Original Sin and the road to redemption

Paul Garver on the Democratic Party cover-up and denial of Biden’s incapacity and the rise of the left in the shape of Zohran Mamdani

Original Sin* is a depressing book to read and review. Tapper and Thompson narrate in excruciating detail how Democratic Party operatives collaborated to cover up and deny the increasing cognitive decline of President Biden in the final years of his presidency.    Their misguided actions denied the base of the Democratic Party any opportunity to select a more viable candidate in open Democratic primaries.  Thereby, they helped facilitate the election of a sociopathic demagogue, together with the dangerous schemes of his followers to establish a White Nationalist neo-fascist regime over the USA.

The authors conducted some 200 interviews of Democratic Party insiders and strategists. Many of them admit that they were aware of Biden’s incapacities, but for one reason or another, did not speak out publicly until it was too late to unwind the damage caused by their silence.  Their motives are many, including personal loyalty to Joe Biden and his family, coupled with the belief that only even a diminished Biden could defeat Trump in the 2024 election.

It is hard to prove a counterfactual. It is quite possible that Trump would have steamrolled over even a more viable Democratic opponent than Kamala Harris.    Harris was badly advised by the Democratic Party insiders, who focused on winning over a handful of Republican defectors rather than shaping a message to the traditional base constituencies of the Democratic Party – working class, young voters, people of colour, etc.  About 10 million of these did not vote at all.   A smaller but noticeable number in Michigan defected over Biden’s and Harris’s kowtowing to Netanyahu’s genocidal war in Gaza. 

Media pundits have been playing the blame game since the election.   However, many Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, and some Democratic state governors, persist in the hope for a normal electoral correction in the midterm elections of 2026.  I call this the “lying flat” or the “head-in-the-sand” strategy.   Why would the electorate reward the Democratic Party for its cowardice and calculated inaction in the face of the grave threat to the fundamentals of the American constitutional order?    Polling indicates that a large majority of normally Democratic constituencies are frustrated with the feeble response of the Democratic Party to creeping fascism.

I am writing this on the day after the heartening Democratic primary victory of democratic socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani running for mayor of New York City.   A Muslim immigrant and only a U.S. citizen for a few years, Mamdani campaigned around bread-and-butter issues like transit and housing, with the support of New York City DSA, the Working Families Party and nationally known democratic socialists Bernie Sanders and AOC.   We had hoped that Mamdani might squeeze through by picking up votes in a ranked-choice voting system through his alliances with other progressive candidates like Brad Lander.  In fact, Mamdani got over 43% of the total first-round votes, while Lander got another 11% [boosted by his arrest by ICE agents for daring to ask them to show a judicial warrant].  Discredited former NY governor Andrew Cuomo, backed by major corporate donors, Bill Clinton and most Democratic officeholders in New York City, got only 36% of the vote on the first round, and not enough second choices to overcome Mamdani’s large lead.  Cuomo may run as an Independent in November.  He would join disgraced incumbent mayor Eric Adams, who had to be pardoned by President Trump for his flagrant corruption in return for a highly unpopular collaboration with Trump’s ICE raids, as well as a feeble Republican candidate, to contest Mamdani in November.

Panicking large donors, billionaire businessmen, and Democratic Party insiders are already lining up to support either Cuomo or Adams, running as independents.  Mamdani frightens them because he is a Muslim, a democratic socialist, and a charismatic campaigner with simple populist social democratic messages that appeal to the majority of New Yorkers – rent control, free transit, etc., while threatening to slightly raise taxes on the ultra-rich.

Those same interests futilely spent some $25 million in negative advertising against Mamdani in the primary.  He was libelled as anti-Semitic and communistic, as well as being called inexperienced and impractical.  These negative ads against Mamdani were not very successful, since Zohran had consistently been upfront with his views on immigration, free transit, higher taxes on the rich, and support for Gazans and Palestinians, and his opposition to ICE raids.

We expect that Mamdani’s opponents will receive much more extensive funding to run scurrilous attacks on him between now and the November election.

Mamdani will counter mainly by further amping up his extensive campaigning network that carried him to his primary victory.  Some 40,000 volunteer canvassers had come not only from the organized Left (DSA, Working Families Party, etc.), but also from dozens of progressive organisations, community and neighbourhood associations representing the full spectrum of NYC.  In the fall, Mamdani will rely even more heavily on volunteer canvassers and small donors as well as on his own creative social media and personal appearances.  Hopefully, they will be reinforced by labour union activists, even though most union leaders endorsed Cuomo in the primary.

As a member of DSA’s International Committee, I have been scanning the congratulations to DSA flooding in from international socialist organisations on Mamdani’s victory.  I have also noticed that Mamdani is being hailed in social media by a wide spectrum of progressive organisations in the USA.   So far, I have seen only a trickle of congratulations from Democratic Party officeholders outside NYC.  Could it be that many Democrats in office still fear retaliation by the Democratic National Committee in their own districts in 2026 and beyond if they support    Mamdani?

I would like to believe, hope against hope, that the Democratic Party will not double down on the original sin so well highlighted by Tepper and Thompson.   Their revised version of original sin will be to try to stop Mamdani at all costs. For many Democratic operatives, the victory of the Left in the Democratic Party, now represented by Sanders, the Squad, and Mamdani, would be a catastrophic blow, at least as obnoxious as MAGA and Project 2025. 

Will we be able to overcome these reactionary Democratic diehards at the same time we creatively battle the creeping Fascist takeover that will close most space for political resistance? The odds remain long, but not insurmountable.  Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will!