Why I’m Staying in the Democratic Party

Let’s get a few things out of the way: I am a nonobservant Jew; calling me secular might be putting too fine a point on it. I was brought up in a Reform temple in Forest Hills, Queens. Very Reform. It was one of those early 1950s temple buildings, done up in blonde wood and recessed lighting, decor a friend of mine referred to as “upscale Chinese restaurant.” We had an organ, stained glass windows, a rabbi in a business suit and tallis.  To be blunt, we were probably one messiah away from being Episcopalian. And it’s not like my parents were observant; my father was the kind of Jew who’d complain that a grocery store in our neighborhood was open on Yom Kippur … as he drove past it on his way to lunch.

So it’s reasonably safe to say that everyone reading this knows more about Judaism than me. But I do know a thing or two about politics. If my parents were lax in religion, politics was a different story. I grew up in a home where voting Democratic was the 11th Commandment. The biggest fight I ever saw my parents get into was because my mother had voted for 1965 GOP mayoral candidate John Lindsay. “You only voted for him because he was handsome,” was the gist of my father’s argument. After college, I ended up working in politics, first for a political consultant, then on former GOP Representative John B. Anderson’s abortive attempt to form a third party in 1984. (I decided to leave politics after that campaign; the whole business just felt dirty and underhanded. I decided to make my living writing about the music industry. I thought it would be less venal. Like Rick, when he tells Capt. Reynaud that he came to Casablanca for the waters, “I was misinformed.”)

My experience (and movie references) may be rooted in the 20th century, but I do know one political truth that remains in force today: You can’t change anyone’s mind if you’re not in the room. So it disturbs me when I hear Jews exhorting other Jews to abandon the Democratic Party. 

And let’s table any discussion about Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Ahmad El-Sayad and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and any of the Democratic Socialists running on the Democratic line. Call them progressive, socialist, woke, antisemitic or antizionist, they’re currently a small minority of the party and thankfully, I don’t have to vote for them. If you don’t like the direction they’re taking the party, the only way to stop it is to provide a viable alternative. But if you leave, you allow them to set the terms of the debate. The way to push them out of the spotlight isn’t to throw up your hands, cry it’s unfair and take your bat and ball home. You need to get in the trenches, and convince enough people that your cause is righteous and to get behind a candidate or legislation more to your liking. Even in the age of Zoom meetings and Trump’s bread and circus rallies, politics remains a retail business; you make your gains on a person-by-person basis. 

And you’ll never change anyone’s mind by shaming them (although you could argue that American politics has entered its “no shame” era). If anyone starts yelling about my perceived shortcomings, my back immediately stiffens and I’ll yell back, even louder, that they are wrong … even if I know they’re right. In an age where no grievance goes unspoken, I’m guessing I’m not the only one who feels this way. If you’ve read Robert Caro’s now-five-volume life of Lyndon Johnson, you know that the real work of politics – the arm twisting and horse trading that used to grease legislation to passage – was done away from the cameras, in the cloakroom. 

There are probably some of you who can remember when Democrats and Republicans not only worked on legislation together, but were friends away from the Capitol. Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill was known to regularly share a civilized beverage with Republican President Ronald Reagan. It’s probably harder to achieve this level of comity at a time where “transparency” has become a war cry and on-line influencers are ready to pounce on anyone who veers even slightly from partisan dogma. (It would probably also be easier if the person currently occupying the Oval Office wasn’t a toxic narcissist with an understanding of the Constitution picked up by from watching “Schoolhouse Rock’s” “I’m Just a Bill.”)

People used to talk about political parties being a “big tent,” and mean it as a compliment. Nowhere is it written you have to agree with every position taken by every candidate running as a member of your party. There used to be a time where there were conservative Democrats like the “boll weevils” of the 1980s, who often voted with the GOP, and liberal Republicans like New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Senator Jacob Javits. Today, unless you check all the boxes, you immediately become part of the enemy. Now it’s who can bring out the base, usually by scaring them about “the other.” It was only 18 years ago that the GOP Presidential candidate, Arizona Senator John McCain, who at one point wanted to nominate Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman as his vice president, told a supporter who was “scared” of the Arab Democrat Barack Obama becoming president: “Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States.” The current president, when not measuring himself for another statue, calls Democrats “radical lunatics” who “hate America.” 

You might never come to an agreement with El-Sayed or Mamdani or AOC and “the Squad” about Israel and Palestine (and given that no one has come up with a solution in thousands of years, it’s pretty arrogant to think we can do it in months), but you might agree on the need to pass “Medicare for all.” As the late Ed Koch used to say, “If you agree with me on nine out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.” 

Now, if someone decided to form a party that takes good ideas from both sides of the aisle and is competent enough to create policy using those ideas, I’m certainly willing to consider it. But until then, I’m keeping my party identification Democratic. If nothing else, I’m scared my late father, buried on the other side of the country, would rise from the grave and haunt me if I don’t.

Steven Mirkin is the Journal’s copy editor.