Republicans break laws. Democrats worship identity. How should you vote?
What is the least worst option when our parties won't build America?
I’ve spent a lot of time criticizing the left for falling down the skin color/gender creativity/anti-Jewish rabbit hole which has made them about as relevant as the Capri Sun sugar water bags from my youth. They were gross, glad they’re gone.
Not to rehash too much, but the gist of my argument is that the left hasn’t evolved since 1973. They can only blame themselves for their obsolescence.
If anyone seriously thinks the Democrats are still relevant as a party, then it’s fair to predict the one thing they’re not not serious about is winning elections.
Back in 1973, Americans basked in legislation passed a decade earlier — the Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Acts — ending segregation and Jim Crow. No more back of the bus for black people or divided lunch counters or bigoted hotels, schools and on and on. Finally, America lived up to its promise of equality for all. It was only until then we became a democracy. (Quotas and segregation against Jews at similar institutions had already faded and was never as violent.)
A few year earlier, in 1969, the Stonewall riots in Manhattan sparked the gay rights movement. The movement reached a zenith in 2015 with nationally legalized gay marriage. This was a huge and measurable turning point for our country, but then the movement fractured. Parts of it merged with other progressive trends and delved into what I find strange ideas like anticolonial queerness that aligns with radical anti-gay Islam, which makes no sense, or it promulgated ideas about widescale gender dysmorphia leading to irreversible medical procedures on minors and maltreatment of young female athletes and women prisoners. While other countries experienced similar gender realignments, these interventions are no longer widely condoned in other advanced industrial countries, but in America the left still says it’s transphobic to question terms and the etiology of gender affirming care — which has been proven to be ineffective. And, to many millions of voting Americans, shortsighted and cruel.
Regardless of the eddies after 2015, the wins from the gay rights movement are real and rooted in the late 1960s. Other good leftist things happened back then. In 1972, Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment. A year later, we had Roe v Wade.
I was also born in 1973, but I honestly did this research blind to a date. Still, thanks mom and dad!
Ending segregation and Jim Crow. Creating avenues for gay rights. Promoting women’s equality and legalizing (with an unfortunately temporary judicial majority) control over their bodies — all epic changes to America the right can’t take credit for.
Trouble is, the left hasn’t changed since. Meanwhile, the right gallops ahead.
These 1973 victories are still worthy of attention. The Civil Rights Movement was a wonderful time in our history, and it’s not like racism, sexism and the oppression of gay people will ever fully disappear. But are these our only priorities, forever? Is the lens of the Civil Rights Movement the only way to observe and respond to social needs or, as my favorite observation goes, the only way to understand foreign conflicts?
America, as imperfect as it is, has improved in many ways in the past 50 years. It’s also struggled with new problems not as relevant in 1973 when education, housing and healthcare were far more affordable. As seemingly impossible as it is for the left to say, I believe our country can achieve new wins.
Let’s focus on this:
Unaffordability — of housing, healthcare and education. Add food, cars, transportation, consumer goods and construction supplies.
Poor infrastructure — our airports and air safety, trains, mass transit, streets, housing and agriculture are all decaying or killing us.
Why add agriculture? Our country doesn’t meaningfully support small, truly organic farms producing the best quality food possible while improving the environment. Instead we subsidize polluting agribusinesses linked to fast and snack food businesses and grocery chains. Our food infrastructure has delivered us the most obese and sickest population in the western world. Like a decaying airport or pot-holed street, this can fixed. We have the technology and money.
Public safety — we need protection against looters in the LA fires, mentally ill men on New York subways, mass shootings in every state, violence in our jails, and street violence — sometimes from our protectors, more often from minorities killing other minorities in poor places flooded with weapons. We now have planes crashes for the first time in years.
None of these issues are discussed in any cogent way by either party. What I hear instead from the left, since I live in a blue state and have no voting options, is a kind of a caricature of a wealthy student at an exclusive liberal arts school spending $150,000 a year to study decolonization, as if that isn’t the most colonial act of all.
This irony is apparently lost on university administrators. They only raise tuition to fund irrelevant sports buildings or build discriminatory bureaucracies, underpay faculty and hope not too many Jews get targeted on campus today. Or better yet, they enforce quotas against Jews. Worked great in the 1920s!
Funnily, DEI thinking also excludes Asians. Progressives tell us Asians, excuse me, AAPIs, since progressives need acronyms, are “people of color,” but just not when it comes to universities? Hmm….
The right is perhaps worse than the left’s theater of the absurd they call politics, because the right is not only in power, but now, under, Trump, they’re really effective at wielding it.
Don’t believe me that the left is bad at wielding power when they have a swing at bat? Where are the EV chargers Biden promised? Why did the ACA give many of us worse outcomes? Where’s the new infrastructure?
I think one reason the right is better at utilizing power is because they have a clear theory of brokenness, even if the movement is often illegal and self-dealing, while the left paradoxically urges reinventing our caste system for niche and I think invented identities — while also saying the answer is to maintain the status quo.
Which is it? Liberation for non-white non-straight non-sex-based-gender non-Asian (maybe?) non-Jews and non-religious people (how many constituents that leaves remaining is not asked) or do they want our leaders to be slow and steady at the wheel?
They don’t know. They need to refer to a handbook, create a few acronyms and get back to us. They have until November 2026.
I think the main reason the right is in power is because the left hasn’t had produced a reasonable option for most people; and because the right has embraced a cult of personality wiling to violate the Constitution, which, for many millions, is exciting and worth a shot since neoliberal democracy hasn’t produced meaningful results.
Without options for economic success, I can’t blame someone for voting for what they define as their best interest. That’s how democracy works. To the winner goes the spoils. (The caveat must be: as long as they abide by the Rule of Law and uphold the Constitution. That’s the kicker Republicans have abandoned. Does this doom our country, or should it inspire a political alternative? Either or, people, either or.)
The right has a long litany of moral and legal failings that, as a former leftist, I don’t have the background or knowledge to diagnose. There are far better journalists talking about Trump’s fawning over Saudi Arabia — the home of 15 of the 19 attackers in 9/11, a state that executes gays and murders journalists. There’s also Eric Adams corruption, pardoning January 6th resurrectionists and the Trump-family meme-coin grift that should make the Obamas and Clintons cringe for missed opportunities when they were at the trough.
To give a recent personal example of not having options, I was excited to learn about a Republican running for New York governor. From my standpoint, Kathy Hochul hasn’t performed well. She’s a status-quoist while I’m a non-Republican brokenist. Housing isn’t getting built quickly enough. Infrastructure costs too much, takes too long and performs too poorly. Mental health street crimes never go away.
The solutions to these challenges are obvious and, for some reason, not tackled by her.
Can you honestly tell your 14-year-old niece or daughter that it’s safe for her to ride the subway? Police at turnstiles doesn’t mean safety on platforms or in train cars. Before she walks down the stairs (because there are few elevators or reliable escalators) you need to teach her to avoid psychotic people, advise where to stand so she’s not pushed into the tracks, and if she asks what to do if she’s in a moving train and a homeless psychotic person approaches, you can only shrug and say, “um, nothing?”
This is 2025. In the wealthiest country on earth.
Adding cops to the system is a great step 1. Step 2 is treating, with force, homeless mentally ill people until they’re safe to be in society, are no-longer homeless and, ideally, have some form of employment. You don’t see loads of homeless people in other major cities. Why not in New York? (Brad Lander, running for mayor against Eric Adams, talks about this. Will he win the Democratic primary as a non-BIPOC straight male Jew? Maybe if he mentions the two-state solution incantation he’ll have a chance?)
New York, like most cities, has well-funded public schools with boatloads of union representation that produce terrible results. Red tape restricts things from getting done, built, licensed or fixed. California has the same challenges. Hochul and Gavin Newsom, to me at least, don’t have the ability or vision to mend what's broken.
Game over dudes.
It’s necessary to have political options for a democracy to function, even more so in a two party system. Trouble is, the Republicans aren’t an option I can take seriously if I want to make America more affordable, safer, and with new infrastructure — and that abides by the rule of law. Republicans don’t build. If they do make things cheaper, like some taxes, that never benefits people who need cheapness most. They now openly break the law. Not good.
So if it's not Hochul or Newsom or Trump, who is it? Brad Lander is just one man with one good idea about ending street homelessness in New York. (Don’t call it “being unhoused.” People live on the streets because they lack homes. How does policing speech create an affordable apartment, give a person a job or a doctor?)
Back to Republicans. Are they my best option while the left takes selfies in the corner? One of the leading Republican contenders for New York governor says he’s against congestion pricing. It’s complicated, but on the street level, charging drivers a $9 toll has dramatically reduced Manhattan traffic below 60th street. This is the most concentrated urban space in the North American continent. (People like me have wanted this for 20 years. Hochul delayed and lowered the fees, apparently for political exigencies, but got it done after Trump won. Is this literally too little too late?)
On a practical level, it’s empirically silly to imagine the MTA will spend the toll money to give us an observably upgraded subway system. No matter how much you appreciate less traffic in Manhattan, you can’t seriously imagine our subways will soon, I mean, ever, compete with London, Paris, Tokyo or Dubai.
That said, I like congestion pricing. It seems expensive, but the savings for bus passengers, pedestrians and businesses are far greater than a driver toll.
I want new and better things, so I want the toll money to improve my and my neighbors’ lives. It’s depressing that I can’t tell you I believe congestion tolls will truly improve our trains versus making them slightly less terrible.
But hey, traffic is down. As my grandmother said, a half loaf is better than none. The Republicans plan is none. Um, no thanks?
You get it, I want an alternative to vote for and all I get is a Republican who doesn’t want to fix things and is slavish to Trump, who most definitely doesn’t believe in the Constitution. Not coincidentally, he recently tried to end congestion pricing — and with no infrastructure alternative.
Now what?
I don't know what to call the new way forward, maybe it's The Builders. Maybe it’s being Centrist or Moderate. The problem with the last two is that allows the extremists in both parties, which are now the base of both parties, to define a middle. I think a positive bipartisan movement is our best bet. Here’s to hoping.