How (not) to build a coalition

Zohran Mamdani and purity tests

Zohran Mamdani’s win in the Democratic primary for NYC mayor has unleashed a flood of vitriol, misinformation, and attacks—not just from the right, but from within the Democratic party. Numerous elected Democrats have refused to endorse him, while one former governor is mounting a campaign to ensure Mamdani doesn’t attain the mayor’s seat. Eric Adams is talking a lot of shit, which makes senses given that’s all he seems capable of doing on any topic.

Instead of learning from Mamdani’s effective moves as a young politician, the establishment appears hellbent on maintaining the status quo, ignoring the fact that many of his ideas are quite popular. So is his affect: eating briyani with your hands (which is completely normal, despite protestations and guffaws from horrified MAGA stans) is relatable. Hakeem Jeffries holding a bat like a literal child while showing himself impotent against Trump’s bill is not. Ritchie Torres calling Mamdani a “Mickey Mouse challenger” certainly isn’t helping unify the party.

How effective Mamdani will be in building a coalition remains to be seen. What’s certain is the man is willing to speak to issues few other Democrats will. Mamdani’s message, at least in the city where his race actually matters, is popular. Broadening out to the national level, however, the left is still caught in the sort of binary thinking that could continue to hamper progressive candidates from attaining power.

I’m being reflective and critical of the left because I care about the issues Mamdani speaks to. I’m under no illusion that the right, especially the MAGA right and Christian nationalist right (which are often the same), is the real problem here. But if the left wants to succeed as a big tent welcoming to a variety of ideas that represents the diversity of its coalition, there needs to be reflection, discussion, and debate, as obviously a lot of shit ain’t working right now.

Consider the supposed big tent that is Mamdani’s party. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) was founded in 1982. Their decentralized network boasts one national chapter with an elected leadership, followed by many nodes representing local chapters. Some influence is top down, but not nearly as much as the GOP or Democratic parties. I’m discussing the national party, which is the most visible.

As a big tent organization, the DSA welcomes a variety of left-wing to far-left thinkers. Part of the success of any organization, including this one, is tension. When you’re only surrounded by people who agree with you, grandiose thinking tends to dominate. The DSA historically welcomes libertarian socialists, communists, and social democrats, which is where my politics most closely align.

The philosophy of a social democracy: a lot more socialism worked into the current system. Importantly, that socialism exists alongside capitalism. Healthcare should be socialized, as should transportation. Mamdani’s city-run grocery stores is a fantastic idea. Broadly speaking, our food supply should have more oversight and protections. People often talk about the price of eggs, but rarely do they discuss the supply chains needed to get eggs to shelves, and all that entails in terms of pricing and access.

None of this needs to replace the private market. Every country that offers socialized medicine (every developed nation besides America) also has a private market. Likewise, Mamdani isn’t recommending replacing private grocery stores, despite what “he’s a communist” fear-mongerers proclaim. Mamdani’s approach is additive, which could help the free market if prices are competitive enough. And it’s not only about prices—NYC has food deserts, so open them in the areas that need them most. As Mamdani has said, we’re already paying higher prices due to subsidies that benefit a few industries. Let’s focus on benefiting more people, and give everyone options with public and private markets.

This sort of tension, from center-left to communism, historically exists within the DSA. Some think more socialism should exist within a capitalist market; others feel everything, including private property, should be collectively owned. Tension within debates is supposed to serve as a way to forge the best path forward.

That tension existed until two years ago. Maurice Isserman, a founding member of the DSA, left the party in 2023 when, for the first time ever, the far left won a majority of National Political Committee seats. Some members cited entryism—taking over a larger organization in order to move the politics in the direction you want.

Isserman sums up the tension:

I am a lifelong democratic socialist. I was a founding member of the Democratic Socialists of America, a group established in 1982 in the spirit of Debs, Garrison, and Douglass. I am also the author of Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism, a new history of that movement from 1919 to 1991. I wrote the book as a cautionary tale. The Communist Party’s ignominious history—of taking instructions from Moscow, drumming out dissenters, and making excuses for communist regimes’ human-rights violations in the name of revolutionary solidarity—should be a warning to ideologues pushing for greater uniformity on the left and to anyone tempted to think that dogmas, slogans, and tactical orders from headquarters should be accepted without debate. Unfortunately, some factions within the organized left are repeating the CPUSA’s errors today, most notably in their rigid, doctrinaire response to the Hamas attack on Israel in October.

This is where any conversation always goes off the rails. Let’s continue with Isserman for more specificity:

Various DSA chapters have since adopted resolutions providing for the expulsion of any member deemed to be a “Zionist,” which can include anyone who defends Israel’s right to exist, regardless of their support for a Palestinian right to independent statehood. In May, the Red Star caucus circulated a statement with the revealing title “We Do Not Condemn Hamas, and Neither Should You.”

I’m not going to litigate this topic. The genocide is horrific. I’d love nothing more than to see Netanyahu ousted from power. I’m not going to pretend to be a geopolitical expert about a region that I’ve never been to and likely will never see. This story is under discussion to spotlight the danger of one faction taking over an entire political party for one cause, then judging every member based on that issue.

As Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender member of US Congress ever, recently said, “absolutism always leads to authoritarianism.” The fervency in which morals are adopted and expressed always warrants caution, because plurality is quickly forgotten when a myopic focus on righteousness prevails. And what’s happening, according to Isserman specific to the national DSA, and from what I’ve seen more broadly on the left, is people with a range of complex feelings about the totality of this longstanding problem are immediately being ousted if they don’t express the exact sentiments demanded.

Case in point: the DSA pulling their endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Part of the reasoning included that AOC didn’t “publicly support BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) to end Israeli settler-colonialism” and because she was on a panel, sponsored by a Jewish organization, in which anti-Zionism and antisemitism were conflated. She didn’t conflate them, but apparently someone on the panel did, which then figured into their decision to pull their endorsement.

Using that as a reason for pulling support over someone actively fighting for progress on many fronts reveals the ideological capture that made Isserman leave the party. In other words: a purity test. Also: a shit way to build coalitions when progressives in America have so little political power to begin with.

To be clear, I’m working with the following definition of purity test:

In political contexts, a purity test refers to a rigid standard or set of criteria used to judge whether an individual—often a politician or party member—adheres closely enough to the core beliefs or policies of a group, faction, or party. Failing a political purity test can result in exclusion, loss of support, or being labeled as an outsider (e.g., “Republican In Name Only” or “Democrat In Name Only”). These tests are often criticized for promoting ideological conformity and shrinking political coalitions by excluding those who do not agree on every issue

Recently, Mamdani paraphrased former NYC mayor Ed Koch: if you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me; if you agree with me on all 12, see a psychiatrist. I’ve often quoted activist Loretta Ross and her circles of influence: align yourself with people who agree with you 90% of the time, and then down the line to varying degrees depending on the circumstance, but you should be wary of anyone who agrees with you 100% of the time.

This isn’t to say Israel isn’t an important issue. It’s just not the only issue, especially for many Americans struggling to buy food, pay rent, and secure healthcare. Consider the last topic, which is probably the most important political issue to me. While implementing universal healthcare is the one piece of legislation I’d most like to see passed in my lifetime, I would consider it a purity test if I judged every political candidate solely based on this issue.

Whether you’re talking about the horrors of Gaza or the horrors of American health care, what we’re really talking about is the value of human life. Marshall McLuhan’s theory of media might have something to do with how we weigh this value differently. Hot media delivers a lot of detailed information to a single sense, while cool media provides less sensory detail. There’s a whole part of his philosophy about audience participation, but I’m only discussing how imagery meets us in this moment.

Over 57,000 Palestinians have died since October 7, 2023. Absolutely horrific. Al Jazeera has a higher estimate of 62,000 when accounting for people who haven’t been pulled from rubble. Thanks to social media, people on the left have likely seen the devastating imagery from Gaza, which might explain why many people have rightfully become passionate about this topic. It’s certainly much hotter in terms of visibility than the genocides occurring in Sudan, or the high-risk areas of Myanmar, the Congo, or Pakistan.

Then we get to how Americans die every year due to healthcare access. Figures range. Families USA puts it at 26,000; Harvard Medical School, 45,000. When factoring in underinsurance and indirect effects, one health justice group puts the number closer to 200,000.

Now that 17 million Americans are likely to be kicked off Medicaid due to the passage of Trump’s new bill—the same one that permanently extends tax breaks for billionaires—that’s going to cause an extra 51,000 deaths per year. Even at the lowest estimate, in the coming years 77,000 Americans every year are going to die because they can’t access health care. Since these deaths aren’t concentrated in one region, the media is much cooler. You won’t see them in your feeds. But they’re still human lives lost due to the specific actions of a power-hungry government.

Maybe instead of hot versus cool we can think about chronic versus acute. Healthcare access is a chronic problem in America, and sometimes we lose sight of chronic issues because they just seem to be part of the everyday, even as every other developed nation in the world with mixed economies has figured out how to provide some level of universal care for their citizens.

Zohran Mamdani is one of the few politicians out there speaking to the heart of the issues affecting so many of us right now. But to be fair, party mates like Bernie Sanders and AOC have been working on similar issues for years. None of these people are perfect. No one will deliver the exact responses and results you might want to hear 100% of the time. That doesn’t mean abandoning them if they’re not fully on board with every issue that matters to you.

That’s what living in a democracy entails—if we can keep it. If the left continues judging every candidate on one issue, the question of keeping it will be the least of our concerns.