The old guard of the Democratic Party is dying off - literally and figuratively. The last eight members of Congress to die in office are all Democrats, and three have died this year alone. But it's also exiting stage left as the radicals take over the party. Zohran Mamdani is another signal of that shift in New York City.

It's like watching two ships passing in the night. The old guard, represented by dynasty family names like Cuomo, is losing out to the radicals. Chuck Schumer is the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate, but the base is spoiling to knock him out of power with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

In the aftermath of the 2024 election, when Americans overwhelmingly blasted the Democratic Party as out of touch, elitist, and radical on far too many issues, Democrats are tilting harder to the left.

Ruy Teixeira, who once accurately predicted the Obama coalition (that Trump has taken over), describes current Democrats:

Progressive Democrats have been dreaming for years of a way they could be both economically populist and culturally radical—and succeed. The original name for this was "inclusive populism." The idea was that Democrats may indeed be bleeding working-class voters, but the solution does not lie in any way with moving to the center on culturally-inflected issues like crime, immigration, race, gender, and schooling. That would not be "inclusive."

As he goes on to note, the ascendance of Zohran Mamdani is an answer to these Democrat's prayers. They get hard socialist views combined with his radical cultural views.

Aside from all the usual things like "defund the police," strong antisemitic views of Jews, and all the other socialist trappings, Mamdani goes beyond the lightning rod issues that sank Kamala Harris. In 2024, she was sunk by an ad that pointed out she supported taxpayer-funded surgeries for trans-prison patients.

The Trump campaign hammered her relentlessly with that attack ad. It worked. Mamdani wants to go further. "Mamdani wants to spend $65 million in taxpayer funds on transgender treatment — including for minors — if he's elected to lead New York City. About $57 million would be allotted for public hospitals, community clinics, federally qualified health centers and nonprofits with another $8 million for more expanded services, the website states."

At one time, the Democratic establishment could push this kind of nonsense away. But as the old guard steps aside (Biden) or dies off elsewhere, we're looking at the radicals grabbing the wheel and taking over. These radicals act like they're overthrowing the bonds of conservatism, but they're mainly aiming at other Democrats.

Mamadani complains about how one of the most populous and wealthy cities on earth is run, but Republicans haven't had a say there in decades.

Ruy Teixeira notes, "To put it bluntly, voters, particularly working-class voters, harbor deep resentment toward elites who they feel are telling them how to live their lives, even what to think and say, and incidentally are living a great deal more comfortably than they are. This is not the rich as conventionally defined by economic populism but rather the professionals-dominated educated upper middle class who occupy positions of administrative and cultural power. By and large, these are Democrats in Democratic-dominated institutions. Looked at in this context, truly populist Democrats might want to say, with Pogo: 'We have met the enemy and he is us.'"

Mamdani takes everything that votes have rejected from both parties, cranks it to 11, and rips off the knob.

Republicans are looking at this with a level of glee that I can understand. They view Mamdani as a radical who can lose support among normal voters. And that does seem to be true at first glance.

However, as the old guard of Democrats passes away, it's bringing more and more of these full-tilt radicals into national politics and ever closer to the levers of power. You don't have to be an ace student of American history to know that the two parties trade off power from one direction to another frequently.

The wisdom of Americans is that they tend to see the need to balance out one party against another. That could provide an opening for any radical; Mamdani is a prime example of that.

Baby boomers often look back fondly on the radicalism of the 1960s. But Americans, by and large, rejected it and them. Note that after LBJ left office and Nixon took over in 1969, Republicans dominated national politics nearly uninterrupted from then until Clinton's presidency in 1992.

In the aftermath of Watergate, Gerald Ford was not far from staying in office. Carter's election was not a wave election, and Reagan quickly ousted him four years later. For all the consternation of Nixon and Watergate, the public did not punish Republicans hard. They still mistrusted Democrats.

It wouldn't be a shocking thing to see a similar thing happen here, where Democrats push so hard to the left that they become unelectable on a national level. Republicans are increasingly getting an edge in several blue and purple states that was unthinkable a decade or two ago.

But even with that, it's not good that the Mamdani's of the Democratic Party are calling the shots. I hope he loses in the fall election. Because right now, he's providing a lot of fuel to the radicals in the Democratic Party, who want to control everything. And Democrats are increasingly incapable of stopping them.