Zohran Mamdani's victory in the New York City mayoral elections Tuesday elicited a number of high-handed, sneering remarks from centrist- to center-right commentators. Several of them even used a version of the same phrase. "There’s just not that much to be achieved through 'soak the rich' rhetoric"—Matt Yglesias wrote yesterday. Bret Stephens, writing in the New York Times, similarly dismissed Mamdani's DSA platform as nothing more than battle plans for "soaking the rich."
I'm reminded of Bertrand's monologue to Jim Dixon, in Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, about the political agenda of the postwar British Labour Party: 'But their home policy... soak the rich ... I mean ...’ He seemed to be hesitating. ‘Well, it is that, pure and simple, isn’t it? I’m just asking for information, that’s all. I mean that’s what it seems to be, don’t we all agree? I take it that it is just that and no more, isn’t it?"
This is followed shortly thereafter by Bertrand's disquisition on the subject of why he likes rich people. '[S]hall I tell you what else I happen to like? Rich people. I take pride in the contemporary unpopularity of that statement. And why do 1 like them? Because they’re charming, because they’re generous, because they’ve learnt to appreciate the things I happen to like myself, because their houses are full of beautiful things. That’s why I like them and that’s why I don’t want them soaked. All right?'
I am reminded at this point that Matt Yglesias has also opined in the past that the Democratic Party's greatest strategic blunder in the Biden administration was to pursue antitrust cases against Big Tech, thereby alienating Silicon Valley billionaires. Apparently, we ought to have known that such heavyweights are so fragile that they must constantly be pampered and appeased, lest they take it upon themselves to overthrow democracy. That is one proposed reason why we mustn't "soak" them.
Indeed, there is a certain unmistakable tone of Bertrandism behind much of what Matt Yglesias says on these subjects. And so—to all this—I find myself reacting in rather the same way that Jim Dixon does to the first of Bertrand's discourses: "Bertrand's speech [...] had annoyed him in more ways than he'd have believed possible," Amis writes. (Lucky Jim, recall, dates from Amis's socialist period, before his later conservative turn; it's therefore quite evident which side of this little set-to the author favors.)
I mean all this in the nicest way possible. I actually like Matt Yglesias, in spite of his annoyingness. I listened religiously to The Weeds when he was still hosting it—and I dropped off immediately after he was fired. He was the main force that made that show interesting; and who in their right mind still reads or cares about Vox without him? (Clearly, Yglesias's bosses lost that battle—and justly so. Of the once-all-powerful-seeming cancellers of the 2020 era, I ask: "Who rests in [their] mean flattery now?" to borrow a phrase from Isaac Rosenberg.)
I also admire Yglesias's integrity. He was willing to be canceled for his views; even though they are largely moderate positions that should be well within the accepted canvas folds of a big-tent liberal coalition.
Not only that—but he managed to survive cancelation without being immediately red-pilled in turn. He had the maturity and emotional resilience it takes not to react to leftist toxicity by immediately recoiling into the waiting arms of rightist toxicity instead. He started as a normal liberal, and continued as one—despite the siren calls forever luring the cancelled erstwhile liberals to go over and join the profitable ranks of resentful right-wing manosphere podcasters.
So Yglesias is to be admired and subscribed to.
But he is also—for all that—profoundly annoying. His posts are replete with unnecessary humblebrags. He can't get to a discussion of policy substance without prefacing it with fifteen paragraphs of autobiography.
And what's worst about this is that it's the opposite of what Yglesias purports to stand for. The whole premise of his blog ("Slow Boring") is that people ought to focus for a change on the unglamorous substance of policymaking—the "slow boring through hard boards" that makes up the real guts of politics (the phrase originally comes from Weber's vocation lectures)—as opposed to the celebrity gossip and clash of personalities and emotions that we tend to obsess over in most political writing.
And then he turns around and gives us paragraph after paragraph of self-description! The typical Yglesias post is a call for everyone to stop talking about whatever latest human rights outrage Trump has just committed, and start talking more about the boring details of tax or health policy instead—because this is what actually wins elections, in his view. Yet, Yglesias rarely gets past the abstract demand that someone oughta start focusing on the wonky policy details for a change long enough to actually focus on them himself.
Instead, we are treated to fifteen paragraphs about his personal grievances, his status within the commentariat, the strategic positioning of his various takes within the contrarian branch of the liberal coalition, etc.
One typical post was headlined: "I’ve been right about some things." In the subheading, Yglesias refers to himself in the third person. The subject matter of the piece revolves entirely around Yglesias's personal grievances and in-fighting with various other left-leaning commentators. We are treated to such vital and illuminating information as the following: "I used to read The Nation every week in high school, my grandma was literary editor there in the sixties, and my uncle Lewis wrote film criticism for them."
Exactly what "hard boards" are involved in this passage? What, if anything, is being bored here, apart from the reader?
Another recent post—titled "What went wrong with Biden and immigration"—is equally characteristic. We begin with a humblebrag and several paragraphs of autobiography: "The Trump actions that I and most people I know — high-socioeconomic-status Democrats who follow the news closely and post about it on the internet — find most morally outrageous relate to immigration," reads the second paragraph of the piece.
This is followed by some navel-gazing back-and-forth over whether this attitude is justified, or whether it is instead merely a product of class status and social positioning (we conclude it's mostly justified, but maybe not entirely).
In short, it's all rather annoying. Not just annoying in some ways, but in "more ways that [one would have] believed possible," as Amis writes of Bertrand.
But is he right—for all that? That is surely a possibility we must consider.
Yglesias's take on Zohran Mamdani's election victory, after all, is not entirely inaccurate. His main point about the race is just that it probably means less than people think. The powers of a mayor are limited. He will not be able to create a socialist paradise overnight. His idealistic rhetoric will not accomplish the transformation in daily life that many people seem to envision. New York City had a democratic socialist mayor before, and it didn't visibly make the city any less dystopian.
It's hard to argue with that. I don't expect Mamdani's administration to live up to people's seven-league hopes either. There probably was a lot of "B.S. overpromising" involved in that campaign, to use Yglesias's phrase (which, as Yglesias graciously points out, is true of just about every political campaign, in fairness). And so, indeed, it's probably true that "There’s just not that much to be achieved through 'soak the rich' rhetoric" alone, after all.
Yglesias is not wrong, then; but he may be missing the point. Casting a vote for the socialist candidate is always a quasi-spiritual exercise. It's a vote for transcendent ideals in a world that probably can never realize them fully.
But just because humanity will never make it all the way to paradise, that doesn't mean we can't get closer to it. Just because we can't fully realize our ideals, that doesn't mean we can't still recognize that some ways of living and organizing our societies are a closer approximation to them than others. And if we don't at least vote for such ideals—I ask—then how will we ever make any progress toward them, even directionally?
Voting for the "socialist ticket" is—as Vachel Lindsay once put it—a "vote against our human nature." And that, he said—was exactly why we should do it. "I am unjust, but I can strive for justice," Lindsay wrote. "My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness." That, he said, was "Why [he] voted the socialist ticket."
Admittedly, this vague hope for the realization of transcendent spiritual values, through the grubby and all-too-human instrument of politics, can put socialist voters in a rather ridiculous position at times.
In his book The Cold War and the Income Tax, for instance—Edmund Wilson is forced to admit—after a years-long personal confrontation with the IRS—that the reality of progressive taxation is a bit less pleasant than he always imagined it would be—as a young socialist and admirer of Eugene Debs. He had thought that the triumph of socialism would represent a transformation of human nature—the advent of brotherly love on Earth. The reality of "soak the rich" policies—he now realized—was distinctly less glamorous in practice (particularly once he found himself among the soaked).
Disappointment, then, is probably baked into the trajectory of socialist movements. A straightforward application of many of Mamdani's policies probably would lead to a capital flight from New York City of just the sort Bret Stephens warns against. Rent stabilization policies, meanwhile, might lower housing costs for some but simultaneously raise them for others, by creating scarcity.
Such things are inevitable, according to the economists. Price controls always create shortages. People always respond to incentives. No matter how rich someone may be—however immune to economic insecurity and scarcity—they will still act to preserve their wealth and try to get even more of it. And so, no one is going to stick around a city where they are taxed at high rates, if they can avoid it. No one is going to take one for the team—still less get "soaked" for it.
"So [man] will be, though law be clear as crystal," Vachel Lindsay says. Our species is forever "fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury," he writes. Such is human nature.
But "[c]ome, let us vote against our human nature," Lindsay concluded. One should still cast one's vote for the democratic socialist ticket, even recognizing that part of their aspirations will forever be a pipe dream. Even if they can't carry us all the way to the worker's paradise as they claim; even if there is no Big Rock Candy Mountain to be found on this Earth—we will never even advance a step toward something better, if we don't at least hope for it; if we don't cast our ballots for the side that at least tries to represent our unattainable ideals and the better angels of our nature.
As the political writer and Substacker John Ganz put it months ago at this point: "Do I think Zohran Mamdani’s ambitious policies will be implemented and work if they are? Probably not. [But,...] Mamdani, for all his supposed naivety or untestedness, [at least] hopes to represent something else, something new and something that I think is good at its heart."
"Hopes to represent." That may actually be the best we can expect from the imperfect instrument of politics. And it's not much to go on. But—to Ganz's point—it's at least better to hope to represent something better than to openly represent something nefarious and rancid and evil, as Cuomo and Trump do.
So, indeed, let us say, with Lindsay: we should "vote against our human nature. / Crying to God in all the polling places / To heal our everlasting sinfulness / And make us sages with transfigured faces."
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