Only Fools Gloat


Hakeem Jeffries loses candidates | BillMelugin_/X

The aftermath: Loyal readers of Roundup know that yesterday’s primary results—a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) sweep of New York’s districts, dethroning incumbents left and right—are likely going to lead to a lot more self-proclaimed socialists in the U.S. House of Representatives. How much does Mamdani Fever matter elsewhere, though?

“Left-leaning, anti-establishment candidates have triumphed in a series of primaries in deep blue congressional districts. What about in competitive races this fall?” asks Katie Glueck at The New York Times. The races to watch? “The Maine Senate race, where Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee, has embraced progressive positions such as supporting Medicare for All and calling to dismantle Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” Also, “if Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official, wins the August Senate primary in Michigan, his candidacy would pose a similar test in one of the nation’s most important battlegrounds.”

Meanwhile, the National Republican Congressional Committee has taken it upon itself to do the bitchiest thing possible to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D–N.Y.), who had been hoping to become speaker but will probably not be so supported by the incoming far-left representatives:

It’s foolish for Republicans to gloat. This isn’t good for the Democratic Party (or for Jeffries’ political ambitions), but it also probably isn’t very good for the Republicans, either. Our discourse will be dragged down to ever-more-stupid levels. Think former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.): What once looked like steadfast President Donald Trump loyalism has actually devolved into deep feuding and—as of yesterday—apparently a total break from the Republican Party.

It’s possible the Democratic Party will be dragged further to the left. It’s possible it will have a harder time appealing to moderates. It’s possible the split on Israel will prove insurmountable. It’s also possible that the policy priorities of these DSA types won’t actually be possible to pass at a national level, and that they won’t be able to get anywhere close. Or that efforts to implement national versions of, say, universal childcare, would end up backfiring.

“One challenge: more equitable federal social policy would mean NYS/NYC would receive far less in federal transfers and lower-income, lower fiscal-capacity states (disproportionately rural and Republican) would receive far more,” writes Reihan Salam of the Manhattan Institute. “Without federal matching funds, it is hard to see NYS/NYC sustaining anything approaching its current level of social welfare expenditure, let alone finance social housing and subsidized housing for the bottom 90 percent, universal unionized childcare, free transit, and other lofty aspirations. Austerity forever. This kind of discipline could yield a better, more effective government, but it would undoubtedly be more targeted and less expansive.”

It’s also possible they’ve just…barely thought about the mechanics of governing at all. They can hardly handle the politics side of it! Consider what New York primary winner Darializa Avila Chevalier’s team thinks is an appropriate political ad (possibly the worst ad I’ve ever seen):

The upshot:

Scenes from New York: “I’m sympathetic to Bodega Nationalists because I can relate to them,” writes Denzel Rust at Mama. “They prove something fundamental about human nature: that people tend to be right-wing lunatics about the things closest to them. The teacher who votes blue but fantasizes about her worst-behaved students being sent to Guantanamo. The HOA apparatchik who wants their BLM yard sign protected by private security. In the case of the Bodega Nationalist, who has been denied a healthy outlet for his tribal libido, all that’s left are zip codes and sports teams. Coexist stickers for the post-national localwaffen.”

QUICK HITS

  • At least 164 people are dead—and probably more—after two earthquakes (7.2 magnitude and 7.5 magnitude) hit Venezuela yesterday. The last time a super-destructive earthquake hit Venezuela was in July 1967, killing 240 people.
  • “Key parts of the oil market are suddenly awash in supply, as a stream of cargoes out of the Strait of Hormuz accelerates after the US-Iran agreement to open the waterway,” reports Bloomberg.
  • “U.S. President Donald Trump faced pointed criticism over the Iran war in a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans on Wednesday, shortly before his administration asked Congress for tens of billions ​of dollars to pay for the conflict,” reports Reuters. “Several Republicans who attended said Trump engaged in a shouting match with Senator Bill Cassidy, who said the administration needed to explain a framework deal Trump signed last ‌week that gives Iran financial incentives but falls short of the goals he laid out at the war’s beginning.”
  • From The Wall Street Journal: “Things Are Getting Awkward in England as Roadside Diners Turn Into Sex Shops.” (“Things have clearly changed here since the days when a comedy called ‘No Sex Please, We’re British’ was one of the biggest shows on London’s West End in the 1970s and ’80s.”)
  • The responses to the New York Times‘ dissecting-Usha-Vance’s-pregnancy-style article are incredible:

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