No, Eric Adams Won’t Save New York

The party’s metropolitan base is committed to ideological insanities it won’t abandon, even when they threaten Dems’ hold on national power.

Eric Adams on the campaign trail in July 2021. (Billie Grace Ward/Wikimedia Commons)

Well, so much for Eric Adams, the would-be savior of New York City and Democratic Party moderates. Following the horrific Saturday killing of Michelle Go, an Asian woman pushed in front of an incoming R train by a black assailant with a long history of violence, Adams said: “New Yorkers are safe on the subway system. … What we must do is remove the perception of fear.” Don’t be alarmed, folks. Just adjust your perceptions.

Beginning last summer, the former NYPD captain positioned himself as the moderate exception to the Dem mayoral primary’s slate of hard-left activists and de Blasio administration flunkies. The gambit paid off: A coalition of outer-borough white ethnics, sick-of-crime minorities, and tabloid readers sent Adams to Gracie Mansion (his Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, wouldn’t have had a shot in deep-blue Gotham even if he weren’t a certified eccentric).

Adams appeared serious in the face of the city’s immediate crises: spiraling crime and gun violence, street homelessness and disorder, public schools that were lousy long before politicians handed unions near-total control in the name of fighting Covid-19. But for many urban conservatives—urban centrists might be the better label—Adams’ triumph signified something more. As the New York Times’ Bret Stephens put it, he was a “godsend” for anyone worried about Democrats “becoming the party of urban misrule, just as they were in the 1970s.”

There is a logic to this line of thought, and it goes like this. As things stand, the GOP is hopeless in metropoles dominated by the new yuppies, people who double-mask outdoors, seriously support de-policing, and use verbiage like “Latinx” and “people with vulvas” (instead of the transphobic slur “women”). The real urban contest, then, is between Dems who cater to such gentry liberals and other Dems, like Adams, who voice the common sense more likely to be found at the Bayside bodega than the Soho boutique.

Adams had a further appeal for urban centrists: namely, that he was a familiar figure of New York machine politics. Someone who’s been around as long as Adams has, it was said, will have woven an intricate web of clients and patrons, of favors owed and favors due. Machine politics, in their own way, bind a man to the givenness of things and condition him against utopianism. A guy like that would never embrace lunatic radicalism.

Candidate Adams seemed to sense all this and campaigned accordingly. He leaned into the anti-crime pitch especially hard following an incident last June in The Bronx, where a gang-banger opened fire on a rival while two kids, ages 10 and 5, took cover nearby. In response, Adams put up $2,000 of his own funds toward the capture of the assailant. The emotion he displayed at the news conference seemed sincere (and likely was). He sounded similar notes through the rest of the year, cementing his status as the tough-on-crime alternative and converting more than a few skeptical urban centrists to his cause.

Then he took office—and things almost instantly soured. In just his first two weeks, Adams has…

  • tapped his own brother, a former NYPD sergeant who’d been working as assistant director of parking at Virginia Commonwealth University, to serve as deputy police commissioner for government affairs, drawing a salary of $242,000 a year; when pressed, the new mayor claimed, preposterously, that his brother would be in charge of his personal security “at a time when we see an increase in white supremacy”;
  • lent support to a City Council bill that would allow some 800,000 legal, noncitizen migrants to vote in local elections, making a mockery of the privileges of citizenship;
  • signaled that he is open to remote learning in public schools, despite having vowed to defend in-person learning during the campaign—a foolish move that can only invite more intransigence from teachers unions;
  • and, relatedly, called United Federation of Teachers boss Mike Mulgrew his “good friend” with whom he shares “emotional intelligence,” allowing the pair to solve problems together (eye roll, please).

That last move is especially pathetic, given that Mulgrew specifically instructed his voters not to vote for Adams. In other words, Adams owed Mulgrew absolutely nothing, yet he chose to kowtow to a figure responsible for denying schooling to some of the city’s neediest, most vulnerable kids.

So what are the lessons here for the urban centrists?

For starters, look closer. Seth Barron of the Claremont Institute, for my money the sharpest and most knowledgeable observer of city affairs, was one of a very few conservatives who remained skeptical of Adams while others swooned. He pointed to Adams’ history of racial opportunism, including his association with Al Sharpton and the Nation of Islam and his concord with anti-anti-crime prosecutors, to suggest that “the return to normalcy” the mayor promised may have been an electoral mirage.

Second, beware of low expectations. Yes, it’s probably better that Adams is governing the Big Apple, rather than one of the truly fire-breathing woke crusaders. But the lesson of Adams’ first two weeks is that the merely corrupt machine type may not make much of a difference in an otherwise hostile ideological environment (and, again, Barron’s reporting reminds us that Adams himself may not be nearly as pragmatic as others thought).

To cut through such an environment takes an iron commitment to sanity that’s all too rare in today’s Democratic Party. The party’s metropolitan base is committed to ideological insanities it won’t abandon, even when they threaten Dems’ hold on national power. If Adams were the second coming of FDR, and he isn’t, he couldn’t withstand these forces. The wiser course, then, is to allow the woke furies to consume the party while working to build a governing conservative-populist alternative. Trying to play ball with the likes of Adams is a fool’s game.

about the author

Sohrab Ahmari is a contributing editor of The American Conservative and a visiting fellow of the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University. His books include From Fire, by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith (Ignatius, 2019) and The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos (Convergent/Random House, 2021). He is currently writing a book about privatized tyranny in America.

Latest Articles

Note: This article have been indexed to our site. We do not claim legitimacy, ownership or copyright of any of the content above. To see the article at original source Click Here

Related Posts
Edo State Speaker Explains why Deputy Gov’s Budget Was Reduced thumbnail

Edo State Speaker Explains why Deputy Gov’s Budget Was Reduced

The Speaker of Edo State House of Assembly, Blessing Agbebaku, has explained why 354 million naira was appropriated to the Office of Deputy Governor, Philip Shaibu. TrackNews recalls that in the budget, which was signed into law by Governor Godwin Obaseki on December 15, the Governor’s Office got an allocation of N19 billion, the Secretary
Read More
Shelter From The West’s Long Winter thumbnail

Shelter From The West’s Long Winter

Re-Enchantment Book St. Colman's hideaway in the Burren is a still point in a passing world I'm in the west of Ireland today, gallivanting about with the writer Paul Kingsnorth. We went earlier today to visit the cave dwelling of St. Colman Mac Duagh, an early medieval Irish saint, then had oysters and Guinness at
Read More
Johnny Sexton says England could do ‘some real damage in France’ as Ireland’s Six Nations hopes still alive thumbnail

Johnny Sexton says England could do ‘some real damage in France’ as Ireland’s Six Nations hopes still alive

SUPER SATURDAY 13:18, 13 Mar 2022Updated: 13:18, 13 Mar 2022Ireland captain Johnny Sexton believes Ireland still have a realistic chance of winning the Six Nations Championship. Andy Farrell's side defeated England 32-15 at Twickenham yesterday afternoon. 2England's Marcus Smith and England's Henry Slade were a real threat against Ireland yesterday2Johnny Sexton believes England have a…
Read More
In Penza, in the Komsomolsk park put things in order thumbnail

In Penza, in the Komsomolsk park put things in order

Накануне, 2 октября, в парке прошла акция по благоустройству, которая состоялась в рамках осеннего месячника. В работах по уборке приняли участие руководители городских управлений и ведомств, а также сотрудники учреждений. Ими был собран мусор и очищен парк от осенних листьев. «Мы ставим для себя задачу – навести порядок на всех наших территориях. Городские коммунальные службы…
Read More
Index Of News
Consider making some contribution to keep us going. We are donation based team who works to bring the best content to the readers. Every donation matters.
Donate Now

Subscription Form

Liking our Index Of News so far? Would you like to subscribe to receive news updates daily?

Total
0
Share