A broad coalition can beat back right-wing demagoguery

Local Republicans are still giddy about the results of Nov. 5, continuing to call it a decisive rejection of progressive and “woke” politics. Writing in the New York Post a few days after the election, Republican City Council Member Vickie Paladino lectured Democrats to “look in the mirror” after their election loss.

The election certainly was a rejection of the gross caricature of progressive politics that flooded the media environment, but it was also about much more than Paladino would likely care to admit.

The vote increase on the GOP line and the consequent drop on the Democratic line were not separate events. Rather, the result was an expression of voters’ discontent with the status quo. Trump's advantage was his ability to position himself as the anti-establishment candidate, including the Republican establishment. Democrats ultimately lost the election because they were seen as representing a deeply flawed status quo. 

While Democrats lost an election, Republicans lost their party to a demagogue and self dealer who is poised to impose authoritarian rule on the country, and Republican elected officials seem prepared to let him. But Paladino wants the Democrats to look in the mirror.

Contrary to the Queens Council member’s opinion. Democrats ran a decidedly “unwoke” campaign and more importantly failed to offer voters a social and economic agenda that poll after poll has shown a broad cross section of voters support: Medicare for all or a robust public option, free community college, childcare and universal pre-K, investments in the care economy and a Green New Deal. Appeals to save democracy, a very real challenge now, failed to land because many voters didn’t see its impact on their daily lives.

The Biden administration's refusal to squarely confront the Israeli government's ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza and the West Bank just underscored people’s view (especially that of young voters) that our country's leaders too often “play politics” with people's lives. It becomes easier to understand how a voter in New York City could cast a vote for Trump and then also for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

As people take a closer look at the election results, a different story will take shape. It’s one that makes the argument that voters gave Trump a mandate and shifted right a thin one. In ballot measures across the country, voters stepped up to protect reproductive rights and raise the minimum wage.

Republicans hold Congress by the slimmest of margins — by five in the House and six in the Senate. In New York, Proposition 1, which enshrined reproductive rights, won majorities across the state and three Congressional seats flipped back into the blue column. The state Senate and Assembly remained firmly in Democratic hands.

In contrast to the Democratic vote drop in New York, the Working Families Party line maintained vote totals closer to the high water mark of 2020.

Ever since former Governor Andrew Cuomo vindictively raised the threshold for political parties to maintain ballot status, every two years the WFP campaigns to carve out a political space on the ballot for the expression of working class politics independent of the two major parties.

The result is that tens of thousands of voters, mostly registered Democrats, make a conscious decision to vote on the WFP line in general elections and for WFP endorsed candidates in Democratic primaries. Disciplined voters who understand the use of fusion voting to fight right-wing extremism, corporate power and advance working people's interests.

The contribution of those voters? They were a central partner in the successful Proposition 1 reproductive rights campaign and the margin of victory in Josh Riley’s congressional race north of the city. Imagine also, in this moment, a New York Governor Lee Zeldin. In 2022, after stepping in with a vigorous campaign, WFP voters were the margin of victory for Kathy Hochul.

Tellingly, Democratic Congressional candidates such as Riley, Pat Ryan, in the state’s 18th Congressional District, and John Mannion, in the 22nd, who chose to run on the WFP line, significantly outperformed those candidates, such as Tom Suozzi in the 3rd District, and Laura Gillen in the 4th, who didn't. The WFP saw vote growth in upstate rural counties, which includes the 20,000 Republicans who voted for U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand on the WFP line.

MAGA Republicans such as Paladino will try to capitalize on their uptick in votes, to narrow what is politically acceptable to versions of their right-wing policies and talking points. Voices independent of the corporate power that otherwise hold sway over the politics of the two major parties will be crucial. As Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado pointed out in a recent New York Times op-ed evaluating the 2024 election, “This presents an opportunity for Democrats, but only if we are willing to challenge the systems and institutions that have caused Americans to lose faith in government. Our philosophy must make clear that the real threat to democracy is widening economic inequality and the colossal power of big money in politics…. The Democratic Party must lay out a new vision of economic security and independence for working families.”

Electing a handful of progressive champions will not be enough to turn the tide on the authoritarian challenge we face. Neither will an agenda that does not recognize the central problem of corporate power in politics and how that power has gamed the system against working people. But a broad pro-democracy coalition based on challenging corporate power and actually improving people's lives could.

MAGA politics thrive on division and fear. Blocking the MAGA agenda will require a collaborative effort. Misogyny and racism still hold sway with a significant minority of voters. While breaking that hold will take more than an election, even those voters have shown an openness to a broad populist agenda both economic and social that can be built on. 

A go-it-alone approach advocated by some on the left would be a dead-end as would excluding the voice of progressives as some have suggested. In New York, fusion voting is an important coalition-building tool because, unlike many other democracies, the American electoral system necessitates that effort before an election instead of just after.

The challenge to American democracy began long before Trump. Appeals to defend and restore democracy must go beyond the immediate challenges of a Trump administration and make the case to voters how democracy can work for working people. 

Successful transformational politics must be rooted in people's lives. Democracy begins at the kitchen table as much as at the ballot box. The road ahead must have the lives of working people, in their totality, as its starting point. 

Economic security, healthy lives, safe communities, a sustainable future for our children and the right of people to be who they are, without fear. For those with that same vision, the WFP can be an important partner.

David Mirtz is a co-chair of the New York City Working Families Party.