-branded “USA” caps at the White House, or that teammate Tage Thompson wore a literal MAGA hat. This is simply benign, totally harmless, red white and blue patriotism. I cannot tell you if Jack Hughes is trying to deceive people, or if he is hopelessly naive. What I will tell you however, is that he is promoting an idea that is simply not true; that athletes are automatically immune from political considerations.

Let me be very straightforward, I was strongly rooting for Team Canada to win the gold medal. Those who spoke to me in the days after Sunday’s game know I was downright despondent over the loss. Despite dominating the game from nearly start to finish, despite possessing perhaps the best starting forward line to ever take the ice, despite plentiful opportunities, Team Canada could only score one goal in just over three periods, and fell in a dramatic overtime. I was not happy, I’m still very unhappy about this. It’s important that you, dear reader, know this because I want to be upfront about my bias. Not only was I rooting for Team Canada, but I was doing so in part for political reasons. I rooted for Team USA hockey until very recently. My support for Team Canada’s hockey team emerged in early 2025, when in the midst of Donald Trump’s threats against Canada, Team Canada emerged as a rallying point for everyone who wanted to support Canada against a bully. In the Four Nations tournament, Team Canada won a dramatic overtime thriller against Team USA at the height of Trump’s aggression, against a Team USA that openly indicated their support for the President. It gave a whole nation joyous optimism that it could survive the present crisis. It cheered my heart not just as a Canadian, but as an American who wanted to reject Trump’s divisive vision for the country and this continent. This past week’s Olympic defeat has hurt as much - or more - then the Four Nations victory inspired. I do not want to deceive you, as Jack Hughes may be doing, about my true feelings or my political bias. It’s not wrong that I am somewhat of an embittered loser.

Let us first dispense with the idea that international sporting competition is divorced from politics. It isn’t. When you wrap yourselves in the flag of your country and compete against other athletes wrapped in their own native banners, they become nationalist avatars, their defeat is the nation’s defeat, their victory, their nation’s victory. There are few things more political than that. There are many incidents throughout history of sporting competition making profound political statements, or leaving behind major consequences. At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Jesse Owens’ victories were a public blow to Hitler’s pseudoscientific theories of Nordic racial superiority. East Germany’s state-sponsored doping program was in part motivated by a desire to prove the superiority of their ideology through victorious physical competition. The “Miracle on Ice” - when the amateur American men’s hockey team defeated the elite Soviet squad for the Olympic gold came at the height of late Cold War tensions, and was a triumphant moment for those convinced that the United States would inevitably overcome Soviet communism. During the 2025 Four Nations Hockey tournament, nobody could deny watching Canadian fans boo the American National Anthem, or watching Team USA fans wearing MAGA hats that the series had politics all over it.

So let us examine the political context of Team USA’s, admittedly quite incredible, victory over Team Canada. Almost immediately after beginning his second term as President of the United States, Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Canada that have the potential to ruin its economy, while also repeatedly saying that he believes Canada is an “artificial” country that should be made part of the United States - by economic force if necessary. He has since threatened Canada with further economic consequences for recognizing the State of Palestine, supported unpopular secessionist movements within Canada, and continued to disparage the country and basically imply it shouldn’t bother existing. Many Americans are used to laughing at Trump, but for Canadians this is no laughing matter. After Team USA’s victory, the White House’s official Twitter account quote-tweeted then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s triumphant proclamation after Canada won the Four Nations - that Canada could never be taken, and neither could hockey - and posted an image (knowing this White House, probably AI-generated) of a bald eagle tackling a Canadian goose. It’s worthwhile noting not only that the White House posted this at all, but that they specifically quote-tweeted Trudeau’s post affirming Canada’s freedom from the very height of the 51st state rhetoric - early 2025. The White House was hardly the only one to advance such a message, they were joined by many other commentators ready to proclaim a political victory over Canada

In normal times, where Canadian-American friendship was a given, a post like this could be harmless ribbing. But in these times, it’s a political statement. A statement that the United States will overcome Canadian pride, that Canada may yet become an imperial conquest. It is simply not true to pretend otherwise.

This is not at all to say that anybody who dons the uniform of Team USA, or for that matter Team USA fans, automatically become supporters of Donald Trump and his aggressive posturing towards Canada. I do not mean to shame anyone who celebrated Team USA’s gold medal victory. Nor do I want to criticize anyone who felt a real sense of patriotism, or who waved the flag, or who proclaimed “what the fuck is a kilometer?!” watching the American men win the gold medal for the first time in 46 years. Absolutely it was a very special moment. There is nothing necessarily anti-Canadian, aggressive, or otherwise malevolent about celebrating this special moment in American sports history. But especially for the athletes, you become part of a narrative, and a context, that is larger then friendly sporting competition. How you position yourself as an individual relative to the political context is definitively a political statement.

Those who disagree with me on the political nature of Team USA’s celebrations will say that visiting the White House and showing due respect to the President isn’t political, it’s just a matter of being on Team USA. As Jack Hughes said, they’re just athletes and they’re honored to be in a place of such national importance. But the President doesn’t cease to be a political figure just because he’s not on the campaign trail, especially not this President who has practically merged the White House and his campaign mouthpieces. The context of Trump’s actions towards Canada don’t disappear just because he’s being respectful to you personally (this respect was not extended to the gold-medal winning US women’s team who Trump mocked to the laughter of the men’s team).

When FBI Director and right-wing podcast personality Kash Patel was inexplicably included in locker room celebrations, that was a political statement. When Matthew Tkachuk put his own gold medal around Trump’s neck - almost literally making their triumph his own, that was a political statement. It should be obvious that wearing Trump-brand apparel at the White House is also a political statement. Still not convinced? Consider at least this juxtaposition. Many of these players, including team captain Auston Matthews and goalie (and soon to be Medal of Honor recipient) Connor Hellebuyck play for Canadian NHL teams - the Toronto Maple Leafs and Winnipeg Jets respectively. Have any of them issued a word in support for their Canadian fans and teammates over the past year? A feel good quote about living and playing in Canada? Crickets. Consciously or unconsciously, through action or inaction, they are now party to Trump’s message of political domination. Pretending otherwise is, I believe, very naive.

Under different circumstances I could easily imagine myself leaping for joy myself at Team USA’s win. I wouldn’t ask any fan to deprive themselves of the joy brought by this special moment in the history of our beloved sport. But I do ask people not to play make believe about the politics that surrounds and pervades this moment. These players do not cease to exist when they exit the rink, and they read the headlines. Jack Hughes can say what he wants about how he’s a stranger to politics, but the two are closely acquainted. We should absolutely demand better from them.

For my fellow fans, pretending that there is nothing political about our national hockey team bear-hugging the White House is gullible, and actively echoing the White House’s rhetoric of “the 51st state” sends a political signal that you’re on board. You cannot escape politics, and certainly not in sports.

At the November 2025 Parliamentary Press Gallery Dinner, a sort of Canadian counterpart to the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, New Democratic Party Interim Leader Don Davies took the podium for his chance to make a stab at comedy. He introduced himself by saying, “my name is Don Davies, and my pronouns are broke and irrelevant.” It was off to the races from there, a non-stop cavalcade of bangers, including my personal favorite, “now, a lot of people say that the NDP has alienated the working class, which I think is unfair, rich people and professionals also don’t like us.” That just about sums up the state of the present-day NDP, doesn’t it?

The New Democratic Party (NDP), initially founded as the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in in 1932 before being reorganized as the NDP in 1961, has for almost 100 years been Canada’s social democratic party. Social democracy, defined by former NDP leader Ed Broadbent as “the full extension of democratic principles to both society and the economy” and “the foundation upon which the lives of people everywhere can be made dignified, just, and exciting,” has been the guiding star that has led the NDP to build the foundations for Canada’s beloved public healthcare system, fight for the rights of workers, secure old-age pensions, and advance ambitious social reforms on the federal and provincial level. Despite never having formed Canada’s federal government, they have nonetheless played a vital role in Canadian history.

Lately, the New Democratic Party has fallen on hard times. After the 2021 election, in which the party performed merely okay despite a massive effort, the NDP entered an agreement to cooperate with the Liberal Party, who held a plurality but not a majority of seats in the House of Commons. Justin Trudeau’s third Liberal government quickly became very unpopular, with the NDP securing policy concessions but becoming unpopular alongside the government. In the 2025 election, voters were faced with two distinct visions, Mark Carney’s Liberals and Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. The New Democrats, led by Jagmeet Singh, fell by the wayside. Progressive voters terrified by Trump’s aggressive threats and Poilievre’s right-wing rhetoric fled to the Liberals, while blue-collar workers feeling that the NDP offered little difference from the Liberals turned to the Conservatives. When the voters were tallied, the New Democrats fell from nearly 18% of the vote and 25 seats in 2021 to 6% of the vote and 7 seats in 2025. From just over 3 million votes in 2021 to barely 1 million in 2025. It was the worst result in the history of the party and Jagmeet Singh immediately resigned.

The election result, and subsequent developments, have begged the question of whether or not the NDP is still relevant in today’s day and age. I’m no exception, I almost didn’t write this article at all. After Prime Minister Mark Carney’s much applauded speech to the World Economic Forum, the NDP just feels very small right now. As I’ve written about, Canada is engaged in an effort to define the next half-century or more of its existence, a vital struggle to rebuild its sovereignty in the face of an increasingly dangerous world, mounting a defense for the very meaning of being Canadian. The historic tasks of Mark Carney and his Liberal government are gargantuan, especially in comparison to the intra-party politics of Canada’s fourth largest party.

But the truth is Canada still needs the New Democratic Party. Canadians deserve a voice for ordinary people who lack the political influence of entrenched elites who back the two major parties. Canada needs the New Democrats because both major parties have let down ordinary Canadians at various points in history. While I’ve offered Carney much applause, I’ve also criticized tax giveaways to the wealthy and cuts to public services in his budget, and only the NDP will give voice to those concerns. That’s why they’ve been called “the conscience of Parliament.”

While the NDP has never formed federal government, it currently governs two of Canada’s largest provinces by population and land area - British Columbia and Manitoba. These governments provide a model for the nation, they’ve raised wages, secured low-cost childcare, eliminated obstacles to housing construction, and increased benefits for expectant mothers. These governments are popular and effective. Perhaps one day, one of BC’s David Eby or Manitoba’s Wab Kinew will be an NDP Prime Minister.

It’s for these reasons that I care about the current election within the New Democratic Party to decide its next leader. Because Canadians need and deserve a competent, effective, and visionary federal New Democratic Party that is capable not just of criticizing and organizing, but also of governing Canada. A party that is capable of approaching the defining issues of our time - inequality, declining public services, a wave of neo-imperialism, and climate change - with the necessary strength of leadership.

To say that it is unlikely that any of the people I discuss here will ever be Prime Minister would be a wild understatement, but, well, you have to start somewhere. Now, without further ado, let’s discuss the three main contenders vying to lead the New Democratic Party.

Heather McPherson

Heather McPherson is the only person running to lead the NDP who actually has a seat in Parliament, being one of the 7 New Democrat MPs to actually win re-election in April - winning a comfortable (if lessened) victory in her central Edmonton constituency. Her status as an actual MP seemed to make her the obvious choice to steward the NDP through a difficult period of rebuilding and transition, but the contest has since become a lot more competitive than many expected.

McPherson is widely considered the “safe” choice of the party’s institutional elites concerned about maximizing electoral success. She has strong support from party leaders including including 2017 leadership runner-up Charlie Angus and former Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley. McPherson has also spoken extensively about the party’s need to broaden its tent, criticizing “purity tests” for alienating ordinary Canadians from the party and making the party less approachable, which has invited criticism from left-wing activists and even fellow MPs.

So far, it’s not entirely clear what McPherson means about purity tests, but I think it’s a not-so-subtle jab at left-wing activists and excessive moral scolding that has emerged within the party. During the leadership of Jagmeet Singh, the NDP was criticized for being directed by Canva graphics more then Canadian workers, turning the party into an insular club for professional activists rather then the mass farmer-labor party it was founded as. A lot of this criticism was in bad-faith, but there’s certainly some truth that the NDP has become too exclusionary or academic in its approach to politics. Frankly it’s hard for me to object to McPherson saying the party should broaden its tent considering that the party received 6% of the vote in the last election. Obviously, something needs to change.

Nevertheless, many on the party’s left-wing have been quick to label McPherson a sellout based on her comments. But when I look at her actual record, I find it to be consistent with NDP principles. Her policy platform on her website seems pretty progressive to me. Sure, like many other Alberta New Democrats, McPherson has sometimes supported pipeline projects that the federal party has opposed. But I don’t buy the idea that McPherson is on some mission to drag the party to the right.

On no issue is this more clear then on Palestine. As the NDP’s Foreign Affairs Critic in the last Parliament, McPherson has been an early and loud advocate for the rights of the Palestinian people: calling for an arms embargo, recognition of Palestinian statehood, and even going on a fact-finding mission to the occupied West Bank. In Making Your Canada I offered Palestine as a place of potential further differentiation from Trump’s foreign policies, and McPherson seems to agree. McPherson’s outsized voice as Foreign Affairs Critic could make her a serious contender for government in the public eye in a moment when Canadians place foreign policy and Canada’s place in the world very highly on their list of priorities.

In addition to her foreign policy expertise, McPherson’s biggest selling point in my mind is her electoral assets, specifically her performance in her Edmonton riding. Since McPherson became the NDP MP in Edmonton Strathcona, the party’s performance has markedly improved to the point where it is now the party’s safest seat. Her performance in 2025 was roughly on par with the party’s numbers prior to her emergence, despite a vastly inferior performance by NDP nationwide.

Edmonton Strathcona NDP Vote Share (Federal vote share in parentheses)

2025: 46.8% (6.2%)

2021: 60% (17.8%)

2019 - McPherson elected: 47% (16%)

2015: 44% (19.7%)

2011: 53% (30.6%)

If McPherson’s hustle nationwide is anything similar to her local organizing, she could be positioned to really help the NDP rebuild from its dismal 2025 performance. Of all the candidates running, McPherson is the only one with any credibility as an electoral performer - and her performance isn’t just good by comparison, it’s genuinely impressive. This credibility and the fact that she already has a seat in the House of Commons make her pretty appealing from the perspective of rebuilding the party. The one big drawback to her electorally is that like the other candidates, her French is poor and she will certainly struggle to revive the party’s fortunes in Quebec. Mais c’est la vie.

Avi Lewis

If there is an NDP royal family, it is the Lewises. The patriarch of the family, David Lewis (born David Losz) immigrated to Montreal in 1921 from the faraway Belarusian shtetl of Svisloch, where he and his father Moishe had organized with the General Jewish Labor Bund, an underground Jewish autonomist and socialist political party, against Tsarist oppression and antisemitism. David Lewis thrived in Canada, quickly immersing himself in socialist politics of his new homeland, becoming a mainstay in the CCF of the mid-20th century, and finally becoming leader of the New Democratic Party in 1971. His son, Stephen Lewis became a party activist as well, serving as leader of the Ontario NDP from 1970 to 1978 and later as Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations. Stephen’s son, Avi, is seeking to take his grandfather’s place leading the NDP today.

When David Lewis sought to lead the New Democratic Party in 1971, he was the choice of the party’s institutional elite, and had to face down a rebellion from a faction of radical left-wing academics and activists called “The Waffle” who wanted to get their own man in the leadership spot. After a bitterly contested convention, Lewis saw off the rebels and secured the leadership. Ironically, his grandson Avi is now positioning himself as a left-wing insurgent trying to move the party to the left.

Avi has vowed to take on a system “rigged for the rich that leaves the rest of us behind,” and promoted the most ambitious policy program of all the candidates, including publicly-run grocery stores, a nationwide rent cap, massive new public housing projects, expansion of public healthcare, and much more - all financed by a wealth tax on top earners. Lewis’ platform and Zohran Mamdani inspired social media content have garnered him serious momentum, people are starting to talk about him like a potential leader. So let us consider how he would do as leader.

Near the last quarter of the 20th century, social democratic parties across the world, once the progenitors of public investment and mixed-market economies, made their peace with neoliberalism. In some cases, such as in Germany and Sweden, it was even the social democrats that carried out welfare reform, austerity programs, and privatization of public assets. The New Democrats are no exception to this trend, with the NDP having presided over austerity programs of their own in Saskatchewan and Ontario.

After the express train of laissez-faire careened off a cliff in 2008, social democrats everywhere had to rethink their approach - and consider their own complicity in the failures of neoliberal capitalism. Some proposed mild retreats from the excesses of the past, while others proposed a sharp left turn, a direct attack on inequality and austerity, and an embrace of social democracy’s radical roots. Avi Lewis falls into the latter camp. In broad strokes, I’m fairly sympathetic. When social democratic parties become bystanders to the crisis of inequality, they are more likely to wither away as they have in France and Greece. More importantly, a direct forward assault on the catastrophic inequality of our time is simply the right thing to do.

There are policy areas however, where I differ from Lewis. I remain skeptical of public grocery stores, and I am concerned about his ability to fund his whole list of proposals. But the biggest of our disagreements is on defense spending. He’s sharply criticized the government for its big military spending push, taking it to task for taking crucial resources from the green energy transition and social services. As I discussed in Making Your Canada, I understand these concerns but I simply do not agree. I think it would be a serious mistake for Canada to continue treating its military like the runt of the federal budget. When this happens, the United States takes greater and greater responsibility for Canada’s defense, and with this responsibility comes power over Canadian affairs. As Trump begins to escalate his rhetoric against Canada yet again, and extending more political support to right-wing separatists in Alberta, this is very dangerous.

I think from an electoral perspective, Lewis could certainly be effective in unlocking the progressive, young, predominantly renter demographic in the way that Mamdani did in New York City. I’d watch Toronto, which the NDP hasn’t won a seat in since 2011 - I’d particularly watch the by-election coming in University—Rosedale, a central Toronto riding opened up by Chrystia Freeland’s resignation. If Lewis wins the leadership, he’ll possibly have time to enter that contest personally. The NDP has only one seat in the major metros of eastern Canada, there’s no reason that has to be the case and Lewis could change that. While hardly proficient, Lewis also speaks the best French of anybody running - potentially opening doors in Quebec - although I’d certainly advise him to do a month of immersion in the Saguenay before trying to speak off the cuff. Any optimism about Lewis’ electoral appeal needs to become with a heavy qualification however, which is that Lewis has been an NDP candidate in the last two elections and both times he came in third behind the Liberals and the Conservatives. No secret sauce was revealed.

I do have concerns about what a Lewis victory might mean for the health of the New Democratic Party. Unlike the other federal parties, the New Democratic provincial parties retain official ties with the federal NDP - outside of Alberta becoming a member of the provincial party means automatic enrollment in the federal party. Lewis has made opposition to any new fossil fuel development a cornerstone of his agenda, which could be awkward for provincial parties out west where fossil fuels remain important parts of the economy. I do worry about how a Lewis-led NDP would impact the positions of provincial parties, especially in Alberta where the local NDP is the only opposition to an increasingly right-wing and pro-Trump conservative government. Nobody wants to see provincial parties renounce ties to the federal organization because they think that’s the only way they can win.

Whatever one thinks, Lewis is riding some serious momentum right now. Not only is he leading the field by a wide margin in fundraising, but he’s also been endorsed by the Ontario branch of the largest union in Canada - the Canadian Union of Public Employees. What was once unlikely may become reality very soon. If Lewis can hone his French skills, soften his edges, and build relationships with the provinces, he may yet be a strong leader.

Rob Ashton

In the 2025 election, the New Democratic Party hemorrhaged blue-collar votes across Canada - much of them to the Conservatives. In fact, more New Democrat incumbents lost to Conservative challengers (10) then Liberals (7). These included seats like Skeena—Bulkley Valley, a remote area of northern British Columbia populated mostly by workers in natural resource sectors, as well as Windsor-West, home to much of Canada’s remaining automobile industry, flipping from NDP orange to Tory blue. How is it that hundreds of thousands of Canada’s blue collar workers abandoned the NDP to vote for a Conservative Party led by Pierre Poilievre? How is it that these workers turned to Pierre, a career politician who has literally never worked outside of politics, who is a a market fundamentalist who once proposed a radical rewrite of Canada's labor laws to weaken the bargaining power of workers, how did they turn to him? This question is an existential one for the NDP.

Rob Ashton thinks he has the answer. Rob is the President of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada (ILWU), and has been a longshoreman himself for thirty years. He proposes that Canada’s labor party needs a labor leader at the helm. Ashton is a straight-talking union man who dispenses entirely with the media training and focus-grouping that characterizes politics today. He’s spent his whole career talking to his fellow workers in the language they understand, and he doesn’t plan to stop just because he’s entering politics. Politically, he’s a classic labor populist, railing against trade deals written by corporate boards, tax handouts for the rich, and cuts to wages. Ashton’s candidacy has attracted surprising momentum and big endorsements from major labor unions, entering the top echelon of candidates despite never having run for office before.

I think the basic premise of Ashton’s campaign is absolutely correct. As the working-class vote trickles out of the NDP, the party becomes increasingly immersed in a universe of special interest non-profits and activist professionals who make for a smaller voter base and an often-pernicious influence on policy. Take the consumer carbon tax introduced by the Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau, which enjoyed initial support from the federal NDP under the pressure of environmental NGOs. This was a new approach for the party. When the center-right government of British Columbia levied a consumer carbon tax in 2008, the BC NDP had rightly criticized it for being a regressive tax shifting the burden of the green energy transition onto workers and their families - reflecting the interests of their blue-collar voters who often had to drive to work in areas with scarce public transportation options. This newfound support for Trudeau’s consumer carbon tax was electorally toxic, with the party being punished by many of those same voters for perceived complicity in the policy federally, despite backing away late in the game. So clearly, the exit of blue-collar voters from the NDP’s coalition is both an electoral and policy problem.

What I question is whether Rob Ashton is a truly effective vehicle to deliver on his promise to rebuild the NDP’s working-class coalition. His campaign has already been in hot water for using generative AI to answer questions on a Reddit AMA, which was pretty ironic considering Ashton’s attacks on AI replacing workers. What’s more, while I certainly agree the party would benefit from a less academic style of rhetoric, I’ve been personally less then impressed with Ashton’s communication abilities. Firstly, his French skills are little to none, which could make his appeal in Quebec nonexistent. Secondly, Canadians want a statesman who can speak to their place in the world, and I don’t know if Ashton can speak to that. Speaking about Canadian sovereignty and approach to the world need not distract from his focus on workers’ rights, in fact I think the two are very connected. I hope to hear more on this.

Of the three leading candidates, my best estimate is that Ashton is running in third. I wouldn’t consider him likely to win, but I wouldn’t count him out either. Personally, while I find a lot of his message deeply compelling, I’m not totally sold on his ability to lead the party.

Make This Your Canada

The title of my last article on Canadian politics, Making Your Canada was inspired consciously by Make This Your Canada, a 1943 book co-authored by David Lewis about the future of Canada in the post-war world. In Make This Your Canada, Lewis and co-author F. R. Scott argue that after the war against fascism is won, Canadian society should be reformed along social democratic lines, that a decent standard of living should be provided for all people, that the state should have a role in the provision of healthcare, that all workers should be able to organize for better wages, that society should become more democratic, more gentle, and more compassionate.

I titled the article with this book in mind because like in 1943 - Canada is in the midst of a precarious and dangerous world. A world in which the very existence of a democratic, sovereign Canada is no longer to be taken for granted. As Russia seeks to redraw the map of Europe and the United States the map of North America, the assumptions of the old world are being dispensed with. In this time of troubles, Canada must take the steps to make sure there will be a Canada for future generations to cherish. But once the ashes of today’s crises settle, it is not good enough for Canada to simply exist as it did before. It must be your Canada, a better, more fair, and more just society then before. That is why the New Democratic Party matters, because when Carney comes home from Davos there is still much work to be done.

That is why the this leadership contest, one that could shape the party’s future, matters. That is also why I hope to revisit this subject in future articles. Until then.

The media is constantly comparing foreign leaders to Donald Trump. Whether it’s Jair Bolsonaro being labeled the “Trump of the Tropics,” or Boris Johnson and his messy blonde hair, or aspiring autocrats from Hungary to India, the 45th and 47th President of the United States has often been invoked to describe politicians across the world. This comparison is usually just a way of saying a politician has a populist style or a disregard for political norms. These are often very silly comparisons that eliminate nuance in favor of simplistic analogies for American audiences. These comparisons usually fall apart immediately once pushed past superficial similarities. All that being said, I’d like to indulge in a bit of comparison myself.

I believe that Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych, the 4th President of Ukraine, has some things in common with Donald Trump. For those not aware, Viktor Yanukovych is a Ukrainian politician who played a major role in the last 30 years of Ukrainian history. Despite having a very low opinion of the man, I find him fascinating. There are not just superficial commonalities between Yanukovych and Trump, but also strikingly analogous events in their paths in and out of power. I believe this comparison offers a lesson for our current national crisis.

Trump and Yanukovych share certain surface-level characteristics which make a comparison readily visible. They are both men of large frames who hail from eastern regions of their respective countries, for Trump, New York City, for Yanukovych, the mining town of Yenakiieve in the eastern Ukrainian oblast (province) of Donetsk. Perhaps Eric Adams would say that “Yenakiieve is the New York City of Ukraine.”

Both Trump and Yanukovych obtained massive fortunes through business arrangements of questionable legality and morality, and they both are known for amusing turns of phrase. Trump’s manner of speaking has been parodied many times, best in my opinion by Saturday Night Live’s James Austin Johnson. His list of quotable moments is vast. But Yanukovych was known in Ukraine for his own amusing sayings, oftentimes less a result of his sense of humor and more a result of his poor grasp of the Ukrainian language - like many Ukrainians of his generation he grew up speaking Russian. Once, while speaking in Lviv, Yanukovych claimed the “the country’s best genocide” was assembled there - he meant to say “gene pool.” He once claimed that Greece’s famous Mount Athos was located in Palestine. He made 13 spelling mistakes on his forms to file for the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, including spelling professor “proffesor.” The list goes on. But what I find more interesting is the curiously similar arcs of their respective careers.

From Humiliation to Power

Trump and Yanukovych share little in terms of upbringing. Whereas Trump was born into wealth, Yanukovych grew up as an orphan and made a living as a gangster in the grimy, soot-covered industrial towns of Soviet Donetsk. While Trump built a real estate empire in the 1980s, Yanukovych was transitioning into a semi-legitimate career in the Soviet transportation sector. Unlike many of his contemporaries in Soviet middle management, Yanukovych did not emerge from the collapse of the USSR with a colossal fortune - but he did utilize his “business” connections to gain the sponsorship of Ukraine’s new richest man, one Rinat Akhmetov. Ukraine’s post-independence politics was dominated by the influence of “clans” - alliances of oligarchs, ex-Soviet officials, well-connected businessmen, and politicians who vied for influence in the chaotic, resource-rich new state. Together Akhmetov and Yanukovych built a political machine of their own called the Donetsk clan.

The Donetsk clan and their political organization, the “Party of Regions,” successfully displaced the post-Soviet incarnation of the Communist Party of Ukraine as the dominant political force in the Donbas region, in part by winning over resentful Russian-speaking industrial workers with promises of social security and friendship with Moscow. In the USSR these workers were at the center of the Russophonic Soviet economy, in independent Ukraine, they were now on the periphery. Whereas those grievances had once fueled the Communists - who campaigned on Soviet nostalgia - they now formed Yanukovych’s social base. The Donetsk clan steadily increased their influence. Yanukovych was appointed Governor of Donetsk oblast in 1997, then in 2002 was appointed Prime Minister by President Leonid Kuchma. Finally, he was selected to lead Kuchma’s coalition in the 2004 presidential election.

The 2004 presidential election pitted Yanukovych, with the support of Russian elites and the Donetsk clan, against former National Bank head Viktor Yushchenko, the favorite of nationalist youth activists who envisioned Ukraine as a European democracy. The election handed victory to Yanukovych, but the result quickly became marred by credible allegations of mass voter fraud in his favor. Thousands of protestors converged on Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) and camped out for months demanding a re-run of the runoff election, in addition to an end to the corruption and cronyism of political clans. In what would become called the “Orange Revolution” (for Yushchenko’s campaign color), the Ukrainian public successfully compelled the country’s powerbrokers to re-run the runoff under vigorous observation. In the re-run, Yushchenko decisively defeated Yanukovych by an 8-point margin. Yanukovych was utterly humiliated, his transparently craven efforts to seize power against the will of the electorate exposed. He was derided as Yanukovych the mafioso, Yanukovych the Russian flunky, the man who tried and failed to make himself a king. His political career was seemingly over for good. Doesn’t that sound a bit similar?

Like Yanukovych, Trump also attempted to subvert the will of voters in a presidential election, and like Yanukovych he failed miserably and was totally humiliated in the process. After losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, Trump first attempted to overturn the results with several poorly-conceived schemes. When that failed, he rallied a mob to violently seize the Capitol building during the certification of the electoral votes. After American democracy’s brush with violent coup d’etat, Trump’s approval rating cratered, falling to an all time low, barely above 30%. He was also abandoned by Republican Party elites, with several previously loyal Senators voting to remove him from office, and powerbrokers like Rupert Murdoch looking elsewhere for leadership. All the while, Trump and his allies’ efforts to install him as President over the verdict of the people were ruthlessly mocked in internet videos and memes alike. Trump would continue to maintain that the election was stolen from him, which Yanukovych also did after his own defeat. Nevertheless, Donald Trump was supposed to be discarded to the dustbin of history.

Four years after this apparent final humiliation, Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term as President of the United States. Trump successfully reasserted control of the Republican Party and took advantage of the Biden Administration’s inability to address a cost-of-living crisis at home and instability abroad to win a narrow election victory on promises of a return to economic stability enjoyed during his first term. Since then, Trump has waged a war of retribution against political opponents, enriched himself and his allies, and attempted to consolidate an authoritarian regime.

After the Orange Revolution, most observers dismissed Yanukovych’s future in Ukrainian politics. Rinat Akhmetov, looking to rebuild the Party of Regions in time for the next election, brought in American political consultant Paul Manafort to right the ship. Just over 10 years later, Paul Manafort would be the Chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for President. Manafort’s analysis concurred with the common assessment. His polling concluded that not only was Yanukovych not a viable candidate for President in 2010, but that his candidacy carried “the potential to destroy the Party of Regions.”

But Yanukovych refused to go away. He paid Manafort millions to launch his public rehabilitation campaign. Yanukovych was recast not as a corrupt ex-mafioso who dined with Russian super-oligarchs, but as a humble, loyal son of the fatherland who had endured “the bitter taste of orphanhood, misery, injustice, but has not broken himself.” Yanukovych was a poor public speaker, so Manafort shifted the campaign’s messaging to television advertisements. But more than anything Manafort did, Yanukovych was helped the most by the ineptitude of his opponents. The “Orange” government of President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko became a den of infighting between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, and seemed unable to deal with the country’s pressing problems or deliver on promises of reform. Yanukovych’s old foibles no longer seemed as important compared to present challenges. In 2006, Yanukovych led the Party of Regions to a strong performance in the legislative elections and he once again became Prime Minister. His eyes were firmly fixed on the presidential election of 2010.

As the contest approached, Yanukovych continued his rehabilitation tour. Whereas in 2004 he had supported recognizing Russian as the state language alongside Ukrainian, now he talked of the importance of the Ukrainian language. Whereas previously he had favored closer ties with Russia rather than European integration, now he promised to make EU membership a goal for his presidency. Such was the success of his rebrand that Western outlets were publishing absurd articles about how Yanukovych was in fact the man most capable to fulfill the dreams of political reform set out by the Orange Revolution. Yanukovych’s promises to return to the relative stability of the early 2000s were reinforced further by the global financial crisis of 2008, which accentuated Ukraine’s economic woes. It was enough for him to defeat Tymoshenko by a narrow 3-point margin in the 2010 presidential election. Viktor Yanukovych, despite it all, was going to be President of Ukraine.

Trump and Yanukovych both overcame apparent political death brought on by their failed attempts to subvert democratic process and returned to power. Given time, distance, and the inability of those who had defeated them to successfully address pressing social problems, both men were able to leverage economic precarity to make promises of a return to previous stability under their leadership to return to power.

Much like Trump, Yanukovych also immediately set out to get retribution on those he felt had stolen his rightful victory in the last election. He was obsessed with putting Yulia Tymoshenko in prison, which he was able to do shortly into his presidency. He also set about making an enormous amount of money for himself and his allies, who became known simply as “The Family.” Public properties were handed out, state connections were leveraged to secure massive stakes in oil, gas, and mining enterprises, and when that wasn’t enough, money was straight up looted from the treasury. Yanukovych built a massive personal estate called Mezhyhirya which was legendary for its opulence.

Spread over 140 hectares of landscaped gardens with artificial lakes, the estate featured every conceivable luxury; spas and gyms, a tennis court, a golf course, a party ship, a helipad, a collection of retro cars and modern yachts, a state-of-the-art lab for testing food, greenhouses for growing it, and even a zoo and dog-breeding facility.

Yanukovych, in another parallel to Trump, escalated his attacks on Ukraine’s fragile democratic institutions. In addition to imprisoning his leading political adversary, Yanukovych rolled back the compromises agreed to after the Orange Revolution limiting presidential authority. He used his new powers to erode separation of powers, subordinate the public prosecution authority, and establish an imperial Presidency.

He also established his own personal army. Ukraine’s actual post-independence army was chronically underfunded, with resources instead being funneled to domestic security services like the Ministry of the Interior’s riot police, the Berkut, whose members were paid better than police officers and were outfitted with military-grade equipment. Yanukovych used the Berkut to threaten political opponents and even intimidate opposition voters in the 2012 parliamentary elections. Much like Trump’s ICE, the Berkut flagrantly violated constitutional protections and acted without any mechanisms of accountability. The Berkut also developed a reputation for anti-semitism, anti-Ukrainian Russian nationalism, and contempt for the public.

The End of Yanukovych

Yanukovych had promised to usher in Ukraine’s European future, a future which promised both increased standard of living and democratic freedoms. Ukrainians pinned their hopes on negotiations between Ukraine and the European Union for a free association agreement which would have established visa-free travel to the EU for Ukrainians, opened up new investment, and a glide path to full EU membership. But the agreement also included requirements for Ukraine to improve its democracy, strengthen separation of powers, and an implicit promise to release Tymoshenko from prison. Yanukovych faced a clear choice, he could have an autocracy or have the agreement. He chose autocracy. In late 2013, Yanukovych backed out of negotiations with the EU as they entered their final stages, announcing instead that Ukraine would seek stronger ties to Russia who had no pesky demands about the rule of law. Breaking this crucial campaign promise led to instantaneous and massive backlash.

Once again, thousands of Ukrainians entered the Kyiv Maidan and refused to leave. This time, Yanukovych chose violence, deploying the Berkut to make war on the Ukrainian people and then abrogating parliamentary procedure to pass laws criminalizing most forms of protest. But despite the crackdown, the demonstrators refused to give in, eventually forcing Yanukovych to agree to a political settlement with opposition politicians limiting his power and paving the way for new elections. Facing electoral defeat and likely prosecution for his many sins, Yanukovych soon fled to Russia with as much wealth as he could carry. Vladimir Putin - never comfortable with Ukrainian independence - refused to accept this outcome, seizing Crimea and sending troops into the Donbas region, beginning the war which continues to this day. As for Yanukovych himself, he remains in his Russian exile, emerging from obscurity every few years to parrot Russia’s position on the war and insist he is the legitimate President of Ukraine. Few pay any attention.

Lessons for Us Today

What purpose does it serve to compare Trump and Yanukovych? For one, it could have cautioned American liberals against triumphalism after Trump’s first defeat. If Yanukovych could successfully rebound from trying and failing to rig an election, Trump could do the same. But now Trump is President again, and it’s too late for that section of Yanukovych’s career to advise us.

But I do believe that the Maidan Revolution of 2014 and subsequent actions by the post-Yanukovych Ukrainian state can provide an example for Americans today. One of the concerns oft-demonstrated by Ukrainians as they endured skull-crackings and tear gas in the Maidan was that this was the last chance to save any vestige of democratic freedom. If Yanukovych succeeded in irrevocably taking Ukraine out of Europe, it would neuter the pressure exerted by the EU on Yanukovych to maintain Ukraine’s democratic institutions. If Yanukovych succeeded in crushing the protests with illegal force, it would secure his unchallenged authority, paving the way for him to transform Ukraine’s flawed elections into utter farces resembling Russia’s pre-ordained coronations. Ukrainians understood that without vigilance and self-sacrifice in defense of their rights, those rights would be extinguished.

Such urgency is again required today by my fellow Americans. I’m inspired by the bravery of the Minnesotans who are braving subzero temperatures and tear gas to protest the lawless, murderous, behavior of ICE in their city, who are forming a physical barrier to the brazen actions of the authorities. Who are delivering hand warmers and building barricades while under fire from tear gas. As I write this, we are seeing a sort of Minnesotan Maidan. It’s inspiring, but also terrifying because the stakes are so existential.

The current Administration has made it their official position that Donald Trump should have been extralegally installed as President after the 2020 election. Trump has said he wishes he seized ballot boxes to remain in power. It would be a mistake to simply assume that we will get the chance to vote out the Trump Administration in 2028, or vote out congressional Republicans in 2026, and state institutions will simply comply as normal. The Trump Administration has been obsessed with correcting shortfalls from the first term, and it can be safely assumed based on their public sentiments that allowing a transfer of power in 2020 was one of those shortfalls.

Of course, when there are elections, and every election held during Trump’s second term has been free and fair, we should vote with historic turnout - but that cannot be the extent of our vigilance. Firstly, leading Democratic politicians must dissuade themselves on the notion that this time is just the normal politics of any other year. Longtime Democratic political operative and commentator James Carville summarized this approach with his advice to Democrats to simply “play dead.” Playing dead means getting eaten alive. This is not normal politics. These are not normal times. The stakes are existential and the fight should be fought desperately. Democratic state officeholders should fight the Trump Administration every step of the way, and when election time rolls around, they should develop contingencies to protect the conduct of those elections in their state from federal interference before, during, and after election day.

More importantly, this moment calls upon the people to mobilize en masse to make sure those elections happen fairly in the first place. Shawn Fain and the UAW are planning a general strike for May 2028, mobilizing millions of workers across the country to mobilize for better wages and more power for ordinary people. They’re doing hard work to align contracts across sectors to expire on International Workers’ Day, so it would be silly for me to merely say to delay it, but why not begin preparing labor actions for November 2028? Should the Trump Administration attempt to overturn a democratic mandate, we’ll need a mass mobilization. We’ll need the courage of the Ukrainians when they came to the Maidan twice to defeat corrupt and authoritarian governments.

Ukraine also provides lessons for opposition politicians in the United States should they take back the levers of power. The Berkut, which had become synonymous with police brutality, criminality, and loyalty to Yanukovych before the public, was dissolved by order of the interim government which took over from Yanukovych. The public order responsibilities assigned to the Berkut were delegated to other bureaucracies. The decision to abolish the Berkut was informed by a keen attention to the incompatibility of its institutional culture with the Ukrainian constitutional order. For years, the Berkut had operated as a gang-for-hire for corrupt politicians and particularly the Donetsk clan. By breaking it up, Ukrainian officials effectively cauterized this rot, preventing it from undermining Ukrainian democracy again.

This brings me to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE has ceased to be a law enforcement body (emphasis on law enforcement) and become a political instrument for the Trump Administration. It does not enforce the law, rather it flagrantly violates the law, including the illegal detention and deportation of American citizens, violating the constitutional protections of the undocumented, and even targeting legal resident critics of Israeli policy. Just as the Berkut became known for political extremism, ICE has shown signs of becoming a hotbed for right-wing extremist politics, including using a white nationalist song as a recruiting tool. As the Berkut became notorious for deadly force against protestors, now the name “ICE” is synonymous with the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. These are terrifying developments.

If a Democrat becomes President in 2029, the best and most effective reform they can adopt is to abolish ICE and delegate internal immigration enforcement to other bureaucracies not compromised by Trumpification, and to prosecute officials responsible for illegal actions. The United States was not a lawless society prior to the creation of ICE in 2003, and Ukraine did not degenerate into anarchy upon the dissolution of the Berkut. What happened instead is that Ukraine became a healthier and more robust democracy. Such a lesson can be instructive for us, should we once again be faced with the prospect of rebuilding our country after a Trump presidency.

This comparison, I hope, is not just an academic curiosity, but can provoke us all to think critically about how we got here and how we move forward. I cannot predict what will become of Donald Trump, but with any luck, it will be similar to Viktor Yanukovych: disgraced, distant, and utterly estranged from his compatriots.

From its foundation, Canada was built on an infrastructure that deliberately resisted the continental pressure of the United States. This infrastructure was designed to maintain both state independence and the institutional strength in culture, politics, and the economy that underpinned it.

By the 1960s, this infrastructure was already crumbling. From 1926 to 1963, American capital control of Canada’s manufacturing industry had risen from 30% to 46% and Canada’s mining industry from 38% to 59%. Between 1945 and 1965 foreign direct investment into Canada grew massively, and by 1965, 80% of it was American. This massive expansion of American influence was financed by the sale of Canada’s own natural resources abroad. Not exactly a virtuous cycle.

In 1970, Austrian-born Canadian economist Kari Polanyi Levitt authored Silent Surrender: The Multinational Corporation in Canada, offering a grim but prescient prediction for the future of Canadian sovereignty in a world where American corporate boards enjoyed hegemony over the Canadian economy.

The most bitter harvest of increasing dependence and diminishing control may yet be reaped in the form of the internal political balkanization of Canada and its piecemeal absorption into the American imperial system. The final outcome of a branch-plant society is a merging of value systems and a meshing of corporate and technocratic elites which must ultimately call into question English Canada's willingness to pay the price of continued independence.

Levitt predicted that the increasing control of the Canadian economy by American capital would inevitably lead to an erosion of political independence, ultimately culminating in a crisis that would test Canada’s will to exist.

Yet, after 1970, Canada embraced continentalism enthusiastically. The advent of NAFTA knocked down the remaining barriers to free trade, the “Blue Tory” Mulroney government privatized major state assets, and the two nations became more culturally and socially interlinked than ever before. This arrangement, while counter to decades of Canadian thinking, seemed to be, ultimately, a beneficial one. American goods, American markets, American investment, American technology, and the security of the American military umbrella made the erosion of substantive sovereignty a second thought.

After all, what was the downside? Satellite status didn’t seem terribly threatening. The United States and Canada enjoyed genuine kinship, and unlike the Soviet bloc, there was no risk of armed invasion and regime change if Canadian foreign policy differed from Washington. When Canada refused to participate in the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, there were no serious consequences besides patronizing lectures from the American Ambassador. To this day, Canada maintains cordial diplomatic relations with Cuba despite the American insistence on embargo and isolation. Washington grumbles, but Canada has not been coerced to change course.

The downside became immediately and starkly apparent in 2025 when Donald Trump arrived for his second term in the White House. Not only did Trump implement massive import tariffs introducing massive uncertainty for Canadian markets, raising prices, costing jobs, and threatening a massive recession, but he underpinned these measures with threats to end Canadian independence and make it the “51st state.” The bombastic rhetoric alone may have been typical Trumpian theater, but the scale of tariffs, and the extent of Canada’s dependence on American trade, made them an economic weapon capable of triggering an existential political crisis.

Meanwhile, similar annexationist threats (this time with the implication of military force) were made against another American ally, Denmark, this time regarding Greenland — indicating the potential end of the American defense umbrella in North America with massive consequences for Canada as well as the NATO alliance. To make matters worse, Washington has gravitated to supporting Albertan secessionism, a proposition offering direct access to natural resources for America, but for Canada it represents a massive — perhaps irreparable — fracture for Canadian confederation.

Suddenly, it seemed that the crisis of sovereignty brought on by economic dependence predicted in Silent Surrender had arrived, and despite a surge in patriotic sentiment, Canada having dismantled much of its nationalist infrastructure was caught deeply unprepared. While this essay takes the positive case for Canadian independence for granted, it bears repeating the stakes. Unless Canada takes serious steps to strengthen and rebuild its independence, it will continue to be exposed to the erratic whims and dangerous designs of an increasingly deranged President surrounded by a coterie of far-right ideologues. Should these threats rise to the level of existential crisis, Canadian healthcare, education, and democracy could be vulnerable to the eager vultures of Trump’s rapacious oligarchy.

Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberal Party of Canada were given a mandate by the voters in the April 2025 federal election to build — as their slogan went — a “Canada Strong” or in French, “Un Canada fort.” On the campaign trail, Carney spoke candidly about the importance of this moment, saying that Trump wants to “break us, so that America can own us.” He vowed to make sure such a crisis could never happen again and that Canada would remain the true north strong and free. Now, the Central Banker turned Prime Minister has to deliver.

Austerity, again?

In 1995, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial titled Bankrupt Canada? written by right-wing pundit John Fund (notably, not an economist), predicting that Canada could become a third world country due to spiraling debt. In 1993, the Liberal Party had been swept into power with a mandate to tackle economic stagnation, a declining Canadian dollar, and rising debt as a percentage of GDP. Although everyone expected cuts, it was Manhattan boardrooms that made them historically brutal. This editorial, combined with threats of a rating downgrade from Moody’s, helped persuade PM Jean Chrétien and Finance Minister Paul Martin to massively deepen their cuts to public expenditures to 20% across the board, despite backlash from bleeding-heart Liberal backbenchers. The cuts successfully reduced debt, and restored international confidence in Canadian markets. From a different point of view, primary care access for Canadian patients was slashed due to Canadian dependence on appeasing American investors and their newspapers.

I bring this up because Mark Carney, like Paul Martin before him, is reintroducing austerity as a hallmark of Liberal administration. Carney’s FY 2026 budget is asking most departments to find 15% in cuts, laying off over 40,000 public servants — where healthcare services in particular will feel the hurt. What do these budgets have in common besides cuts? They’re influenced by economic dependence on the United States. Whereas in 1995 it was signals deployed from elite American institutions directing a change in a policy, this time it’s belt-tightening made necessary by a direct presidential power-grab. Once again, Canada surrenders substantive sovereignty over crucial fiscal policy to Washington.

Now, to be fair, the economic conditions we live in are compelling many governments to scrounge for savings. My time working in the Vermont state legislature gave me a very direct experience in that. Furthermore, Carney seems to a have a long-term vision of making Canada less reliant on the United States, which was not a feature of Paul Martin’s political project. Nevertheless, I challenge the necessity of this austerity. Especially not while Carney accompanies these cuts with a bevy of tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, including scrapping the tax on yachts, scrapping the digital services tax on large tech firms (a Trump demand by the way), and slashing capital gains taxes. At what point does fiscal necessity turn into an ideological war on “government bloat?”

Frankly at this time I am less concerned about bloat and more concerned about declining public services. At a time when rising waiting times threaten to undermine confidence in Canadian Medicare, understaffed Canada Revenue Agency call centers can only return a correct answer to taxpayers seeking help 17% of the time (yes, 17%), and student performance is lacking, I am not convinced that starving vital services to finance tax giveaways is a sound bet. While capital flight is more of a concern in Canada then the United States (where the threat of which is routinely bluffed to stop minor tax increases on the wealthy), I’d like to see more of an “elbows up” mindset applied to the wealthy, not just to ordinary Canadians expected to shoulder necessary sacrifices. That way, public services can remain credible, strong, and something to be proud of in a time of severe disturbance. It’ll also be a powerful signal that American policymakers can’t dictate terms to Ottawa.

A 21st Century National Policy

The “National Policy” originated with Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald, as a strategy to develop an independent Canadian state capable of withstanding the pressure of annexation from the United States. This policy combined protective tariffs on newborn Canadian industries and state investment in physical infrastructure spanning Canada’s wide and often hostile geography. The National Policy is widely credited with defending Canadian independence in its cradle, but was gradually dismantled over the course of the 20th century in the name of market efficiency. While still-intact trade agreements between Canada and the United States limit Canada’s potential measures, recent events make the construction of a 21st century National Policy very compelling.

Mark Carney seems to be thinking along these lines, given that he has embarked on a serious of government-backed “nation-building” infrastructure projects including but not limited to hydroelectric dams, ports, power lines, mines, and more. At a time when American firms already control large swathes of Canada’s infrastructure and resource economy — and are looking for more — these projects are definitely a good start. It may be worth thinking even bigger however.

Partially as a response to Silent Surrender, Canadian federal and provincial governments made combating foreign resource ownership a bigger priority in the 1970s. New Democratic governments in British Columbia and Saskatchewan nationalized large swathes of the lumber and potash industries respectively, while PM Pierre Elliot Trudeau created a state-owned oil company. These policies were, for the most part, dismantled in the name of market efficiency and continental integration over the course of the next three decades. Obvious recent developments however, I believe, merit a second look at proactive “Canadianization.”

Despite trade tensions, American firms continue to eye up untapped energy reserves in Canada, and finalize deals to buy up Canadian mines and water infrastructure. At the very least, Carney could seek to tighten existing regulations meant to keep resources in Canadian hands: more national security reviews, giving Canadian firms the right to match American offers, and so on. But I’d argue to go a step further, including bringing back the Crown Corporation to develop certain resources, or even have the state buy up controlling shares in assets as risk of entering foreign ownership. It’s possible that American authorities would cry foul and claim a violation of trade agreements, but it would certainly be ironic coming from the progenitors of the present trade war. If Trump wants to be a muscular economic nationalist, then Carney shouldn’t hesitate to reach into Canada’s own heritage to do the same.

Geopolitical Autonomy

Upon becoming Prime Minister in March, 2025, the first countries Mark Carney visited were the United Kingdom and France. These countries both played a historical role in colonizing what is today called Canada, but crucially were also not the United States. Carney was sending an undisguised signal that Canada was turning to the rest of the world. This is a welcome change. As Trump’s foreign policy prioritizes fanning the flames of far-right politics in Europe, techno-futurist ethnic cleansing in Gaza, looting and then selling out Ukraine, and of course, bullying Canada, the necessity of reasserting Canada’s independent position on the world stage is more important then ever. Carney has taken a variety of steps to do so, the largest of which may be including over $80 billion in new defense spending in his FY 2026 budget.

Typically, progressives oppose new military spending because it usually comes at the expense of social programs and makes war more likely. I’m not totally unsympathetic to those objections, but I’ll step forward as a rare left-wing voice in favor of growing Canada’s military budget. Not only is the deliberate underfunding of Canada’s military having dire consequences on servicemen and women — an Auditor General’s report showed bases failing to meet basic living standards — but this austerity is a result of outsourcing Canada’s security to the United States. Obviously, this shifts a lot of power and influence to Washington. In order for Canada to reassert its sovereignty, it has to take responsibility for its own security — and that means funding the Armed Forces. So I support Carney’s moves to do just that, but I want to qualify this in strong terms. Canadian rearmament cannot be structured as a giveaway to the American military-industrial complex or in the service of American foreign policy, and doing so would be worse then doing nothing at all.

That means, for starters, that Carney should absolutely not approve a Canadian purchase of American F-35s, or participate in Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense boondoggle as he has considered doing. Refitting Canada’s military with American equipment would not only mean massive giveaways by taxpayers to American companies, but it would make Canada more reliant on the United States for security, not less. Sweden has put forward a compelling offer to sell fighter jets to Canada, and not only would this be better regarding sovereignty, but the jets would be manufactured in Canada, creating thousands of jobs. Carney has made encouraging moves that he recognizes the necessity of diversifying Canada’s weapons supply, including securing Canadian inclusion in Europe’s defense financing program, but I think we’ll have to wait and see to know how serious he is not just about military spending, but about independent military policy.

Since World War Two, Canada has been a reliable supporter of American foreign policy, and even exceptions around Iraq and Cuba that I mentioned earlier were exceptions that proved the rule. Today, Donald Trump’s capricious and plundering foreign policy gives Canada an opportunity to draw ever sharper distinctions between Washington’s line and Ottawa’s. This is an important opportunity, because an independent military policy necessarily requires an independent foreign policy.

In this respect, Mark Carney has often refrained from contradicting Trump’s policies outside of those affecting Canada directly with one major exception: Palestine. In September, Canada broke with its own precedent and American policy by unilaterally recognizing the State of Palestine. In his statement, Carney issued criticisms of Israeli policy that would be unheard of from either the Biden or Trump Administrations.

The current Israeli government is working methodically to prevent the prospect of a Palestinian state from ever being established. It has pursued an unrelenting policy of settlement expansion in the West Bank, which is illegal under international law. Its sustained assault in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of civilians, displaced well over one million people, and caused a devastating and preventable famine in violation of international law. It is now the avowed policy of the current Israeli government that ‘there will be no Palestinian state’.

The White House was furious, with Trump even threatening economic consequences for the act, opening a major fissure between the two countries. PM Carney is a cautious leader who is unlikely to rock the boat further while trade negotiations are ongoing, but I think he has a unique opportunity to go one step more on this issue. Not only does the Canadian public favor a strong moral stance against Israel’s behavior in the West Bank and Gaza, but the issue represents an easily available opportunity to draw a necessary distinction between Canada’s position and that of the United States. I’d consider measures to sharpen Canada’s position, such as closing loopholes that allow Canadian war materials to go to Israel despite official Canadian policy restricting such exports, but also moves to increase the power of Canada’s voice, such as upping Canadian contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA).

Trump’s attacks on Canada and Denmark, as well as his eagerness to appease Russia have already forced other NATO leaders to plan for a world without the alliance. Trump’s and his allies in the tech oligarchy promotion of far-right nationalist politics in Europe has even forced governments to consider the United States an adversary. In some respects, Canada — short of having a Trumpist right-wing nationalist government of its own, and I should hope this never happens — is already being forced to find new geopolitical footing. For Canadians who have come to enjoy peace and quiet as America’s polite friend, this may invite worry, but it also presents an opportunity to be embraced. Canada has a unique opportunity to further define its national identity by developing a stronger, more Canadian voice on the world stage, and I think there is a lot of potential.

A Note on My Position

I approach this issue from multiple perspectives and identities, none of which can be excluded from my analysis. I am at once a proud American and a proud Canadian, while also holding a certain set of universal principles which transcend national borders. When I think of the present trade war, I think of businesses in Vermont I know well which have suffered or even failed from lack of Canadian tourism, but I also think of Canadian friends and relatives who worry for their own jobs and livelihoods. As a child, I was always taught that the United States and Canada enjoyed a sincere friendship that was so rare in the world and this was comforting for a child who had family on both sides of the border. It has been heartbreaking to watch that idea dissolve before me this past year. All of this was avoidable, none of this was necessary, and we all deserve better.

But I would be remiss if I did not note how I have embraced my Canadian identity with renewed enthusiasm. Watching Donald Trump and his underlings insult and belittle Canada made my blood boil. It nurtured my pride in being Canadian. I purchased a Canadian flag for my apartment when the tariffs came down. I went from sobbing when Sidney Crosby scored the overtime winner to defeat Team USA in the Gold Medal game of the 2010 Winter Olympics to hollering for joy in the snow-covered streets of Burlington when Connor McDavid scored the game-winner to lift Team Canada over Team USA in the 2025 Four Nations Face-Off.

Not for a moment have I sacrificed what makes me an American, but I sincerely believe that given the toxic nature of a Trump-led United States, that Canada must end the relationship of ever-deeper integration it has pursued for the past several decades. It is the best option not just for Canadians, but for Americans who are against this regime, because an independent Canada can serve as an ideal to aspire to for our own country. In Canadian resistance to Trump, we can see a cause worthwhile of all of us. It is my highest hope that one day, the United States and Canada can enjoy renewed friendship on the basis of mutual respect. That, more then anything, would make me happy.

For the sake of privacy, some locations and names have been left unspecified

There are approximately 600 mosques, Islamic cultural centers, and Muslim prayer spaces in the five boroughs. These sites serve a community that is as diverse as the entire Muslim world; including Francophone West Africans, Bengalis, African-American converts, Pakistanis, Arabs, and so many more. You can find them in Far Rockaway, Harlem, Parkchester, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Kensington. Together, they serve a community of almost 1 million New York City Muslims. Every Friday around midday, these sites issue the call to Jummah prayer for their communities, and 600 clocks all strike at once.

I had no idea a few months ago, but these would be the places I would spend my time on the Zohran Mamdani general election campaign.

I wasn’t in New York City for the primary campaign. I was issuing polemics against Andrew Cuomo from my Burlington apartment and casting my ballot for Brad Lander whilst in transit in Brooklyn on primary day. But when I moved back to Brooklyn in late July, I knew I had to get involved. I was already a big fan of Mamdani, but the primary campaign had delivered such an unbelievable mandate for change I was doubly excited to join a movement that had the potential to reshape politics in my city. I quickly began hitting doors and signing up for field lead training. I didn’t end up securing a regular field shift to lead, but I ended up signing up for something far more interesting: Jummah prayers campaign outreach.

I’m not a Muslim, I have no experience in communal Muslim affairs. I have never been inside a mosque in my life. This was not a problem for the campaign staffers I spoke to. All qualified campaign hands were needed.

Historically, the Muslim vote in New York City has remarkably low turnout, usually in the single digits for municipal elections. Through these efforts at outreach, the campaign aimed to transform the electorate by mobilizing thousands of Mamdani-sympathetic nonvoters to the polls and extend civic outreach to an underserved and neglected community. We could change the election, and potentially the city.

I was excited to get started.

Take One

I had a job interview the morning of my first shift of Mosque outreach, so after I was done I had to quickly rush out the door to make it to a mosque in a nearby neighborhood in time for afternoon prayers. When I got there, I was impressed to see cars double or even triple-parked up and down the avenue, while people crowded into a small storefront that would be difficult to clock as a religious space from a distance. When prayers ended, what must have been over a hundred people filtered out, and that’s when we distributed our campaign literature.

New York City is a multi-lingual city, and that is one of the things I love the most about it. I remain very proud to live in a multicultural space, where millions of people from all corners of the world bring their own languages and cultures with them and contribute to what I consider to be the most special place on the planet. At a time when the pluralist foundations of the United States are under attack by right-wing nationalism, this is of particular importance to me. Mamdani’s campaign reflected this diversity with a focus on reaching people in their native tongue. At the masjid, we distributed literature in Arabic, Urdu, and Bengali. The endorsements highlighted on the literature were dependent on the language, with Bengali materials highlighting my own City Councillor Bangladeshi-American Shahana Hanif and south Asian advocacy organization DRUM Beats!, Arabic materials highlighting Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, and English materials highlighting New York Attorney General Letitia James and the United Federation of Teachers.

For the most part, the response was very positive, but I was surprised to receive some pushback on the basis of Mamdani’s perceived secularism or insufficient religiosity. I had a conversation with one young man who explained to me that he felt socialism was inherently antithetical to the Islamic faith and that Mamdani was a potential threat to the spiritual health of the congregants. Merely two college classes on Islamic history have left me ill-prepared to make any commentary on the historical relationship between Islam and left-wing politics, but pushback to Mamdani on a conservative, religious basis was something I was vaguely familiar with. Nevertheless, I left in good spirits.

Masjid At-Taqwa

The Nation of Islam originated in the early 20th century as a Black nationalist new religious movement, and gained serious pull in the mid-20th century, claiming Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X as leading members, and is estimated to have had a peak of 70,000 adherents in the early 1960s. Despite its name and use of Islamic terminology, the Nation’s views diverted fundamentally from orthodox Islamic tradition. These views and the leadership of self-proclaimed prophet Elijah Muhammad became sources of serious controversy, with Malcolm X himself famously leaving the Nation in 1964 and converting to Sunni Islam. After the death of Muhammad in 1975, his son Warith Deen Mohammad attempted to take the Nation in the direction of universalism and Sunni Islam, rebranding the movement as the “American Society of Muslims” - but this move was rejected by Elijah Muhammad’s protege Louis Farrakhan who reclaimed the Nation of Islam brand as its new leader in 1981.

That same year, Masjid At-Taqwa was founded in Bedford-Stuyvesant by 25 NOI members who left the organization and wanted to practice orthodox Sunni Islam. The masjid quickly became a community fixture, taking a prominent role in the 1980s trying to root out crack cocaine in the neighborhood. Historically, Bed-Stuy was one of the most important hubs of African-American life in New York City, although in the last twenty years it has been increasingly gentrified. At-Taqwa stands today as a valuable signpost for the history of African-American religious and social life in the neighborhood. I was lucky enough to be headed to this historic place, this time as part of a visit from Mamdani himself with the campaign team.

After prayers ended, Zohran delivered a speech to the congregants, and when he finished, hundreds of people flooded out the doors, eager to register to vote. We must have registered at least 50 new voters in the next hour. Not everyone was so eager however, and there was at least one gentlemen who had a 30 minute conversation with one of our volunteers about frustration with politics and the futility of electoral participation. He eventually agreed to register.

Speaking personally, when I haven’t done front-facing campaign work in a while, I can be a little bit shy. But after a few minutes I had definitely entered “campaign mode.” I was handing out literature to everyone under the sun and flying through registration forms. I quickly realized the challenges of my monolingual communication however. Many of the folks we were trying to register were Senegalese-American, and only spoke French. Friends of mine who got to know me on the Mamdani campaign will know I would go on perhaps incessantly about the need for French-language campaign materials.

Despite having to resort to Google Translate, we were able to engage with a lot of voters. Afterwards, I rewarded myself in a shop next door with a taste of bean pie, a sweet custard pie of mashed beans widely associated with the Nation of Islam and Elijah Muhammad, who extolled it as a more culinarily decolonized alternative to soul food. I was somewhat disappointed however, that I didn’t get to see Mamdani in action. That was going to change.

Islamic Cultural Center of the Bronx

The next weekend, I took the 6 train up to the Bronx to once again support the campaign team for Mamdani’s visit to the Islamic Cultural Center of the Bronx. Like At-Taqwa, the ICCB services a mostly West African community, including a mix of Senegalese and Gambian Americans. The history of the space was explained to me by one of the congregants, who told me the site used to be a nightclub but was shuttered after a shooting. The construction of a masjid, he explained, had meant a general increase in quality of life in the area, giving children and adolescents a place to go after school to do their homework, receive moral guidance, and stay out of trouble. This, he explained, was one of the most important elements of religion, whether you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or anything else.

Before prayers began, I finally got my wish to see Mamdani in action up close. In the week leading up to my visit to the Bronx, the Cuomo campaign had chosen to massively escalate a strategy of anti-Muslim racism. Cuomo surrogates like Mayor Eric Adams tried to tie Mamdani to Islamic fundamentalists burning churches in Nigeria and said New York City couldn’t “become Europe,” while Cuomo himself chuckled as radio host Sid Rosenberg claimed Mamdani would celebrate another 9/11. On social media, the Cuomo campaign posted and then deleted a wildly racist video depicting Mamdani eating rice with his hands and a Black man in a keffiyeh declaring his support for Zohran and then shoplifting. Meanwhile, rhetoric accusing Zohran of being a literal terrorist or his election comparable to 9/11 had become par for the course in Republican circles. In view of these developments, Zohran had decided to give a speech in front of the ICCB, one pictured at the header of this article. In this speech, he professed his pride in his ethnic background, his faith, and a refusal to be cowed by racists. You can watch the entire speech here. I watched the speech up close and was very impressed, and thoroughly motivated to fight for the multicultural New York City I loved.

As the campaign presence around the mosque built, and dozens of journalists gathered, residents of Morrisania came out onto the stoops of their apartment buildings to look on in curiosity. I didn’t hesitate to approach them and hand them literature. After prayers ended and Zohran spoke to the congregation privately, we once again got to work registering voters. This time, we were lucky to have one of our volunteers be fluent in French, which made me very happy.

This volunteer came in handy when I spoke to one man about my age who explained to him he didn’t have papers, and was therefore ineligible to vote. He later approached me with his cell phone opened to Google Translate, translating a message from French to English telling me that while he lacked papers, "inshallah Zohran will win.” We hugged afterwards. After we registered dozens more people, we were invited inside the masjid for jollof rice, Gambian-style. I took off my shoes, entered the space, and dug in. It was delicious.

When you’re a boy from Park Slope, you don’t often meet many of your Muslim neighbors. It’s easy to never get the chance to hear these stories and learn from them. I was honored by the welcome I received by complete strangers, who received me with joy, solidarity, and a commitment to shared values. I am very grateful.

Victory

I’ve spoken a lot about Zohran’s electoral victory on this blog, and I won’t belabor the point, but I do want to note one thing as it pertains to my experience.

Firstly, I want to note that we met our goals of transforming the electorate with expanded Muslim turnout. A friend of mine on the campaign texted me some time after Election Day to note that we tripled Muslim turnout, which went to Mamdani by a ratio of 9:1. These voters included people who voted in 2024 for Harris, Trump, third party, or not at all. I took some degree of personal satisfaction to see that the precincts where I campaigned delivered strong numbers for Mamdani. Above all, this was an experience that was instructive on the benefits of straight talk and sincerity.

Now I’ll briefly talk about what this means regarding New York City as an idea.

Andrew Cuomo described New York City as an almost post-apocalyptic scene; streets roiled by violent crime, schools in steep decline, a city compromised by ethnic strife, thousands fleeing to tax havens on the Gulf Coast. The New York City experiment a failure, a city in tatters. He offered himself as a singularly powerful and brilliant man who could sort-out the riff-raff and govern New York City like a King. Besides the fact that this vision was contradicted by Cuomo’s record of incompetence and his partnership with the present Mayor presiding over such misrule, it was a vision that was profoundly down on New York City. By adding overt racism to this pessimistic cocktail, it challenged the very foundations of New York City’s multicultural creed, echoing the Trump Administration’s view of our nation’s cities as sickening globalist cesspools in need of a robust deployment of ICE agents and cuts to welfare programs.

No doubt New York City has severe and urgent challenges. There’s no denying that. But nevertheless, I love New York. I think New York’s best days are still ahead of us. I think the ambitious idea of a multicultural mix of peoples and businesses connected by robust public services and institutions is something worth striving for. It is that spirit which allowed New York City to become home to my own community of Jewish people, and also the spirit that has made New York City home to hundreds of thousands of Muslims as well. I believe that spirit was identified in the Mamdani campaign, which approached voters in Yiddish as well as Arabic, in Russian as well as Nepalese. A spirit of optimism which argued that political leaders can and should be expected not only to manage problems but also act with vision and ambition. It embraced New York City.

For me, this experience on the Mamdani campaign was first and foremost about embracing New York City. If we want to sincerely tackle the problems of affordability, public safety, educational outcomes, and the plentitude of others, we must all be prepared to get out there and do the same - whatever that looks like for you. I hope you’ll join me!

Warning: the article ahead has spoilers for “Death by Lightning.” You’ve been warned.

I recently texted a friend of mine “are you familiar with the new James Garfield TV series?” He responded to me with “am I dreaming or did you say James Garfield TV series. As in President James Abram Garfield?” I suppose that was an appropriate reaction. I don’t think anybody was expecting a high-budget Netflix miniseries to emerge about the nation’s little known 20th President. For most people, Garfield is one of the nondescript bearded faces of the late 19th-century presidencies that mush together into a jumbled composite of an old white man. Yet, here we are with Death by Lightning, a tale of our 20th President James Abram Garfield and the man that shot him. American history in the mid-19th century is something I take an interest in, and so I was thrilled to hear that we’d be getting a cinematic depiction, especially with such a star-studded cast. I’m glad to say it did not disappoint.

I was practically beaming from the start. In Episode 1, the show beautifully recreates the 1880 Republican National Convention in Chicago, a time where party conventions was where the future of the nation was brokered, not the glorified advertisements we have today. When Roscoe Conkling (played deviously by Shea Whigham) delivered the nominating speech for President Grant (seeking a non-consecutive third term) at the beautifully recreated 1880 Republican National Convention, declaring “when asked whence comes our candidate, we say, from Appomattox!” I was just giddy. President Grant barely played a role in the show, but from that line alone you could feel the real living presence of the man who broke the back of the Confederacy.

James Garfield emerges as a dark horse candidate at the Convention, defeating the main contenders James Blaine and Ulysses Grant and becomes the nominee as a total surprise and basically against his will. This isn’t really true, the real Garfield was always considered a possible compromise candidate, but Michael Shannon’s portrayal of Garfield is very compelling and sells it. As President, he immediately sets about to dismantle the patronage networks which dominate the federal bureaucracy, whereby government jobs are handed out to the politically well-connected instead of being a channel for meritocracy and social mobility. In doing so, he is opposed by the aforementioned U.S. Senator for New York Roscoe Conkling and Garfield’s own Vice President, Vermont native and Conkling ally Chester A. Arthur.

The internal factionalism of the Republican Party at the time is a major theme of the show, and one where I wished Death by Lightning had introduced some more nuance. I think it would have been the show more compelling. Allow me to explain.

By 1880, the Republican Party had been in power for almost 20 straight years, carried by a robust electoral coalition of German immigrants, Anglo-Saxon farmers, radical social reformers, and northern merchants. After the Civil War, this coalition extended to Black men, but only in such places where the Black vote was not suppressed by white supremacist local governments and paramilitaries. Despite their winning ways, or perhaps because of them, the GOP was split between two main factions, the “Stalwarts” who supported the “spoils system” and the dispensing of patronage jobs to well-connected party men, and the “Half-Breeds” who supported civil service reform. In the show, Garfield - as leader of the Half-Breeds - is portrayed as highly virtuous and highly progressive on everything from civil service reform to civil rights, and even the rights of Chinese migrant workers. On the other hand, Roscoe Conkling - as leader of the Stalwarts - is basically portrayed as entirely cynical and self-interested without any higher ideals of any kind. I feel that this is a generalization does a disservice both to dramatic quality and the history itself.

While Roscoe Conkling was a notoriously corrupt politician and Garfield was an advocate for the downtrodden, I still would have enjoyed a more robust exploration of the motivations of the Stalwarts. Many of the Stalwarts - Conkling included - were former Radical Republicans who had fought vigorously for the abolition of slavery and voting rights for freedmen. In the election of 1872, many of the first Half-Breeds (not including Garfield) joined with Southern Democrats to try and defeat President Grant for a second term, attacking him for corruption in his administration, but doing so while downplaying the importance of defending the rights of freedmen in the south. While Half-Breeds assailed the corruption of the spoils system, Stalwarts defended it as a vehicle for the Republican Party to keep the Democrats out, and for newly enfranchised Black Republicans to ascend the social ladder.

Now to be clear, by 1880 Reconstruction was utterly dead, killed by the apathy of Republicans of all factions, not to mention the outright hostility of Democrats. With its death, most of the south had returned to a state of violent racial apartheid. Already, the Republican Party’s reputation as the defender of the Black American was waning. So, arguments that the spoils system was playing a truly progressive role at this point would be difficult to muster. In practice, it usually served to give friends well paying no-show jobs. But I would have enjoyed a scene where Conkling made a passionate stand for why he believed in what he did, and didn’t just twirl his mustache. Because I’m very much a nerd, I’ve even written dialogue out based on an actual scene in the show.

INT: Bathroom, Republican National Convention

Conkling: Appomattox…Appomattox. It’s got a certain ring to it. Thank God Lee didn’t surrender at Foggy Bottom. Heh.

[Garfield listens awkwardly]

Conkling: Haven’t seen you on the floor in some time, Jim. Farm keeping you busy?

Garfield: Well, a touch of the Earth now and again can prove a kind remedy, Senator.

Conkling: Heh. You know we’re on twenty years Jim.

Garfield: Sorry?

Conkling: In power Jim, twenty years. You want to keep that going?

Garfield: Of course.

Conkling: Me too Jim. Me too.

[Conkling pats Garfield on the breast pocket]

Conkling: We’ve won five elections this way. You win, you reward the people who helped you get there. Sometimes it’s a war veteran, or a harbor master…or an elections inspector. Keeps them loyal, keeps them and their friends coming back to the polls. Keeps us in power. Now I understand you’d like to change that system.

Garfield: Well, I think we should reform the way we allocate federal jobs, yes.

Conkling: That’s very nice Jim. Will it be worth it when the Democrats win in ‘84 because you backstabbed our people? Will it be worth it when the party of rebellion and chains re-enters the White House? How will you feel when they start paying pensions out of the Treasury to former Confederate officers? Will you be happy then? Heh. I wonder if they’ll play Dixie.

[Garfield looks back incredulously, half offended, half shocked]

Conkling (scowling): Think on it.

Thank you for indulging my fantasies of screenwriting. I think we can all agree that such a portrayal of Conkling’s fears of what the Republican Party losing would mean would make him more interesting. Even if it’s just how it explains it to himself, I think it adds a lot to his character.

Anyhow, Garfield wins the Presidency and outmaneuvers Conkling, successfully laying the groundwork for the merit-based civil service we’ve had ever since. Well until this year, when President Trump has worked to replace career government bureaucrats with racist internet trolls. Unfortunately for Garfield, he is unable to live to see civil service reform pass.

The other side of our story is Charles J. Guiteau, a delusional narcissist played brilliantly by Succession's Matthew Macfadyen. Guiteau travels from state to state funded by money he stole from his sister’s family, “offering his help” (repeatedly harassing) all the main Republican players. Upon Garfield’s victory, he convinces himself that he played a vital role in his election, and when Garfield does not reward him with a diplomatic posting in Europe, he has a nervous breakdown and ultimately shoots Garfield. Although the wound is relatively minor, Garfield dies in agony due to a blood infection after the doctor treating him repeatedly attempts to extricate the bullet with unclean instruments. The extent of the medical malpractice in treating Garfield is even worse then what is shown in the show, you can find out more here.

Chester A. Arthur, who is played by Nick Offerman in an incredibly fun performance, is sworn in as President and successfully passes the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. As for Guiteau, he is executed by hanging, but not before being visited in his cell by Lucretia Garfield (played by Betty Gilpin) who resolves to expunge the glory-seeking monster’s name from the histories.

At the end of the show, we are left wondering about the “what if” of a complete Garfield presidency. I wouldn’t get my hopes up too much. Indeed, Garfield had many of the markings of being a Great Man of History. He was a war hero who fought tirelessly and outwardly for abolition, he was a visionary who supported massive expansions of civil rights and driving corruption out of the bureaucracy, and he was an accomplished mathematician (which I wish the show had touched on). Unfortunately, great man theory of history is very flawed. It’s unlikely that with an American public that was tired of expending effort for the rights of Black people that Garfield could ever have rolled back the gains of white supremacy in the south, or whether he even would have been a two-term President at all. In 1884, the Democrats finally did take back the White House. Garfield can however, rest easy knowing that Civil Service reform was passed by his successor and one-time opponent Chester A. Arthur.

I really enjoyed Death by Lightning, and despite my mild objections to its portrayal of mid-19th century Republican politics, I am glad that this period of American history is receiving its due attention. Thanks to the show, we are able to have conversations like this! At the end of the day, that’s a huge win for historical education. I hope you’ve all enjoyed my brief take on this show. I know it’s different then what I’ve been writing about lately, but I hope it’s worth your time.

I’ve got some New York City content coming along, and also perhaps some other new material. Stay tuned!

Zohran Kwame Mamdani has been elected the 111th Mayor of New York City.

A great amount of ink will be dedicated to what Mamdani’s victory in the mayoral election means. Certainly, this is one of the most remarkable stories in the history of our city. A State Assemblyman who basically nobody had heard of this time last year has rocketed from obscurity to the heights of power and prestige in New York, with an ambitious agenda on which the future of progressive politics in the United States may indeed rest.

There is a lot more to say about what this victory means. I could talk about how Zohran Mamdani overcame a deluge of racial animus stirred up by his opponent, or how the public financing system for elections allowed him to compete against limitless cash being spent against him, or how so much of the future of our country relies on whether Mayor-elect Mamdani will be successful, but right now I will not focus on that.

Right now, I want to reflect on my own assumptions and beliefs about what would happen on election night, that I articulated in My Mayoral Prediction. I got a lot wrong, but I also predicted some things correctly. A review of what actually happened will also grant some new insights about how Mayor-elect Mamdani achieved a victory.

Firstly, here’s two maps, the first one being my prediction of the results by State Assembly district, and the second being what actually happened. As I reminder, I predicted 51% for Zohran, 32% for Cuomo, and 15% for Sliwa. The actual totals were 50% for Zohran, 42% for Cuomo, and 7% for Sliwa.

Next, let’s start with what I got wrong.

The Curtis Sliwa Collapse

In my prediction, I noted that there was a “last minute push” by the Cuomo campaign to consolidate Republican and conservative New Yorkers behind a single anti-Mamdani candidate. I noted the significant defection of south Brooklyn Republican City Councillor Inna Vernikov from Sliwa to Cuomo, but she wasn’t the only figure who got over their previous opposition to Cuomo from the right to back his candidacy. There was also WABC radio host Sid Rosenberg, longtime State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, and media and grocery store magnate and 2013 candidate for Mayor John Catsimatidis, all of whom backed Cuomo in the third period. But I wasn’t convinced that this was going to manifest itself amongst actual voters. After all, Sliwa still could count on the endorsement of the vast majority of New York City Republican elected officials, every county Republican Party, and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Additionally, Sliwa was hitting Cuomo with very serious attacks on previous more liberal views as Governor that opened a real gash on his right flank. Accordingly, I predicted that Sliwa would carry 15% of the vote, and win vast swathes of the city’s most partisan Republican turf, where memories of Cuomo’s COVID lockdowns and bail reforms would turn conservative voters off from the former Governor.

I was wrong. Not only did Sliwa only win a measly 7.1% of the vote, provisional results suggest he did not win a single precinct across the entire city. On election night, I was visibly shocked to see that on both sides of Sheepshead Bay, where Republican loyalty nurtured in the height of the Cold War runs deep in the blood of Russian and Ukrainian refugees, Sliwa could only muster a single-digit or lower double-digit percentages of the vote while Cuomo claimed 70 or 90 percent. Whether it was Staten Island, Howard Beach, Breezy Point, or Whitestone, it was Cuomo who emerged as the candidate of opposition to Mamdani in the conservative enclaves of the outer boroughs, not Sliwa.

I’ve seen some people attribute this to Trump endorsing Cuomo on election day, but this doesn’t cut the mustard for me. Trump’s endorsement came really late, and wasn’t accompanied (to the best of my knowledge) by any serious effort to mobilize the MAGA turnout apparatus for Cuomo. I’d be curious to know from anyone in the New York Republican world if elected officials like Assemblyman Michael Novakhov, City Council Minority Leader Joann Ariola, or Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis really put effort into the Sliwa campaign. He certainly raised a lot of money when big money donors were shopping for anti-Mamdani candidates over the summer, but was there any machine behind him? In general, I think I would attribute the Sliwa collapse to the strength of feeling on the anti-Mamdani side. In the face of such fear, the “Republican” label under Sliwa’s name became unimportant, and pragmatism won the day. Subsequently, Cuomo rocketed from the low 30s to just over 40%. I certainly didn’t see it coming.

The Black Vote

In my prediction, I repeatedly said I expected Zohran to make inroads with the African-American community which he had struggled with in the Democratic primary. I argued that his campaign’s outreach across the diverse NYC Black community and Democratic partisanship would give his campaign a needed boost. But I didn’t predict how powerful that boost would be. I certainly didn’t predict Mamdani winning the working-class Afro-Carribean blocks of Canarsie by 25 points, or that the Black vote would become his strongest constituency. I certainly didn’t predict that Wakefield and Edenwald in the north Bronx, which Cuomo had won by over 40 points in the primary would go to Mamdani by double digits. This story repeats itself in East New York, Brownsville, southeast Queens, and elsewhere.

Many explanations are already being offered for why this happened, and I am not presumptuous enough to think I can make a serious argument on my own, but if I had to say anything, I’d point to the defection of the city’s biggest labor unions from Cuomo in the primary to Mamdani in the general. The Hotel and Trades Commission, SEIU 32BJ, 1199 SEIU, and AFL-CIO have disproportionately Black and Hispanic memberships, and they were major parts of the Mamdani general election campaign. In New York City, union organizing can still hold serious pull. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t underestimate the Muslim African diaspora vote either.

Now, let’s discuss what I got right.

Mamdani’s Rainbow Coalition

First I’ll give myself a little bit of credit. Zohran Mamdani won the election, and provisional results suggest he’s also won a majority of the vote, both of which I predicted would happen. But that’s not particularly interesting or novel.

What I want to talk about is the way Zohran Mamdani changed the electorate from 2024, bringing new voters to the polls and recapturing minority groups which had shifted to Donald Trump in the last presidential election. Zohran started his campaign with a video on Fordham Road talking to people who sat out 2024 and what would get them re-engaged in electoral politics. Much of his mandate has rested on his ability to change the electorate and bring momentum back to the Democratic Party which in New York City has only declined in the past 4 years. I predicted that he could do this, looking to the Hispanic, Muslims, and Asians working-classes as areas that Mamdani could thrive with. The results indicate he had a lot of success in doing so. I’ll give two examples I referenced in my prediction as places to watch.

Brighton Beach brings to mind images of Cyrillic script on storefronts, but it isn’t just East Slavs who call Brighton Beach home. When myself and an Azeri friend visited Tashkent Market on Brighton Beach Avenue in Summer 2023, he told me he heard the sounds of Uzbek, Crimean Tatar, and Uyghur being spoken in the aisles or by the great big spinning döner kebab. The Central Asian Muslim vote hasn’t really been engaged by the Democratic Party, which Mamdani tried to change. Ultimately, he received a higher percentage of the vote in Brighton Beach than Kamala Harris despite falling well below her citywide total, including flipping two Trump precincts into his column.

Corona, a Hispanic working-class neighborhood in the shadow of the 7 line well known to Mets fans as bordering Citi Field, saw some of the biggest swings to Trump in the entire city, about 20 points in most precincts. Corona was where Mamdani’s focused message on material politics would face its real test. Could it reinvigorate the Democratic brand here, where the brand was in steep decline? The results show that Mamdani performed about on par with Harris, which when considering that his 50% citywide figure is well below her mid-60s number from last November, shows that he performed very well in Corona, including flipping a number of precincts in Corona and neighboring Elmhurst.

Corona and Brighton Beach aren’t the only places where Mamdani’s affordability politics changed the electorate. In Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Parkchester, Bath Beach, and more, Mamdani showed a durable appeal. It would be one thing if he just won 50% with traditional Democratic stalwarts in Brownstone Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, but to really claim a mandate, Mamdani had to grasp his lofty goals of a socioeconomically diverse coalition. I thought he would, and it appears he has.

Why Discuss This?

Some of you have noticed I have spent a large amount of time talking about New York City and New York’s political geography lately. In concluding these reflections, I thought I would talk a little bit about why.

Those who know me know me as a deep depository for historical facts and analysis, whether it be on Ukrainian revolutionary politics of the early 20th century or the 2004 United States presidential election. What I found however, upon my move back to Brooklyn this summer, is that I was woefully ignorant of the history, geography, and politics of my own hometown. I felt that despite having spent nearly two decades living in New York City, I only truly knew the familiar confines of Brownstone Brooklyn and Prospect Park. I was determined to change this.

The mayoral election cycle was the perfect opportunity to do so. So by throwing myself into The De Blasio Revolution series and the Mamdani general election campaign, I could give myself the education I was so determined to receive.

In the past few months, I’ve been grateful to have this conversation with you all on the past, present, and future of New York City. Through discussions on the voting patterns and sociology of various neighborhoods, we learn more about our city. By analyzing the elections of the past, we learn more about our future.

While the election may be over, our discussion on New York City is not. I look forward to continuing The De Blasio Revolution and finding other ways to discuss our magnificent town. Until then!

This has been, without question, the most high-octane and engaging mayoral election of my lifetime. Now, I’m not very old, so that may not mean much, but I bet this would apply to many other people as well. We had a shocking Democratic primary where a little-known outsider defeated a political titan, a will he won’t he game of candidates dropping in and out of the race, television debates that rivaled the 2016 Republican primary debates for hilarity and showmanship, and now a no-holds barred three-way race to the finish. Turnout is projected to rise well-beyond any race I’ve seen, and for the first time I can remember New Yorkers are actively engaged in the future of municipal politics, for better or worse.

At the beginning of this race, I offered a prediction, based on the 1983 Chicago mayoral elections, that bitter elements of the Democratic Party and business elites would close ranks behind a single anti-Mamdani alternative and wage a desperate campaign of racial resentment and fear. I was half-right. I was right that Mamdani’s opponents would resort to a nasty campaign of bigotry. National Republican figures were already doing so after the primary, but in the last few weeks of this race, the Cuomo campaign has outwardly embraced anti-Muslim scaremongering as a campaign tactic, including Cuomo laughing and tacitly agreeing with the idea that Mamdani would celebrate another 9/11, the campaign releasing a racist AI-generated campaign advertisement on social media, and even trying to exploit Zohran’s Twelver Shi’a faith to win Sunni Muslim votes. Cuomo’s surrogates have been even worse.

What I was wrong about was that there would be a concerted and well-organized effort to stop Zohran from being elected. I was wrong. Every County Democratic committee has endorsed Zohran (save Queens, which is neutral), Andrew Cuomo’s backers in labor union leadership have almost all defected to Mamdani, almost every single major New York Democratic power player (including skeptics like Governor Kathy Hochul and Representative Hakeem Jeffries) have endorsed the Democratic nominee, and while the White House and oligarchic interests succeeded in getting Mayor Eric Adams to end his campaign, Republican nominee and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa has defiantly refused to exit the race. Within the Democratic Party, only a small pool of conservative Democrats like David Weprin, Sam Sutton, Tom Suozzi, and James Gennaro have stuck behind Cuomo.

So that brings us to today. Election day is in a mere few days, and Zohran Mamdani seems well-positioned to win, including in opinion polls which on average give him a double digit lead.

Here’s my prediction. Zohran Mamdani will win the New York City mayoral election. But the real question is, will he achieve a cross-borough mandate to govern from a majority of New Yorkers? Let’s dive in.

Here is my prediction:

Zohran Mamdani (Democratic/Working Families): ~51%

Andrew Cuomo (Fight and Deliver): ~32%

Curtis Sliwa (Republican/Protect Animals): ~15%

So how will Zohran get to his majority? Let’s go borough by borough.

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is full of contrasts, from brownstones to dense apartment complexes to single-family sprawl. It includes the most Democratic areas in the city, as well as some of the most Republican. I’m predicting that Zohran will build on his strong majorities in Brownstone Brooklyn, and hold his amazingly high figures in the progressive enclaves of Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Bedford–Stuyvesant. I also expect him to make serious inroads with the Black vote in Canarsie, Flatbush, and East New York, some of the most Democratic areas in the entire country. These areas went to Cuomo in the primary, but armed with the Democratic line and a robust outreach to Black churches in the general election campaign, I expect them to tighten.

Cuomo’s strongest areas will be Borough Park (where he’s received the endorsement of the local Haredi Jewish sects), and in heavily Russian and Sephardic Midwood, where he obliterated Mamdani in the primary, sometimes by an 8 or 9-to-1 clip, Mamdani will find no safe harbor there. Further south, I expect partisan loyalty to kick in around Sheepshead Bay and Brighton Beach (but watch to see if the post-Soviet Muslim vote comes out strong in Brighton Beach for Zohran), and for Sliwa to be stronger. Take note, local Republican City Councillor Inna Vernikov recently defected from Sliwa to Cuomo, but I don’t expect to last minute push to do much.

On the whole, my native Brooklyn is poised to be Mamdani’s strongest borough.

Manhattan

Manhattan surprised many when it went to Mamdani on primary night, as he claimed strong figures in neighborhoods where he was expected to be exiled from. I expect his numbers to improve further in the heart of the city, especially while he holds the all-powerful Democratic ballot line.

Some of Cuomo’s most loyal supporters could be found in the ultra-wealthy Upper East Side, which used to prefer Republican candidates for local office as recently as 2013. In the primary, Cuomo received massive majorities on the city blocks closest to Central Park, and I expect him to do well there again. I do expect him to face serious slippage on the other side of the park however, the comparably more liberal Upper West Side, where Lander Liberals will come home to Mamdani. Expect this to be Curtis Sliwa’s weakest borough by a wide margin.

Queens

The largest borough by physical space is amongst the most diverse places on the planet, and naturally all three candidates will be making a place for turf there. Mamdani will be strongest in his native Astoria and Long Island City, where his youthful, multiracial, renter base is widely present. He’ll also build on his performances in the immigrant communities of Jamaica Hills and Jackson Heights. Personally, I’ll be watching Corona under the 7 train, where a predominantly Hispanic area saw massive swings to Trump in 2024 but where Mamdani did well in the primary.

Cuomo will be strongest with Black homeowners in Springfield Gardens and Cambria Heights, but I do expect slippage from his primary numbers there, once again, due to Mamdani holding the Democratic Party line and his outreach efforts. The simple truth is that Cuomo’s general election campaign has been only marginally more impactful and spirited then his lethargic primary campaign.

Curtis Sliwa made very impressive inroads with the Chinese-American demographic in Flushing in 2021, and I expect him to hold his position there, as well as beat out Cuomo with Irish and Italian-American conservatives in Howard Beach and on the Rockaway Peninsula. If Zohran doesn’t win a majority, team Cuomo will be very resentful to the red-beret wearing Republican nominee for staying in the race and these areas will be the reason why.

The Bronx

The Bronx was one of two boroughs Cuomo won in the primary, alongside the next borough on the list. The Bronx, I daresay, will be the most interesting borough to watch on election night. If Zohran is going to win a majority of the vote, he will likely want to get the most votes here. I expect holding the Democratic line to do most of heavy legwork, as well as the support of local officeholders, and I can personally speak to Mamdani’s outreach to the West African diaspora along the Grand Concourse thoroughfare, but I expect Cuomo to hold onto his strongest areas in upper middle-class, predominantly Jewish Riverdale, the ethnic middle-class suburbs of Throggs Neck, but also in the African-American Wakefield and Co-op City. It’ll be close, but I think Mamdani will prevail.

Sliwa might gather some support in Throggs Neck and City Island (you can find more about that in Michael Lange’s brilliant journalism on the subject) but otherwise I expect this borough to be a dud for him.

Staten Island

We’ve finally arrived at the redheaded stepchild of New York City, Staten Island. There’s no question that Staten Island, which voted for Trump in 2024 by a whopping 29 points, will be Mamdani’s weakest borough. Although he performed surprisingly well in the primary (the earliest sign to me on primary night that he would win), I expect his surprisingly emphatic support in Mariners Harbor and the eastern shore of the island to be buried by a tidal wave of Italian and Irish-American votes for his opponents, the majority of which will go to Sliwa. Staten Island is one of the few places in New York City where holding the Republican ballot line is a major boost.

All in all, I expect Sliwa to carry the borough with a plurality, and second place is anybody’s guess (but I’d bet on Cuomo). If Mamdani wins a plurality and Sliwa carries Staten Island, expect it to be brought up a lot by Cuomo backers explaining why he lost.

On Predictions

Predictions are a messy business, I can attest to that given the many times I have been horribly wrong. I thought Cuomo would win the primary, wrong. I thought Kamala Harris would win the presidential election (blame the Selzer poll), wrong. I thought 2022 would be a Republican wave election, wrong. This is all to say, I’m not Nostradamus. You shouldn’t place an excessive amount of value into what I say. That said, for those who are not acquainted with the political geography of New York City, such as my many Vermont readers and many of my fellow New Yorkers (including myself until somewhat recently), I hope this will be an educational read. If I do turn out to be wrong, and Zohran loses the election, or wins with a very narrow plurality, feel free to let me know how wrong I was.

I’m glad that this election has given me the opportunity to write about New York City, and I look forward to discussing the results with you all.

Joe Lhota is a man out of his comfort zone. The pencil-pushing, mild-mannered MBA, corporate vice president, and city bureaucrat often has to be reminded to talk to people at parades, is unwilling to pander for votes by discussing his Jewish grandparent, and struggles on the stump. Mayor Giuliani’s protege’s ironic wit often fails to land, and he lacks the Latin bravado of his mentor or the paternalistic stoicism of Mayor Bloomberg. The theatrics of politics seem alien to a man whose entire career has been built on keen attention to detail and strong bureaucratic competence. This is not his world. Nevertheless, here he stands as the Republican nominee for Mayor.

(Note: Joe Lhota is a passionate New York Rangers fan, and for that reason I have to give him an ample baseline level of sympathy)

It was surprisingly difficult for the Metropolitan Transport Authority Chairman to become the Republican nominee for Mayor. Despite having the endorsement of Giuliani, New York City’s only Republican congressional Representative Michael Grimm, and major newspapers, Lhota could only manage a 12-point victory over reactionary grocery store magnate John Catsimatidis, who attacked Lhota as insufficiently right-wing and boasted the support of television personality and real estate developer Donald J. Trump. After overcoming the girth and tonnage of Catsimatidis’ campaign, Lhota now limps into the general election against a newborn political behemoth.

Lhota was not without supporters. In a story that must feel quite similar for readers in 2025, much of the New York City financial and real estate class was panicked by the promises by the new Democratic nominee for Mayor to tax the rich. Deep pockets across Park Avenue know that although de Blasio has won the Democratic nomination, he must overcome a November hurdle to enter the Mayor’s office. So for Lhota, assembling Bloomberg’s thrice-victorious coalition has to start with the incumbent Mayor’s most loyal supporters in the city elite. But in the wake of the financial crisis, Bloomberg’s cuts, and growing inequality, Lhota’s talk of de Blasio’s “class warfare” and warnings of a return to “civic decay” under previous Democratic administrations lacks credibility outside of a small circle of Upper East Side elites and the Koch Brothers network.

When finger-wagging about de Blasio’s economic populism didn’t work, Lhota turned to the crime issue. Giuliani, after all, had successfully rode the issue to the Mayor’s office in 1993. Lhota’s team put together a dramatic attack ad warning that de Blasio’s agenda would take New York City back to the back old days of the 80s with murder, gang violence, and crack dens abound. This was hardly original of course, de Blasio’s opponents had been attacking his opposition to stop-and-frisk for the entire campaign, and New York City Republicans had dashed many a Democrat on the rocks of crime for decades. But again, voters seem unmoved. Swing and a miss.

Lhota could also not depend on any of the institutional Democratic crossover support that Bloomberg received in 2009. Although there was certainly frustration that machine golden child Christine Quinn had performed so poorly in the primary, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Quinn herself both swallowed the cinnamon and endorsed de Blasio soon after the primary. Prominent Bloomberg Democrats like Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz followed suit, alongside a host of labor unions that had backed Quinn in the primary. As for the Mayor himself? Bloomberg preferred to remain behind the scenes. Lhota was alone.

Lhota’s loneliness was perhaps most glaring when it came to his relationship with the Republican Party. In the city, the party was most associated with the Tea Party and congressional obstruction to the first Black President. In 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney received a pathetic 18% in New York City. While de Blasio tried to tie Lhota to the GOP, Lhota sought to differentiate himself from the toxic national brand as much as possible, pointing to his liberal views on same-sex marriage and abortion. The national Republican Party for their party was not invested in the race, with Mayor Bloomberg’s advocacy for gun control making him a villain and many grassroots conservatives viewing the entirety of New York City as a waste of time. It was perhaps somewhat of a portent that the future of the Republican Party, failed casino developer Donald J. Trump, opposed Lhota in the primary.

With every new poll showing Lhota 40-points behind, the amount of interest in a serious Stop de Blasio effort dwindled. Nobody wants to back a sure loser.

As Lhota struggled to make himself relevant, de Blasio looked to mend fences with the wealthy elite which had so far viewed him with suspicion or worse. First, there was the mighty landlord class, with which de Blasio had a lot of success. Future Trump Middle East envoy and confidant Steve Witkoff became a strong supporter, personally hosting a fundraiser for de Blasio. De Blasio was less successful with the financial services industry, where future Trump Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross penned an email to fellow industry leaders sarcastically commenting on de Blasio’s much-lauded intelligence, saying “My hope is that since he is so intelligent, he will revise his thinking on both topics before too much damage is done.” Ross, in this case discussing crime and education, suggests that de Blasio simply adopt his own positions on the subject. It seems that de Blasio’s support for raising taxes and prior statements in support of Occupy Wall Street made industry leaders skeptical, but neither were they mobilizing for Lhota.

After his shock primary victory, Zohran Mamdani also met with New York City’s business elite. I don’t intend for this series to become a comparative analysis between the rise of Bill de Blasio and Zohran Mamdani, but I think there’s an important distinction between their liaisons with the city’s richest that is worth observing. De Blasio, a product of the Clinton political machine, seeks to build alliances and compromises on which to build his progressive vision. Mamdani, a product of socialist organizing, seeks to listen, but seeks to build the foundations of his governance instead on a mass movement of New Yorkers to compel political actors to bend to his will. Later in his mayoralty, de Blasio would struggle to rally public support for himself or major initiatives, and old alliances would fall through. For now however, it’s all coming up roses for Bill de Blasio.

After a short and relatively uneventful general election campaign, the election was concluded on November 5th, 2013. Bill de Blasio received 795,679 votes, good for 73.15 percent, and Joe Lhota received 264,420 votes, good for 24.31 percent. The rest of the vote went to a series of third party candidates, most notably cultural icon and Rent Is Too Damn High party candidate Jimmy McMillan. This 50-point result was nothing short of a landslide, the greatest margin of victory for any victorious Mayoral candidate since Ed Koch in 1985. The Bill de Blasio revolution had swept through the whole city again, with even greater force.

There are many ways to describe the magnitude of this landslide. Bill de Blasio won Manhattan by 45 points, Brooklyn by 57 points, Queens by 52 points, the Bronx by 75 points, and only lost Staten Island by 8 points. De Blasio won the Satmar ultra-orthodox Jews of Williamsburg and the working-class immigrant households of Bensonhurst, the multiracial tenants of Staten Island’s north shore and the Chinese shopkeepers of Flushing. His dominance in Black New York City in particular was nothing short of astounding. In precincts where Black voters made up a majority, de Blasio won 96.4 percent of the vote. There are precincts in Brownsville and East New York where de Blasio received 100% of the vote. Yes, every single counted vote. In Hispanic New York, de Blasio was similarly dominant. It remains the greatest performance by any Democrat running for Mayor of New York City since then, a record that will almost certainly continue after November of this year.

Lhota’s support was confined to Republican-heavy Staten Island, the ultra-rich of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and the conservative ethnic whites in south Brooklyn, Rockaway, and parts of Queens. It was a difficult loss, but Lhota probably saw it coming. After his failed bid for Mayor, Lhota briefly returned to leadership of the MTA before abandoning the Republican Party over the rise of Trump, and then becoming a Democrat and supporting Joe Biden for President in 2020. In hindsight, it makes sense, he was already out of step in 2013.

Bill de Blasio had started the 2013 election for Mayor polling at 8 percent. Now, he had captured the Mayor’s office with over 70 percent. The series has covered extensively the how and the why de Blasio conquered the Democratic primary already, but perhaps its worth briefly reflecting on how he glided through the general election with such ease. One imagines that there was a path to victory for Lhota by rallying the Bloomberg coalition for one more push against the “danger” of a progressive, populist Mayor. There was certainly some interest from donors in the city to back a Stop de Blasio candidate, but it just didn’t come together. I think the explanation is twofold and simple. Firstly, Bill de Blasio carried the Democratic line in a very Democratic city (one of the reasons I believe Zohran Mamdani will outperform his polling this November and receive a majority of the vote), and secondly, that the public was in fact tired of Mayor Bloomberg.

Bloomberg exited office with decent approval ratings hovering around 50 percent, a far cry from his once soaring numbers in the mid 2000s, but certainly nothing to scoff at. But although the public might have liked Bloomberg, I contend they were not looking for a fourth term of his policies in Joe Lhota (or indeed Christine Quinn). Bloomberg had already barely gotten the voters to agree to a third term in 2009, when he had much better ratings then he did in 2013. In addition to many of the city’s oldest and most Bloomberg sympathetic voters moving to Florida, the Bloomberg coalition was just too fractured and tired for Lhota to reassemble it. The white-collar professionals of Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn broke with the Mayor over his attacks on public education, and the working-class in the outer boroughs grew frustrated with rising rents, stagnant wages, and the administration’s neglect of public services. The public was hungry for change.

Now the de Blasio Revolution had to deliver.

Glad to bring this series back! If you’re interested in a Part 4, please let me know. There’s a lot more to come in this story.

I had been following Bernie Sanders’ Fight Oligarchy tour since it started in February, 2025, with great interest. Seeing thousands of people, some crowds larger then any Bernie had ever gathered in his two times running for President, eager to fight back against the nexus of corrupt money and vindictive power in Washington was very inspiring. What was even more inspiring was that people, including many people who never voted for Bernie Sanders for President, were looking for answers in the sort of bold attacks against concentrated wealth and power that Sanders had long championed.

I had always wanted Bernie to take the tour to New York City. I had actually approached a Bernie staff member on the streets of Burlington to tell him so. While Bernie had started the tour in red states, and New York City is anything but, I thought it was important that Bernie come to the Big Apple. New York City had seen major swings to Trump in the 2024 election, including pronounced swings amongst demographics that Bernie had performed well in his two runs for President. I felt that he could do good work in reversing those trends. So when I heard that Bernie was coming to Brooklyn to hold an event with socialist wunderkind Zohran Mamdani, I jumped on it immediately and got my ticket.

I travelled to Brooklyn College in south Brooklyn with a friend of mine, and got to the campus about two hours before the rally was to begin, where a line had formed to get in. I was immediately approached by volunteers handing out pamphlets for a variety of communist micro-sects, which each flyer explaining how their Maoist book club, Trotskyist film study group, or bizarre political cult represented the real socialist alternative to capitalism, while Bernie and Zohran were actually complete frauds. I found it intensely amusing. Besides the fact that I disagreed completely with their ideologies, I just found it odd that any one organization, especially ones of such irrelevancy, could claim a monopoly on being historically authentic and morally right.

My friend and I were separated upon entry, he had been waitlisted and I had a ticket, so immediately got to find a seat only about 20 rows back from the stage. As Billy Bragg played from the loudspeakers, I immediately made conversation with my neighbors, one of whom I knew already from canvassing for Zohran Mamdani. About one and a half hours later, Faiz Shakir, Bernie’s 2020 campaign manager and chief advisor, came out to get the event started. I seemed to be the only person who knew who he was and wanted to give him a hand.

When Bernie and Zohran walked onto the stage, the Brooklyn College auditorium turned into a rock concert. Thousands of people on their feet clapping and hollering. I have to admit, especially as someone who had never seen Zohran in person, or been to a Bernie event outside of Vermont, it was very exciting.

The event was immediately interrupted by an older man in what I can only assume was his idea of a clever disguise to deceive the “anti-American communists” into letting him into their event, a shirt with the Cuban flag on it and a Maoist red star cap. He ran towards the stage shouting “I stand with Israel” as loud as he could, and various obscenities, before being led out by security.

I was too young to appreciate the charisma of Barack Obama in his political prime, but I can only assume that he was something like watching Zohran Mamdani. It is difficult to describe, but he has the sort of charisma and magnetism that few people, let alone politicians, possess. I was very impressed. What was also clear immediately is that he had immediate chemistry with Sanders, effortlessly recounting stories from Bernie’s time as Mayor of Burlington (which I very much appreciated) and discussing how they applied to New York City. The crowd loved it.

Call me old fashioned, but I was more excited to hear from Bernie. I had seen him speak before, but never in a rally setting like this, with thousands of people in attendance. True to form, his speech was almost identical to other times I had seen him (healthcare, inequality, campaign finance, etc. etc.), but I could tell he was in a particularly sassy mood. When denouncing the refusal of leading Democrats and New Yorkers like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer to endorse Mamdani, he leaned fully into it, saying that Zohran had a “beautiful smile” and was a “pleasant guy” unlike himself. When discussing the faux-patriotism of Republicans who hug the flag but refuse to support federal funding for childcare, he spoke of the “biggest flags you’ve ever seen” hoisted by opponents of the legislation.

As I listened to Bernie slam the concentration of political, economic, and cultural capital in the hands of an increasingly pro-Trump, right-wing, circle of elites, I was very much enthused, but I was waiting for him to address the elephant in the room: the horrifying crimes against humanity being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank with the diplomatic and armed support of the United States government. I think I was anticipating it more intently then the others, because when Bernie mentioned the need for a “moral foreign policy” I had stood up prematurely. When he specifically, loudly, slammed the billions of dollars going to the Israeli war machine, it was like a thunderclap in the auditorium. I couldn’t hear the end of the line, but it didn’t matter. I slammed my hands together, stood up with thousands of my neighbors, including thousands of New York City Jews like myself (like my new friends I sat with) and gave Bernie a cheer.

After Bernie finished, the event transitioned into the town hall section, where audience members could ask unscripted questions to Bernie, Zohran, or both. This is where Zohran really shined. When asked about the “Tier 6” public sector workers who receive inferior retirement benefits to their colleagues, Mamdani spoke with an obvious knowledge of the issue (which I knew nothing about) and criticized Andrew Cuomo for shaping the legislation which brought Tier 6 into being. When asked about the possibility of Trump sending the National Guard into NYC as he has in Washington DC, Zohran gave a serious and sober response saying that the question was not if but when, and how New York City could look to Gavin Newsom’s California for specific examples of how to fight back. Socialist and progressive candidates for public office are often derided for being idealists who lack an appreciation for the finer points of policy or the difficult sausage-making of drafting legislation, but I think Sanders and Mamdani are two examples of how that is very much not a universal truth.

Around this time was when the second interruption took place. Two seats in front of me, this woman walked towards the stage shouting out a question about Jewish safety in New York City, which while a thoroughly valid question, was not a valid way of asking a question in a town hall. Bernie saw her and told her in his thick Brooklyn accent that she had to wait her turn, while security held her back from the stage. As she continued to shout I began to realize this was not a good-faith contributor at all, but another deliberate agitator. As she was escorted out by security, she began shouting about Israel, and also communism, and also various obscenities. Upon later research, I found that both interruptors were massive Trump supporters and frequent attendees of left-leaning and progressive public events.

I left the event in a great mood, optimistic about a mass movement for a more democratic, respectful, and fair society. When I get in that sort of mood I generally try to talk to everyone I come across. When leaving, in addition to the stands hawking off-brand Bernie apparel, there was a man standing at the exit gate with a thirteen-star American flag an an army-green cap with the United States national emblem. It was fairly obvious he was some kind of conservative opponent of the event, but I was eager to learn more. I approached the man and politely asked him what brought him here. He said he “heard there was a rally.” Unsatisfied with this vague response, I asked him “what he was about.” He hesitated for a second, and then responded to my question with a question of his own: “what are you about?” I responded with the most sincere, star-spangled answer I could think of, “I want to live in a democracy, I want to live in a republic.” He instantly replied, “you already do.” I said, “I’m not sure about that.” He did not have a reply for me, so I shrugged my shoulders and walked away. I was glad I approached the man, but I found myself disappointed that our exchange wasn’t more fruitful. I optimistically hoped he would go home and consider my question “what are you about” and consider what he was for instead of what he was merely against. There was also a man filming everyone who exited the event while shouting that “Muslims are killing Hindus!” and that “every Muslim should be arrested.” I declined to interact with him.

On the 3 train home, everyone was in a great mood. The strangers on the subway car and I had a totally spontaneous conversation about the rally, about Zohran, about the many sins of Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams, and even the futility of rooting for the New York Mets. Bernie once asked at his “Bernie’s Back” rally in Queensbridge Park (which I sadly, did not attend) in October 2019 to rally goers if they would be willing to fight as hard for the person standing next to them as they would for themselves. On that Subway car, I think I got a real look of what that felt like.

Building a mass movement of optimism, empathy, solidarity, and sincerity to combat the MAGA movement of historical declinism, cynicism, apathy, and bigotry will be long and hard work. It’s probably too early to say whether Fight Oligarchy is making meaningful contributions to that fight, despite his primary landslide and almost certain November election (the right-wing consolidation I warned of has yet to come to pass), it is also too early to say whether Mamdani-mania will become a long-term vehicle for building an alternative to Trumpism. But I’d like to think that I witnessed the beginning of the Democratic Party becoming something along the lines of the Fight Oligarchy party. Something that people can really be inspired by and be enthusiastic about. Something, that like Mamdani said that night, teaches that politics is not a spectator sport, but rather something you do.

If Fight Oligarchy is coming to a city or town near you, I highly encourage you to attend, even if you do not consider yourself a Bernie fan. You can find upcoming tour dates here.

As I often tell people, I chose this life completely voluntarily. My mother was raised as a Yankees fan, but was never extremely invested, and my father was a Montreal Expos fan who was always way more interested in the Montreal Canadiens. My choice in baseball team was never predestined. When I was five years old, I attended my first Mets game at Shea Stadium. They played the Atlanta Braves and in a sign of what was to come, they lost. Not long after, I went to my first Yankees game at the newly constructed Yankee Stadium, where the Yankees defeated the then-named Cleveland Indians. I picked the Mets, a decision that was hardened by a youthful idolization of David Wright, who shared my name, and playground bullying from the many many Yankees fans.

17 years after I made that choice, I have no regrets. I probably should have regrets, considering I have lived through generational collapses, heartbreaks on the biggest stages, and constant baseball-induced stress, but I have none. As I noted in the description of this blog, they have taught my patience, but what I did not note is that they have brought me incredible moments of joy as well. So this article will be about joy. In this article, I will draft my New York Metropolitans All-Time Team to celebrate the team I love and for your enjoyment.

Catcher: Mike Piazza

There might be some chatter already on this pick, and while I adore 1986 World Series Champion Gary Carter, the easy choice here is Mike Piazza. Piazza spent 8 years with the franchise and averaged a dominant triple slash line of .296/.373/.542, was a six-time all star, and led the Mets to a National League Championship in 2000. His offensive statistics are among the best in New York Mets history. In his time on the Mets, he was nothing short of iconic, most especially in his home run after the September 11th terrorist attacks (pictured). He’s an easy pick for me.

Honorable Mentions: Gary Carter, Todd Hundley, Jerry Grote

First Baseman: Pete Alonso

I don’t want anyone to think I disrespect the 1986 championship-winning Mets, but I think at this point I am inviting criticism. Yes I love Keith Hernandez very much, yes he should be a Hall of Famer, yes he is the heart and soul of the SNY broadcast booth. Frankly, my pick for this spot would still be Keith Hernandez a year ago. But a lot can change in a year. Two things, most significantly. On October 3rd, 2024, with the Mets facing elimination against the Milwaukee Brewers, Pete Alonso hit a miraculous home run (pictured) to both save the Mets season, and perhaps his own Mets career, which after a disappointing regular season and pending free agency looked to be over. Alonso also most recently passed Darryl Strawberry for the all-time Mets home run crown. Alonso has averaged an impressive .251/.340/.514 triple-slash for the Mets, and is on pace top hit well over 500 career home runs. I have to give it to Pete, and I hope he adds a World Series ring to make it consensus.

Honorable Mentions: Keith Hernandez, Ed Kranepool, Carlos Delgado, John Olerud

Second Baseman: Edgardo Alfonzo

Edgardo is probably one of the least-known ballplayers on this list, but definitely deserves his spot in Mets legend. The second baseman boasted a splendid .292/.367/.445 triple-slash, and 29.6 WAR in his seven seasons playing for the Mets. In that time, he was a central component of the 1999 NLDS winner Mets and 2000 NL Champion Mets, especially in 2000 where he noted an incredibly impressive .967 OPS with strong second base defense. Those Mets teams are not as successful as they were without Alfonzo. He’s the pick.

Honorable Mentions: Daniel Murphy, Wally Backman, Jeff Kent

Shortstop: Francisco Lindor

At this point, I believe this one should be obvious. When Francisco Lindor first arrived to the Mets in 2021, he struggled somewhat and faced a low of fan blowback. But four years later he is nothing short of a New York Mets icon. The Steve Cohen Mets live and die on his offensive performance, and he consistently provides All-Star defense at the shortstop position. His clubhouse leadership binds the team together, and his 25.5 WAR in four and three-quarters season leads the team to victory on the field. He is really the full package. This is all without mentioning his legendary grand slam (pictured is the moment right before) against Philadelphia in Game 4 of the 2024 NLDS, which had me jumping and nearly crying with joy.

Honorable Mentions: Jose Reyes, Bud Harrelson, Amed Rosario, Rey Ordóñez

Third Baseman: David Wright

Discussing David Wright always has a note of tragedy. Wright started his career with Hall of Fame numbers, including an eye-popping triple slash of .309/.389/.518 in the first six years of his career, with Gold Glove winning defense at Third Base. But mid-career injuries and spinal stenosis made 2011-2016 a constant battle to just appear on the field. But you don’t need what-ifs to know that David Wright was a truly great baseball player. His impressive statistics, and the reverence which he received from the Mets faithful is enough. David Wright, who shared my first name, was someone I deeply idolized as a child, including dressing us as him for Halloween once with his trademark thick eye black. For me, this placement is the most obvious on the list.

Honorable Mentions: Robin Ventura, Howard Johnson, Ray Knight

Outfield

Due to the fluid nature of the modern game (I can already telling I’m losing some people), I have decided to deemphasize positions for my all-time outfield, I will instead choose 3 outfielders total.

Darryl Strawberry

Let me briefly dispel the allegations that I disrespect the 1986 Mets. Darryl Strawberry is the greatest Mets outfielder of all time, you can put away your pitchforks. There’s really no argument against this claim either. In his seven years on the Mets, Strawberry averaged a slash-line of .263/.359/.520, and led the Mets to a World Series title as their best offensive player. “Straw” was known for a beautiful swing, incredible power, and more then deserves a spot on this list.

Carlos Beltran

Carlos Beltran has unfortunately become more well-known for his role in the 2017 Houston Astros cheating scandal, but he played 5 and a half All-Star caliber years for the New York Mets. Not only did the Puerto Rican slugger deliver a tremendous Mets career triple slash of .280/.369/.500, but he did so while delivering Gold Glove quality defense in the outfield. Many Mets fans will remember his infamous called strike looking against the Cardinals in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS, but since that was before my time, I’m more likely to remember watching his three home run game in Denver on March 12, 2011, or his June 18th, 2011 home run that went all the way to the Shea Bridge in right-center. Beltran was a vital part of the late 2000s early 2010s Mets offensive core, and easily gets a spot on this list.

Brandon Nimmo

This pick is easily my most controversial so far, but let me defend myself. I love Mookie Wilson, I love Cleon Jones, and I love Rusty Staub, but I can no longer justify keeping Brandon Nimmo off this list. The man was drafted by the New York Mets, and has spent 8 seasons in the orange and blue, with a career triple slash of .254/.325/.436, with an unrecognized but doggedly determined defense. His WAR is always hovering in the 3-4 range, with a 5.0 WAR in 2022, and his OPS+ is usually in the 130s, sometimes better, sometimes worse. He’s even got some speed, with an MLB-leading 7 triples in 2022, and 15 stolen bases in 2024 and 12 so far this year. His offensive production is not amazing, but it is persistently solid. Statistically, he measures up to just about any possible replacement, and he’s got the tenure to put him on this list. If not that, then I will just say I like the guy, and I like how much he loves being a Met. If you want to make the case for Cleon Jones, and I have a dear friend who owns a Jones jersey, then by all means, he’s a Mets legend, but I will pick Brandon.

Honorable Mentions: Cleon Jones, Mookie Wilson, Rusty Staub, Tommie Agee, Juan Soto (who will one day hopefully lead this list)

Utility: Jeff McNeil

I remember very well when Jeff McNeil entered the scene. It was at the tail-end of a disappointing 2018 season, and this call-up came out of nowhere with a choked-up grip on his bat and a golf-like swing to hit .329 for the remainder of the season. The notion of a throwback contact hitter like McNeil was definitely exciting. Since then, McNeil has definitely had his ups and downs, oscillating from winning the batting title in 2022 to hitting .238 in 2024. But he’s provided massive versatility in the field, playing everything from left field to second base, and for me he’s definitely the best utility man we’ve ever had.

Honorable Mentions: Rusty Staub, Endy Chavez, Joe McEwing

Starting Pitching

For the starting pitching section of this list, I will select a starting rotation of five hurlers.

Tom Seaver

Tom Seaver remains the unanimous choice for the greatest Met of all time, and there’s good reason why. “Tom Terrific” led the Miracle Mets to the 1969 World Series Championship, and almost led them to the Championship in 1973 too. “The Franchise” notched a wild 2.57 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, and 2.67 FIP over 3,045.2 innings in a Mets uniform. What more needs to be said? Not only does Seaver rank as the greatest Met of all time, he’s routinely counted amongst the best pitchers of all time. The 1977 trade of Tom Seaver to the Reds remains to this day the consensus pick for the worst day in franchise history for very good reason. This spot is a no-brainer.

Jacob deGrom

Let me tell you about the time I witnessed the greatest pitcher to ever do it. It was April, 2021, the Mets were good, and carried a lot of promise after Steve Cohen had purchased the team in the previous offseason. It was a night game against the Washington Nationals, and I was at Citi Field to see Jacob deGrom. On the mound, deGrom was untouchable. His arsenal of a 100 mile an hour fastball, vexing changeup, and brutal slider was downright unbeatable. At the plate, deGrom was almost just as good, heating a single and a double, with RBIs to boot. The Nationals got two hits on a weak contact, but otherwise nothing. Jacob finished the night with 15 strikeouts and a complete game shutout. The crowd chanted “MVP” all night. I am convinced, and nobody will ever convince me otherwise, that I witnessed the best pitcher to ever pitch. But the human body couldn’t handle that kind of brilliance, it was too taxing. Jacob only pitched to a 1.08 ERA that year, but only through 92 innings. DeGrom suffered a lot with injuries, but that didn’t stop him from winning back-to-back Cy Young awards in 2018 and 2019 with only slightly less nasty stuff. His 2018 season in particular stands out as one of the greatest in league history. This is all ignoring the first phase of his career, where won Rookie of the Year in 2014 and helped pitch the Mets to a National League Championship in 2015. Injuries and a controversial departure from the team after 2022 meant deGrom could never claim the spot as the best pitcher in franchise history, but he has more then earned second place.

Dwight “Doc” Gooden

“Doc” was THE sports performance to see in mid 1980s New York sports. The phenom rookie notched an absurd 276 strikeouts in his first season (plus the Rookie of the Year Award), and then 268 with a 1.53 ERA, and a Cy Young Award in his second. In 1986, he helped lead the Mets to a World Series championship with a stellar regular season and an impeccable combined 17 innings of pitching against the Houston Astros in the NLCS, in which he only allowed two runs. Problems with drugs dodged Doc for the rest of his career, but Queens will never forget his dominance.

Jerry Koosman

It’s easy to say that Jerry Koosman was the lefty Robin to Seaver’s Batman on the 1969 Miracle Mets, but Koosman was a superhero in his own right. He recorded a 2.28 ERA the year the Mets won it all, and a 2.04 ERA in the World Series against the Baltimore. Koosman would go on to come in second in Cy Young voting in 1976, and finished his Mets career with a 3.09 ERA and 39.5 WAR in 2,544.2 innings pitched. There is no 1969 World Series Championship Mets team without Koosman, period.

Jon Matlack

Jon Matlack is best known as an obscure trivia fact, as the man who let up Roberto Clemente’s final and 3,000th major league hit. What people may not know is that he had a fruitful 6-year career with the New York Mets, including an all-time level 9.1 WAR season in 1974. In the course of his Mets career, Jon won the Rookie of the Year award, recorded a 3.03 ERA, and was named an All-Star three times. He is more then deserving a spot here.

Honorable Mentions: Sid Fernandez, Johan Santana, Ron Darling, R.A. Dickey, David Cone

Bullpen

For the Bullpen, I will name one closer because “middle relief” is an annoying category.

John Franco

Newer fans might disagree, but this spot still has to go to 90s and early 2000s Mets star closer John Franco. With the franchise leadership in saves (273), and multiple dominant seasons, Franco has more then earned his spot here. Now, he might face competition from Edwin Diaz, who has shown that at his best he is one of the best closers to ever do it in the history of the game, but he’s only done it in two seasons (2022 and this year). Franco put up not as good but way more consistent numbers in the orange and blue for 14 years. It’s gotta be John.

Honorable Mentions: Edwin Diaz, Francisco Rodriguez, Armando Benitez, Jesse Orosco, Tug McGraw

That about wraps it up! Here’s the final list.

C: Mike Piazza

1B: Pete Alonso

2B: Edgardo Alfonzo

SS: Franciso Lindor

3B: David Wright

OF: Darryl Strawberry

OF: Carlos Beltrán

OF: Brandon Nimmo

Util: Jeff McNeil

SP: Tom Seaver, Jacob deGrom, Dwight Gooden, Jerry Koosman, Jon Matlack

RP: John Franco

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed my list and this discussion of the New York Mets! Remember that it’s all in good fun and that players who didn’t make the list may still be all-time legends of the Mets franchise. Sometimes it is just very hard to choose between legends! It’s been a while since I last wrote for Dilly Delaneying since I’ve been writing for other projects, moving, and job-hunting, but I sincerely hope you enjoy this while you wait for the next edition of The de Blasio Revolution and other new products!

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, and remember to subscribe if you have not.

Dante de Blasio, sitting in what appears to be his family living room, faces the camera and the first thing he says is “I want to tell you about Bill de Blasio. He’s the only Democrat with the guts to really break from the Bloomberg years.”

The advertisement advances this message of change in two primary ways. Firstly, on a substantive level, with Dante noting how de Blasio will shift the cost of economic recovery from overburdened and neglected public services onto the city’s wealthiest. Secondly, on a deeply personal level by showcasing Bill and Dante, father and son, walking through brownstone Brooklyn, in addition to laughing around the kitchen table with Bill’s wife and Dante’s mother Chirlane McCray. Once again, de Blasio draws the biggest possible contrast with Michael Bloomberg. Whereas Bloomberg was a remote tycoon who was most at home in the board room, de Blasio was a Brooklyn family man with a Black wife, son, and daughter and a family that looked like New York.

Perhaps the sort of Obama-era post-racial optimism of the ad would not hold water in a post-Ferguson, post-Eric Garner world, but at the time it was an absolute hit. The ad garnered over 500,000 views on YouTube, on a channel where the average view count on campaign videos was below 1,000, and was repeatedly broadcasted on television screens across the city. Later, TIME Magazine would even claim it won de Blasio the primary.

It’s worth considering this confluence of the change message and the city’s substantial African-American vote. We discussed in Part I about how Black voters were the voters who remained the most loyal to the Democratic ticket against Bloomberg in 2009. Of course, Black voters were the most loyal Democratic voters in New York City period. This loyalty was generously repaid in 2009 by much of the Democratic Party establishment either tacitly or openly supporting Bloomberg for a third term against the city’s first Black Comptroller Bill Thompson. For her part, Christine Quinn, in addition to passing the legislation that allowed Bloomberg to run in the first place, endorsed Thompson so late in the race that in total indignation he refused to appear with her while she endorsed him.

The “Black vote” in New York City is far from a monolith, and there are often significant differences in how Black New Yorkers depending on where they live, for example, in Harlem (whose Black residents usually trace their roots to the Great Migration) or in Jamaica (which often includes more recent immigrant Caribbean-Americans). If not where they live, then how old they are, or whether or not they own their home. Generally speaking however, the majority of the Black vote rarely goes to white progressive or liberal reform candidates in competitive New York City primaries. The reasons for this are worth a more comprehensive analysis then I am qualified to offer, but what matters for this discussion is that de Blasio, a white progressive from Park Slope on paper would not have been a serious contender for the Black vote. By comparison, Christine Quinn had the endorsement of prominent labor unions with heavily Black memberships, and Bill Thompson himself was running for a second time.

But by positioning himself as the strongest break from Bloomberg, de Blasio tapped into a current in Black New York that his opponents either didn’t see or were unwilling to unabashedly approach. On nearly every issue, de Blasio sought to draw the biggest distance between himself and the incumbent. On inequality, de Blasio spoke of a “tale of two cities” and promised to end Bloomberg’s cuts to public services and tax the rich. Black New York was slammed by the financial crisis, especially Black middle-class homeowners in eastern Queens (consider historic Black neighborhoods like Addisleigh Park) who were disproportionately foreclosed upon. Bloomberg’s policies made them finance the recovery, while de Blasio offered an alternative. On Stop and Frisk, de Blasio was the only candidate to support legislation to allow New Yorkers to sue the city for racial profiling.

While it is certainly worth considering the dynamics of the Black vote specifically, the effectiveness of the contrast between de Blasio and Bloomberg went well beyond just one demographic. As the campaign ramped up it became clear that de Blasio was a real contender. At the June 19th New York One debate, de Blasio received wild applause for his attacks on the Quinn-Bloomberg budgets which slashed early childhood education funding. De Blasio offered a fundamentally different approach then the political status quo of New York City. A status quo so terrified of capital flight that any and all spending cuts, no matter how austere, would be preferable to skimming a small amount of wealth from the top. De Blasio’s alternative message of economic justice was resonating.

There was however, a different name who was also offering the politics of change. His name was Anthony Weiner. Yes, that Anthony Weiner. In his 12 years in Congress, Weiner had been an iconic progressive fighter, a man who had been a passionate supporter of nationwide single-payer healthcare and real critic of President Obama from the left. That was all before he resigned in disgrace after sending sexually explicit photographs to a woman on Twitter. Nevertheless, the married man insisted he was a changed person and would make a splendid Mayor. For a while, voters seemed to buy into this idea and Weiner became the frontrunner, before he was once again exposed for sending sexually explicit photographs over the internet and his numbers crashed. Weiner’s collapse largely was to de Blasio’s benefit, who stood alone as the only change candidate with any credibility.

As the summer rolled on, Quinn sank beneath the waves despite her machine support and the endorsement of The New York Times, unable to escape her decision to give Bloomberg a third term. The establishment it seems, had critically miscalculated. The race seemed to turn into a two-horse race between de Blasio and Bill Thompson. Thompson offered contrast with Bloomberg, he did run against the Mayor in 2009 and was a sharp critic, but his moderate approach did not lend itself to the same populist fervor as de Blasio. De Blasio was widely considered by the frontrunner by late summer, and was attracting serious hype and crowds at a level that would be considered surprising to younger New Yorkers who only remember the tail end of his Mayoralty.

Whether it was his focus on inequality, his principled opposition to stop-and-frisk, or his family story, he was making serious waves. De Blasio received another boost when a federal judge ruled stop-and-frisk unconstitutional and a violation of basic civil rights, vindicating his long-held position and humiliating Bloomberg. De Blasio’s competitors were so wedded to the political paradigm that Bloomberg had built, so scared of being perceived as soft-on-crime, that they had avoided de Blasio’s hardline opposition, but now a neutral arbiter was agreeing with Bill.

New York law prior to the advent of ranked choice voting for municipal primaries stipulated that a candidate needed to obtain over 40 percent of the vote to win a primary outright, and winning short of 40 percent meant that a top two-runoff would be held with the second place contender. Polling showed de Blasio hovering around 40 percent, but clearly needed one last push to make it there. Another establishment miscalculation was all it took.

In an exit interview with New York Magazine, the outgoing Mayor was asked about the de Blasio campaign and he blasted it as “class warfare and racist.” The Mayor clarified that he did not mean to say de Blasio himself was racist, but accused de Blasio of weaponizing his mixed-race family for political purposes in a way that was unbecoming of a potential Mayor. If Bloomberg thought his words would scare fence-sitters away from de Blasio he was absolutely wrong. De Blasio pounced, demanding an apology and McCray defended her autonomy as a free-willed political agent. Ouch.

On primary day, de Blasio swept to a first place finish and then to victory, winning 40.88 percent of the vote. Bill Thompson was second at 26.14%, Quinn in a distant third at 15.74%, and city Comptroller John Liu at 6.84%. Anthony Weiner, who would definitely never run for office ever again, won 4.94%.

Now allow me to engage in some electoral sociology and results analysis to just show exactly how remarkable de Blasio’s victory was. First off, de Blasio won every borough in the city. But even that doesn’t truly demonstrate the scale of his victory and the size of his coalition.

Naturally, de Blasio ran up the score in brownstone Brooklyn. A progressive reformer winning big majorities in Park Slope and Boerum Hill is hardly surprising though. What’s more interesting is how de Blasio routinely won majorities in overwhelmingly minority precincts in Brownsville and East New York. In terms of majority-Black and Latino Brooklyn, you could walk from Sunset Park through Prospect Lefferts Gardens to Spring Creek Towers without ever leaving a de Blasio precinct!

(Let me know if you actually want me to do “the de Blasio 2013 walk”)

Even in areas where de Blasio did comparably worse, such as south Brooklyn, which has a large Modern Orthodox and Conservative Jewish vote, he performed quite impressively. Midwood for example, home to the the conservative weekly The Jewish Press which enthusiastically endorsed Bloomberg in 2009, routinely gave de Blasio enough votes to win a solid second place behind Thompson. Take Election District 48-056, home to the East Midwood Jewish Center (where fun fact, I have played basketball, and no they don’t have a three-point line on their court). This precinct is overwhelmingly Conservative and Orthodox Jewish and elderly, but de Blasio got 25.8% there, good enough to be way ahead of Quinn. Bloomberg had dominated these areas in 2009 to the tune of over 80% but Quinn’s embrace of the outgoing Mayor couldn’t even get her in third place. It’s quite likely Quinn suffered with more conservative religious voters (here and elsewhere) due to her sexuality, but that’s still a shockingly low number. This result is important because even in areas that historically favored Bloomberg, de Blasio still found a constituency. That is how big he won.

The de Blasio landslide extends well beyond Brooklyn. He dominated the northern coast of Staten Island, beat out Thompson in Harlem, defeated Quinn in the LGBT-heavy West Village, won over Black homeowners in Springfield Gardens, won Dominican-American voters in Central Harlem, triumphed in diverse Jackson Heights, and crushed it in Long Island City. Please, check it our yourself. It’s fascinating.

We discussed in Part I, and in this part, specifically which parts of the city were most hostile to Bloomberg in 2009. One such area where Bill Thompson performed very well against Mayor Bloomberg was Wakefield in the north Bronx. Wakefield is overwhelmingly composed of Guyanese and Jamaican immigrants, working-class, and suffers from poor access to the public services. It is in some ways a microcosm of the cracks in Bloomberg’s shining city. If we look to Election District 81-021 in the heart of Wakefield, where Thompson received 67% in 2009, de Blasio received 56.5% despite being virtually unknown there prior to the election. Christine Quinn, the candidate of continuity, won 2 votes. That’s right, 2 votes.

It’s telling that Quinn’s best numbers were in the heart of Bloombergland, the luxury apartments alongside Central Park and in the Upper East Side. In Election District 73-071, home to the beautiful and world-famous Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bloomberg received over 90% in 2009, Quinn won 47.6% in this primary, and de Blasio was in third at 23 percent. Bloomberg’s biggest beneficiaries backed his chosen successor, but it doesn’t seem that the credibility he offered her extended much beyond his core supporters.

The voters had spoken. Bill de Blasio was to be the Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City.

The Democratic establishment of New York City, cowed by the Bloomberg landslide in 2005 and his towering approval ratings, had conceded the political playing field to him in 2009. They did not count for the resentment that would engender. It should have been clear after Bloomberg barely beat Thompson in 2009 that Democratic voters were not all-in on Bloomberg. Despite that signal, Quinn and the Democratic establishment acted as if they were and largely acquiesced to Bloomberg’s vision of economic recovery and public safety which placed the burden on the city’s poor. In doing so, they neglected their own voters, especially the Black voters which were historically the most loyal to the party. De Blasio took a risk, a risk to defy the powerful Mayor and his established networks, and he spoke to these concerns in a way other candidates were not. His chance paid off and as a result he became the vessel for a citywide, cross-race, cross-borough rebellion against the establishment. This was the de Blasio Revolution.

Would you like to see the Revolution continue into a Part III? Let me know in the comments below.