Grasping Reality · Economics & Policy
TIER 4 Thu, 26 Jun 2025 16:40:12 +0000
The Democratic primary is just the preseason, in that it does not count at all. A clear-eyed view of this is essential for successfully building coalitions and avoiding catastrophes: what Max Weber... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ | | ---|---|--- | | | Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more --- --- This is Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality--my attempt to make myself, and all of you out there in SubStackLand, smarter by writing where I have Value Above Replacement and shutting up where I do not… Upgrade to paid * * * # Politics as Making Hardwood Furniture with Dull Tools: Mamdani's NYC Primary Win Is Not a Win, But Only an Uncertain High-Stakes Bet ### The Democratic primary is just the preseason, in that it does not count at all. A clear-eyed view of this is essential for successfully building coalitions and avoiding catastrophes: what Max Weber... Jun 29 --- --- | | | --- | | --- | | --- | | --- | | READ IN APP --- ###### **The Democratic primary is just the preseason, in that it does not count at all. A clear-eyed view of this is essential for successfully building coalitions and avoiding catastrophes: what Max Weber and John Maynard Keynes have to say to overenthusiastic supporters of Zohran Mamdani …** Share | | ---|---|--- Share Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality * * * It is reasonably well known as these things go that since the first Trump administration, I have been a firm believer that those of us write social Democrats or left neoliberals who wish good things for America in the world have no live political options, except to pass the baton to those on our left. We should then give them good advice. We should hope they do not drop the baton. We should hope that they run in the right rather than the wrong direction, but until the center right possesses any ac executiontors with political force who are neither grifter, morons, fools, nor cowards, that is our only option if we seek to accomplish good things for America and for the world. However, this morning I confess I wince, very strongly wince, at the headline and the vibe here. I pick on John Ganz because he is (a) hard-working and knowledgeable, (b) intelligent, and (c) good-hearted: > **John Ganz** : What It Took To Win <https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/what-it-took-to-win>: 'Thoughts on Zohran Mamdani's Popular Front…. We were told…. We were told repeatedly…. And we were told…. The lesson Mamdani and his strategists evidently took… was that… [there was] an opening for another kind of protest politics entirely, one that was constructive and positive…. There was an entire universe of motivated voters (and, importantly, volunteers) out there just waiting to be reactivated: Veterans of Bernie 2016, 2020, Warrenistas, and all the civic movements of the 2010s…. Mamdani does well in the middle, which in New York, with its high cost of living, stretches well into the six figures…. Unionized wage laborers, junior white-collar professionals, and small business owners. Say what you like about their feasibility, the major policy portions of Mamdani's campaign were about cost-of-living issues, and he targeted a coalition that goes across cultural and racial backgrounds but were all struggling to build decent lives in New York…. > > The old civic associations' power to control and mobilize the electorate has been steadily weakening…. The "machine"… pre-dates even the labor union, the radio, and television!… Mamdani mastered the new and dominant form of civic association: the Internet…. Politics is ultimately about speaking in public. Find someone with powers of self-expression and you're in business…. > > The electorate doesn't really exist until election day, and the politician and his or her campaign are actively _creating_ that electorate. All political errors, from the level of action to analysis, are based on reifying the situation, believing in a static, factual situation that cannot be changed. And all great political successes are based on the opposite: the art of the impossible; believing in a chance for something new… > > Unpopular Front > > What It Took To Win > > The old saw goes that politics is the art of the possible, but it often seems like the art of the impossible: putting together winning coalitions that "objectively" seem to defy logic--or at least, the logic of the pundits.) My favorite example of this is Trump managing to spike the white working class vote and fulfilling the lifelong Republican dream of… > > Read more > > 3 days ago * 71 likes * 6 comments * John Ganz Leave a comment But: _**" Winning" a Democratic-Party primary wins you nothing. **_ The primary election is a choice process in which people who regard themselves as Democrats together--by whether they turn out or not and who they then vote for--select a candidate to put forward to the general electorate for its consideration on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. John Ganz should thus not be enthusing about "winning", "something new", "great political success", "creating the [primary] electorate", a "a coalition [of]… all struggling to build decent lives", "protest politics… constructive and positive", "universe of motivated voters… and volunteers", and so forth. John should be looking backward: Did this process select a candidate who is in the sweet spot with respect to properly balancing (a) the likelihood that the general-election voters will in fact approve the Democratic Party's candidate to be Mayor of New York City, and (b) the likelihood that that candidate as Mayor will build governmental-bureaucratic coalitions to implement policies that will successfully advance the good parts of Democratic-Party values and preferences? And John should be looking forward: (c) What needs to be done, starting today, to maximize the long-run policy and governance wins should we be lucky enough to find Zohran Mamdami mayor of New York City come next year? And, on this, what I at least am hearing from people in New York City whom I regard as living in reality is that (d) the general trust of the New York City general electorate in the Democratic Party means that Zohran Mamdani will probably win, but that (e) it is by no means guaranteed; that (f) the chances of a general-election victory are much greater if the Democratic-Party ticket is sold as a Mamdani-Lander co-Mayorship; and that (f) successful governance--and the avoidance of a Mayor Johnson-in-Chicago policy, public relations, and political true disaster--relies on that actually being a co-mayorship, with (h) Mamdani orchestrating the internet civic-assocation mobilization part, and (i) Lander building and maintaining the governmental-bureaucratic coalitions actually implementing policy changes. And that (j) if not, not. Are my sources wrong? * * * Matt Yglesias misnamed his substack "Slow Boring" <https://www.slowboring.com/> as a joke around a mistranslation of a line from near the end of Max Weber's "Politics as a Vocation" speech, given in the aftermath of the collapse of Germany's _Kaiserreich_ at the end of World War I. It was, to my ear at least, badly translated by H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills--not least in its title. It should, to my ear, have been not "Politics as a Vocation" but, I think, "Politics as Your Mission", or "Is Politics Your Mission?": > Max Weber: Politics as a Vocation <http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/class%20readings/weber/politicsasavocation.pdf>: Not summer's bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness, no matter which group may triumph externally now. Where there is nothing, not only the Kaiser but also the proletarian has lost his rights. > > When this night shall have slowly receded, who of those for whom spring apparently has bloomed so luxuriously will be alive? And what will have become of all of you by then? > > Will you be bitter or banausic? > > Will you simply and dully accept world and occupation? > > Or will the third and by no means the least frequent possibility be your lot: mystic flight from reality for those who are gifted for it, or as is both frequent and unpleasant for those who belabor themselves to follow this fashion? > > In every one of such cases, I shall draw the conclusion that they have not measured up to their own doings. They have not measured up to the world as it really is in its everyday routine. Objectively and actually, they have not experienced the vocation for politics in its deepest meaning, which they thought they had. > > They would have done better in simply cultivating plain brotherliness in personal relations. > > And for the rest they should have gone soberly about their daily work. > > _**Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards.**_ > > It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today. > > Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. > > Only he who in the face of all this can say 'In spite of all!' has the calling for politics. Give a gift subscription To my ear, much better than "politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards" would be "politics is making hardwood furniture with dull tools". Be that naming choice as it may, the point behind the reference to Weber is a good one. * * * The _karass_ of which John Ganz is a part has, with respect to the thinking about how and process of choosing how the Democratic Party will present itself to American general-election voters for the next decade, placed on awful lot of chips on first Bernie Sanders, then Brandon Johnson, and now Zohran Mamdani. The making of these high-stakes bets is not in itself a reason for enthusiasm and celebration. It is a reason for terror, and for working harder than ever. The first of these bets was, I think, a small loss. The second was a disaster. The third hangs in the balance. | | ---|---|--- Get 50% off a group subscription There is, as I find so much of the time these days, an apposite quote from John Maynard Keynes, writing in another, earlier Time of Monsters. During the Great Depression of the 1930s the U.S. unemployment rate as estimated by the Conference Board reached a low of 11% in July 1937. As the unemployment rate fell toward 10%, the U.S. government in 1936 and 1937 engaged in the premature normalization of macroeconomic policy. President Roosevelt and the Congress turned their minds toward reducing the deficit: fiscal contraction. And the Federal Reserve turned its mind toward sopping up some of the enormous excess reserves in the banking system by raising reserve requirements: monetary contraction. The consequences were disastrous. After July 1937 aggregate demand collapsed, and unemployment began a rapid rise. By December 1937 it was at 16%. It would peak at 20% in June. Yes, that was still lower than the 25.6% peak unemployment of June 1933. However, it was not that much lower to support a case that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal had done a great deal of macroeconomic good. In reaction to this catastrlophe, on February 1, 1938 John Maynard Keynes wrote to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, pleading for him to stop spending time and energy on structural reforms and instead to focus on the major requirement of the day: to reverse contractionary and install expansionary macroeconomic policy to boost economy-wide spending. Keynes closed his letter thus: > Forgive the candour of these remarks. They come from an enthusiastic well-wisher of you and your policies. I accept the view that durable investment must come increasingly under state direction. I sympathise with Mr Wallace's agricultural policies. 1 believe that the S.B.C. is doing splendid work. 1 regard the growth of collective bargaining as essential. I approve minimum wage and hours regulation. I was altogether on your side the other day, when you deprecated a policy of general wage reductions as useless in present circumstances. > > But I am terrified lest progressive causes in all the democratic countries should suffer injury, because you have taken too lightly the risk to their prestige which would result from a failure measured in terms of immediate prosperity. There need be no failure. But the maintenance of prosperity in the modern world is extremely difficult; and it is so easy to lose "precious time. > > I am, Mr. President, Yours with great respect and faithfulness, > > J.M. Keynes Refer a friend For Keynes, it was very important that Roosevelt's New Deal policies not just be a long-term success, but be a short-term success and be seen as a short-term success. And Roosevelt's failure to focus on the one superbly important thing, nurturing the continued growth of aggregate demand, bringing with it rising production and falling unemployment, was driving Keynes mad. The real hard work of making the placing of all of one's remaining chips on Zohran Mamdani's success--the actual building of the hardwood furniture with dull tools--begins now. What is needed now is not gloating--except for prolonged, high intensity, and extremely gratifying gloating over the defeat of Andrew Cuomo and his network of rent-seekers. And energy spent drawing big lessons from the shape one primary electorate in one city on one day is energy wasted. * * * What is needed now is execution and implementation: 1. **Broaden the Coalition** : Mamdani is about competent governance, public safety, and economic opportunity for everybody, and not just for those who have lots of money to take advantage of all New York City has to offer. 2. **No "Movement" Rhetoric:** concrete plans for improving city services, managing the budget responsibly, and delivering on quality-of-life issues; Mamdani is not about protest but about delivering a better New York City, running the city's machinery better than the old guard. 3. **Forge Real Partnerships:** commit to a governing team that blends movement energy with coalition-building know-how staffed with people who know how to get actual things done. 4. **Build Trust with the Bureaucracy and Unions:** Engage them as partners in reform, valuing their work, while making it clear that a good future for the city future depends on everyone doing better." 5. **Communicate Relentlessly and Transparently** : using every tool--town halls, social media, local press--to keep the public informed and engaged, with honest talk about trade-offs and setbacks. 6. **Deliver Early, Visible Wins:** with achievable, high-impact projects, thus building credibility and momentum. 7. **Keep the Movement Mobilized** --But Focus It on Governance: in the good state of the world, do not let the campaign army demobilize after election day, but channel volunteer energy into participatory budgeting, neighborhood improvement projects, and watchdog groups. 8. **Prepare for the Backlash**. Share * * * ### References: * **Beauchamp, Zack.** 2019\. "A Clinton-era centrist Democrat explains why it's time to give democratic socialists a chance." _Vox_ , March 4, 2019. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/4/18246381/democrats-clinton-sanders-left-brad-delong * **DeLong, J. Bradford.** 2019\. "Passing þe Baton…" _Brad DeLong 's Grasping Reality_, February 25. https://braddelong.substack.com/p/hoisted-from-the-archives-2019-passing * **DeLong, J. Bradford.** 2019\. "Passing the Baton: The Interview." _Grasping Reality_ , March 2019. https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/03/passing-the-baton-the-interview.html * F**ederal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.** n.d. "Unemployment Rate | FRED | St. Louis Fed." _FRED Economic Data_. Accessed June 26, 2025. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=jS05 * **Ganz, John.** 2025\. "What It Took To Win." _Unpopular Front_ , June 26. https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/what-it-took-to-win. * **eynes, John Maynard.** 1938\. "Correspondence between J.M. Keynes and F.D. Roosevelt, February-March 1938." _Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum_. https://www.fdrlibrary.org/documents/356632/390886/smFDR-Keynes_1938.pdf/e6a5bbc6-db07-4d65-8576-e4ea058c5641. * **Thompson, Derek.** 2025a. "'What Speaks to Me About Abundance': My Full Interview With Zohran Mamdani." June 26. https://derekthompson.substack.com/p/what-speaks-to-me-about-abundance. * **Thompson, Derek.** 2025b. "The Future of Abundance and the Left." June 25. https://derekthompson.substack.com/p/the-future-of-abundance-and-the-left. * **Weber, Max.** 1946 [1919]. "Politics as a Vocation." In F _rom Max Weber: Essays in Sociology_ , trans. & ed. H.H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills, 77-128\. New York: Oxford University Press. http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/class%20readings/weber/politicsasavocation.pdf * **Yglesias, Matthew.** 2025\. **S** _low Boring._ https://www.slowboring.com/ Leave a comment Upgrade to paid ###### _**If reading this gets you Value Above Replacement, then become a free subscriber to this newsletter. And forward it! And if your VAR from this newsletter is in the three digits or more each year, please become a paid subscriber! I am trying to make you readers --and myself--smarter. Please tell me if I succeed, or how I fail…**_ * * * #politics-as-making-hardwood-furniture _Please forward the email & otherwise share it to everyone you think would appreciate it…_ Share --- | | | Like --- | | Comment --- | | Restack --- (C) 2025 J. Bradford DeLong Holgate House, P.O. Box #5488, Berkeley, CA 904705 Unsubscribe