One of the more famous axioms of the Democratic Party is the importance of speaking truth to power, but what happens when that truth becomes the power?
This question came to me after the mid-term elections ended this week and voters of Brooklyn and New York have spoken with a loud and clear voice. They believe in and want one-party rule – and that is the Democratic Party.
Like Russia or any other country in the world under one-party rule there can be small differences of opinion, but there is no room for anybody outside the ideological tent. Question one and you question all. Try to compromise with the Republican Party for the good of your constituents or come up with a mix and match ideology, cherry picking the best of both parties, and you’re cut off like a bad arm.
If you don’t believe that just ask soon to be former State Sen. Jesse Hamilton.
But politics, like war, is a winner take all game. For better or worse the Dems won, along with their ideological belief in modern liberalism including bigger government, social and economic equality, and increasingly in identity politics.
So here’s what the state and city woke up to on Wednesday:
The Dems now control all the executive branches of state government including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hotchul, Attorney General-Elect Letitia James and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
The Dems now also have a strong majority in both the assembly and state senate. What’s more in Brooklyn, there is just one Republican elected officials left, and that is Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, whose district is mainly in Staten Island with just a sliver in Bay Ridge.
On the local city level Dems control all the executive branches including Mayor Bill de Blasio, Comptroller Scott Stringer, and Public Advocate Letitia James with a special election slated, in which the winner will likely be a Democart. Ditto for the city council, which has Speaker Corey Johnson heading an overwhelming Democratic majority.
So knowing that try to say something good about the GOP. Maybe that they care more about small businesses and entrepreneurship and the American ideal of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. That maybe Malliotakis has a reasonable plan regarding this city’s inequitable and skyrocketing property taxes.
Or try challenging the one-party Democratic machine. Question for instance the possibility that it is the Democratic Party in power and not market forces that is spurring gentrification and driving the working class and poor out of the city.
Or dig even deeper. That it’s the institutionalized Democratic Party that is redistributing generational wealth in the black and brown communities, taking fully paid off and owned properties under highly questionable circumstances, and giving them to favored non-profits and for-profits in the name of affordable housing.
Or perhaps question how it is the city and state can offer billions of dollars in subsidies to bring Amazon, Facebook and Google to NYC with their high-paying jobs for the newly educated, while refusing for years entrance to Wal-Mart with its cheaper goods and working-class jobs.
Perhaps it is these types of policies, and not ignorance or racism, which is the reason why rural America just doesn’t get Democrats.
But in the afterglow of the Democrats finally achieving one-party rule in all of New York things like this are better left unsaid.
Unless you are serious about speaking truth to power.
