Hope for the Democrats?

This edition of Useful Idiots begins with an unbearably dismal presentation of Trump administration spokesmen on “Meet the Depressed” and other weekend shows. But we do get some hopeful notes near the end of the show. The Democratic vote on the two Bernie Sanders bills to stop shipping bombs and bulldozers to Israel does reflect the sea change of public opinion about Israel. This is a hopeful sign that in the upcoming elections, the people’s voice will be heard, the Republicans will lose their majorities in the House and Senate, and Trump can be removed from office. I say this as someone who voted for Trump three times because I hated Obama, Clinton and the neoliberal Democrats so much that I voted for Trump as the lesser of two evils. But that was then, and this is now. Trump has completely lost it in his second term. The loss of public support for Israel has somewhat liberated Democrats in Congress from the control of the Israel lobby. I still think Obama and Clinton should hang for war crimes and selling our country out to the oligarchy, but hope springs eternal, and it may be that there will be a new generation of Democratic leaders in the truly socialist and antiwar values that once represented the best of the party. This vote is one sign that the country may be moving in that direction, and there are others.

The show ends with a ringing endorsement of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani by Aaron Mate. Aaron believes that Mamdani may really be the real thing, that is, a real antiwar socialist. He plays a clip where Mamdani quotes Aarons favorite rap artist Tupac Shakur, “We always have money for war, but not to feed the poor”. I hope and pray that Aaron is right about Mamdani. If so, Democrats now have a credible party leader who could even get the Democratic nomination in 2028. George Galloway has said that he thinks Mamdani is a phony, but he has provided no grounds for believing that and I hope he is wrong.