The lol before the grind

Oh c’mon, let us have this.

Well, it’s been a better week than most for a sweet old gal I like to call The United States of America. I refer to the great Democratic victories enjoyed Tuesday night, capped by Mamdanimania. It was especially delightful to hear the Mayor-elect’s speech — you can read it here — that began with a quote from Eugene Freaking Debs, froze Andrew Cuomo solid with shade, and most importantly claimed triumph for the working people of New York. Get this:

To every New Yorker in Kensington and Midwood and Hunts Point, know this: This city is your city, and this democracy is yours too. This campaign is about people like Wesley, an 1199 organizer I met outside of Elmhurst Hospital on Thursday night. A New Yorker who lives elsewhere, who commutes two hours each way from Pennsylvania because rent is too expensive in this city.

It’s about people like the woman I met on the Bx33 years ago who said to me, “I used to love New York, but now it’s just where I live.” And it’s about people like Richard, the taxi driver I went on a 15-day hunger strike with outside of City Hall, who still has to drive his cab seven days a week. My brother, we are in City Hall now.

My friends back home, you better make this work because this is the best chance you’ve had since LaGuardia.

Now comes the hard part. But before we move on, let us indulge ourselves in just a little teeny tiny bit of schadenfreude.

I’m not one to kick a man when he’s down. I’m not crazy about the rah-rah pep-rally aspects of politics, normally, and, on those rare occasions when my side wins, I am more inclined to thoughtful reflection.

But we are currently ruled by literally dangerous literal psychopaths. The struggle is strenuous and mortal. The past year of trying to not only call our fellow Americans to sanity but also hold onto our own has been brutal. While Tuesday was an immense relief, it has to be more than that — it must be an moment to relax and take a deep victory draught to warm our blood and let us feel our strength come back.

So be petty a moment with me as I dispense some Cope ‘n’ Seethe certificates.

Social media’s been full of the hardcore uncut C&S — e.g.:

And the usual suspects are already flailing, like Fox News, which headlines: Mamdani victory speech draws concern as NYC mayor-elect vows ‘no problem too large for government to solve.’ Yeah — imagine, telling the people who just elected you that there’s hope!

But I have a few from my private stock. For example, I’ve been getting newsletters from Abe Greenwald, the youngest reactionary at Commentary, and expected post-election a long snarl about how antisemitic everyone in New York is except him, John Podhoretz, and Pam Geller. But Greenwald just offered a concentrated plug thereof — “the punk division of Jew-hatred and socialism,” lol — and devoted most of his newsletter to telling us how “disenchanted” with New York he has been, not since Mamdani’s rise but for many years because — well, let him tell it:

I lost my mystical connection to New York City sometime during the Michael Bloomberg years. This was when new bike lanes were being forged while the “Green Light for Midtown” project was turning over large swaths of Midtown road to pedestrian crowds and, unfortunately, increasing numbers of homeless people.

It’s not that I exactly despised the direction in which the city was heading. I didn’t — and still don’t — like bike lanes, and I’m not big on open-air plazas that just push automobile congestion into tighter spaces of Midtown. But those things were hardly enough to make me lose my infatuation with the city. It was that in watching these transformations, I first realized how mutable the idea of New York City always was.

Most people come to realize New York is ever-changing about seven hours after they get there; for Greenwald it took the opening of the Greenway and the closing of Times Square to motor traffic. There’s something detestably woke about fresh air!

At the Times Ross Douthat tells us “Mamdani’s Victory Is Less Significant Than You Think,” and apparently had that one ready in the can because there was plenty of time for a visual editor to trick it up handsomely and thus distract from its innate stupidity. A highlight:

…Mamdani has been elected as the left wing mayor of a left wing city, and imagining that makes him a model for how the Democratic Party should compete nationwide is a little bit like imagining that a far right Republican elected in Alabama or Idaho is likely to offer a template for how Republicans should compete in swing states. That’s likely to be a fantasy.

A nanosecond’s reflection reveals that many conservatives, including Douthat, have for years been pushing the presidential campaigns and swing-state prospects of guys like Ted Cruz — a far-right Republican elected in Texas, which is at least as rightwing as Alabama or Idaho — and if you needed a reminder of how rightwing, here you go:

Also, Trump is a far-right candidate who performed well in swing states. And who thinks his being from New York has anything to do with it?

In any such list Erick Erickson must inevitably figure. He actually seemed to understand the enormity of the defeat, but after a while took refuge in this:

You won’t hear about Texas, where every Republican offered constitutional amendment passed, and even Austin’s progressive voter base rejected a tax hike. That suggests the “Blue Texas” fantasy of next year should be dead on arrival, but the press won’t be able to help it.

Things look grim but we’ll always have Shitheel Central! Love “the press won’t be able to help it” — in some faithful hearts the Myth of the Liberal Media will never die.

And then there were the cope-n-seethe weasel-headlines (“Democrats win key governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia AS PARTY TRIES TO SNAP ITS POST-TRUMP SLUMP”) and weasel-subheds (“The party won the New York City mayoral election and gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey. BUT QUESTIONS REMAIN”), and dark-linings-in-the-silver-cloud shit (“Mamdani Is the Foil Trump Wants”), etc ad nauseam.

So here’s one more thing to be glad of: On the long hard way to getting this country unfucked, there’ll be plenty more like these that we can pick up like snacks and soda along the way to refresh ourselves. Be happy warriors, because these fuckers are a riot.