A Buffalo Saber to the Socialist Heart Leftists discover their ideas aren’t popular. James Freeman
A mayoral election in America’s 76th-largest city usually doesn’t exert much influence on national politics. “As Buffalo goes, so goes the country” is not something you hear every day from Larry Sabato or Norm Ornstein. But the recent repudiation of socialism by voters in a city that hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since the 1960s could have a far-ranging and beneficial impact.
In the immediate aftermath of this month’s crushing defeat for a radical Democratic nominee at the hands of a write-in candidate, many leftists decided to view the event as a political betrayal by moderate Democrats, or perhaps a dirty trick. A recent Journal editorial noted:
Witness the long knives coming out for Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, who won an election against a left-wing favorite.
Mr. Brown won a fifth term after defeating Democratic socialist India Walton, who had beaten Mr. Brown in a June primary with promises to defund the Buffalo Police Department and put a moratorium on charter schools. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigned for her.
The black mayor rallied labor unions, businesses and moderates with a write-in bid that won 59% of the vote. Progressives are now looking to take revenge. “The Democratic Plot to Stop a Socialist From Becoming Buffalo’s Mayor,” griped The New Republic. Larry Cohen, chair of the Sanders-aligned Our Revolution, says it’s “a disgrace” that Mr. Brown pulled the “stunt” of challenging a “working-class woman” primary victor. The left is organizing to banish Mr. Brown from the Democratic National Committee.
For many on the extreme left, Mr. Brown’s victory reminded them of establishment Democrats using a system of “superdelegates” to help Hillary Clinton defeat Bernie Sanders for the 2016 presidential nomination.
But with more time to ponder the fact that the Buffalo mayor won in a landslide even though he was not even on the ballot, some are beginning to consider the obvious conclusion. Socialism is a tough sell even among voters who lean sharply to the left.
Sad and disappointed at the Buffalo result, Fredrik deBoer nevertheless urges his fellow radicals to face some unpleasant facts in an op-ed in the New York Times:
… it’s time for young socialists and progressive Democrats to recognize that our beliefs just might not be popular enough to win elections consistently. It does us no favors to pretend otherwise.
What too many young socialists and progressive Democrats don’t seem to realize is that it’s perfectly possible that the Democratic Party is biased against our beliefs and that our beliefs simply aren’t very popular.
Mr. deBoer then continues to stomp on the progressive buzz by explaining that a rigged system is not the reason Bernie Sanders is not our President:
… the inconvenient fact is that Mr. Sanders received far fewer primary votes than Mrs. Clinton in 2016 and Mr. Biden in 2020… Whatever else we may want to say about the system, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the voters of the liberal party in American politics twice had the opportunity to nominate Mr. Sanders as their candidate for president and twice declined to do so. If we don’t allow this to inform our understanding of the popularity of our politics, we’ll never move forward and start winning elections to gain more power in our system.
Those of us hoping that socialists never move forward and start winning elections would prefer that the Buffalo lesson informs the understanding of the man who defeated Mr. Sanders in last year’s presidential primaries. Democrats made clear in 2020 that they did not want a Sandernista revolution and yet for some reason in 2021 Mr. Biden keeps indulging Mr. Sanders’ effort to enact one.
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Here’s hoping that Mr. Biden will take the lesson of Buffalo to heart—and also that he will take some other advice he’s currently receiving from staff.
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