Rage Against the Machine

It's not just about Israel. It's New York, Jake.

In a media ecosystem drowning in clickbait and cowardice, Journal of the Plague Years offers something rare: insurgent intelligence with literary bite. Edited by Susan Zakin—an award-winning journalist whose bylines include GQ, Vogue, Salon, and The New York Times—this Substack publication feels like dispatches from the resistance, written with the clarity of hindsight and the urgency of now. — William Finnegan, The Long Memo

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When I read the news about the winning trifecta of candidates backed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, something didn’t sit right. The usual suspects, from The New York Times on down, suggested that Brad Lander, Dariliza Avila Chevalier, and Claire Valdez won because they opposed Israel’s war in Gaza, championed Palestinian rights, and criticized the outsized influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) the lobbying and political action group that until recently has dominated U.S. policy on Israel.

My take? The media was, once again, exhibiting its blindness to the income inequality that, for Chrissakes, elected Trump not once but twice. What will it take? A third term, perhaps? We may dodge that bullet, because now the frustrations and fears that elected Trump are being articulated in a far more thoughtful and delineated way by a new generation of dynamic and articulate leaders. I second many of their emotions. We’re tired of fighting for health care, having our futures crippled by student debt and high housing prices, and, most recently, fearing our government.

What’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank, and until recently, Iran for that matter, are atrocities. But compassion for people in far-off lands doesn’t necessarily defeat incumbents, except maybe in Michigan. Or at least that was my gut feeling. This is New York, a city rivaled only by Chicago when it comes to machine politics. Yes, the candidates marshaled support from educated, left-leaning people in their 30s for whom Palestinian rights were the cause of the college years—but these candidates are Democratic Socialists, right? They opposed the city’s entrenched power structure, including the real estate developers who run the show in just about every American city. Didn’t Zohran Mamdani just freeze the rent? (Yes, indeed, he did, for 1 million rent-controlled apartments.)

I didn’t think that Israel was the deciding factor in the election. But, hey, I haven’t lived in New York for a long time so I called a knowledgeable source: my high school boyfriend.

I’ll use his initial: R. R and I were fixed up by our mothers, both of whom were deeply involved in New York politics. I once told my mom that R. was the only decent boyfriend she ever chose, and she should have picked someone that decent (and cute) for herself. That’s another story. R was always more involved in politics than me, but I jumped on board. When I was 16 and he was 17, we were Co-coordinators of Youth for his mom’s City Council run, a disastrous campaign managed by my mom. We were, in fact, the only “youth,” but the titles looked good on college applications.

I left the city in my twenties, but R did serious political work, working on presidential campaigns and in the New York City mayor’s office. R agreed that New York’s Democratic primary upset showed that New Yorkers want change - straight up. They want to afford rent. They want health care. They voted for young, insurgent candidates who weren’t mired in the city’s machine politics, because those politics aren’t helping them. “What did the polls say?” he asked, on his way to a concert with his daughters. (I told you, he’s a pro.)

I couldn’t find exit polls—it was just a primary—but if you look closely at how the races went down, it appears that this week’s vote as not as much of a mandate on Israel as some have suggested. But it also appears that for many voters, especially those under 40, the issues of Palestinian self-determination and affordability are linked. It’s about justice, here or there. The rich vs. the rest. And that’s what really scares people, because it means that the popularity of this new generation of Democrats might not be just a New York thing.

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The Machine

“I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em.”

George Washington Plunkitt, a 19th-century New York state senator and powerful district leader in the Tammany Hall political machine.

First, the Machine. It’s New York, Jake. This is a New York tradition as deeply entrenched as bagels and pastrami. George Washington Plunkitt, arguably the father of the system, made no bones about it when he described his philosophy of “honest graft,”in his 1905 book Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (recorded by journalist William L. Riordon) explaining how he became a millionaire by taking advantage of inside political knowledge.

No, the Trumps didn’t invent this, and neither did our current members of Congress. Here’s how it played out. Initially Mamdani was open to endorsing the incumbent five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th district, and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso for New York’s 7th district.

Espaillat has his own political machine—nicknamed El Squadrino—and Reynoso is a protege of Nydia Velázquez, the first Puerto Rican to serve in the U.S. Congress. At 73, she has served 16 terms in the House of Representatives. It must be hard to let go because she clearly wanted to leave a legacy. After breaking with Mamdani, who she endorsed for mayor, she took on the DSA, pushing six of the DSA candidates’ rivals.

With our least favorite Senator, whose son is making bank in crypto as she deregulates it.

What really happened here? I think Mamdani got up to speed on Espaillat, who started as an insurgent, bucking machine politics, but became a power broker himself. Espaillat was the first Dominican elected to Congress, and, like most city pols, he tracks as liberal. But in recent years, he’s gotten big bucks from both real estate interests (the bane of New York politics) and, yes, the dreaded AIPAC. He’s a bareknuckled fighter, like many New York pols, with rumors of voting irregularities.

Here’s what City and State said about him, and about the Mamdani-backed candidate who just beat him, 32-year-old Darializa Avila Chevalier:

Darializa has been endorsed early by DSA, which fields an impressive canvassing operation built on the burst of political energy in recent years among youth who are closer to her ideologically on key issues such as abolishing ICE and the Gaza genocide [yes, more on her Gaza views later]. Their community-based operation dwarfs Espaillat’s more traditional New York Democratic Party machine. Her credible threat is the result of Espaillat’s abandonment of the insurgent energy he initially promised in favor of the old institutional politics of closed-room handshakes, deal-making, and donor support.

Espaillat has focused on building his personal political machine. His daunting list of protégés and disciples is so notorious the media have dubbed it “the Squadriano.” Others call him the “Dean of Dominican elected officials.” Instead of pursuing significant policy changes, however, Espaillat is a manager of relations, friends, mentees, and money—and focused exclusively on building his power base. The crisis of Latino New York, says Eli Valentin, a political analyst with a focus on Hispanic politics, is Espaillat’s means to a personal end: “Yes, it is expanding Dominican representation,” Valentin said in 2022, “but ultimately, it goes back to Adriano.”

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La Luchadora

At 43, Brooklyn Borough President Reynoso is younger than the 71-year-old Espaillat, and without his liabilities, but he became collateral damage in a power struggle between Mamdani and Nydia Velázquez. Velázquez, nicknamed “La Luchadora” for her willingness to fight for her community, supported Mamdani in his campaign for mayor. As tensions between them grew, Velázquez threatened Mamdani with losing the Puerto Rican vote, but he wasn’t having it. Besides, Claire Valdez, Mamdani’s candidate, a strong union supporter with a vision for the working class, happens to be both Puerto Rican and Dominican. Merging successive tides of immigration to New York in her background, and with a compelling message, she won her race.

It’s not that he doesn’t pay his political debts, although Velázquez might disagree. He certainly repaid his one-time mayoral rival Brad Lander, the former New York City controller, who won a sweeping victory over incumbent congressman Dan Goldman.

Here is where the Israel issue gets interesting. Yes, both Claire Valdez and Dariliza Avila Chevalier are DSA members and both have been hardcore pro-Palestinian activists. Both women attended a rally on Oct. 8, 2025, only a day after the brutal massacre of Israelis by Hamas. More on this later.

By contrast, Lander canceled his DSA membership when the organization advertised the Times Square rally. At this event, people held signs saying things like: “Resistance is Justified when People are Occupied,” echoing the rhetoric on one of the sponsors’ websites. This was justifiably interpreted as tacit if not quite overt approval of the Oct. 7 atrocities.

The more mature and experienced 56-year-old Lander exemplifies the liberal Jewish position on Israel. In his own words, from Medium back in 2023:

Israel has the right and need to defend itself, to hold those who committed the October 7 atrocities accountable, and to keep its citizens safe from future attacks.

But like many others, I do not support the Netanyahu government’s current approach of a bombing campaign in which “the emphasis is on damage and not accuracy” (as IDF spokesman Dan Hagari said last week), a siege that has choked off food and medicine and water, and especially a planned ground invasion, which would kill so many more Palestinians, and so many Israeli soldiers, with no clear plan to achieve long-term safety.

It’s striking that Lander won his primary by more than 30 points, the most sweeping of this week’s victories. His sane and compassionate approach to Israel, coupled with his own strong Jewish identity, was just part of it. The former New York City controller has a solid history of community and political involvement. Lander is also a warm and engaging guy, or as one might say in Yiddish (I had to look it up to check) heimish. But his views on Israel certainly encouraged the new crop of organizations representing liberal Jews to support him. Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) endorsed Lander, citing his support for the Block the Bombs Act, which would block the sale of certain offensive arms to Israel. (You can get deeper into the weeds re: the differences between the candidates re: Israel here.) Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) was among the groups that sent 200 volunteers across 500 shifts to knock doors for Lander, and reportedly they were out until the polls closed.

Landers’ opponent, Dan Goldman, had several strikes against him. A multimillionaire heir to the Levi-Strauss fortune and a Stanford-educated lawyer, Goldman acquitted himself well in the Trump impeachment hearings. He’s also stiff and formal, a guy who looks uncomfortable when he’s not wearing a tie and tracks badly on social media. Goldman’s positions on Israel sound reasonable—he co-led the Nadler-Raskin-Goldman letter, which emphasized that “a commitment to Israel’s security is not incompatible with the humanitarian needs of the innocent people of Gaza,” and he was an an outspoken opponent to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s anti-democratic judicial overhaul plan. But he refuses to call Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide. He also voted to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for her “from the river to the sea” comment, which she later clarified. Later, he said he regretted the vote.

Goldman’s wife has been less judicious. Corinne Levy Goldman, and family members were in Israel following the Oct. 7 attacks, and, as reported by The New York Times, Levy Goldman either liked or recirculated a series of social media posts—several from right-wing accounts—that used “insensitive or hateful language directed at Palestinians and groups or people who supported them or criticized Israel.”

O the intemperate social media posts! Have they become so rampant that they no longer count? Frankly, I’ve gotten the impression that characterizing Palestinians and Arabs as “different” in ways that many would consider racist is not unusual in Israel, or among the more rabid U.S. supporters of Israel. Similarly, there are overtones of anti-Semitism in many passionate supporters of the Palestinian cause and a disturbing tendency to omit any mention of Hamas atrocities, whether committed against Israelis or Palestinian civilians.

The discourse is tainted all around, but from a sitting Congressman’s wife? Not cool. Did the uproar over Goldman’s wife make a difference? Goldman’s refusal to use the word genocide? Maybe to some people. There is never one cause for historic change. I’d say that Lander’s strengths won the day: his cozy, gemütlich social media presence; his propensity for showing up for the underdog including very visibly for immigrants targeted by ICE, plus Mamdani’s energetic support—it couldn’t have ended any other way.

The subject of injudicious social media leads to Dariliza Avila Chevalier, who narrowly beat five-term Congressman Adriano Espaillat. When I read the media coverage of Chevalier, the posts were, as our friend Susan Collins is wont to say, concerning. Chevalier is 32 now. She was still in her twenties when she wrote the tweets between 2019 and 2022. They were not only very radical but trite and stupid in the knee-jerk far left way that we have come to regard with less patience these days. Here’s a replay of the worst at CNN with a link to the Wayback machine if you’re really looking for dirt.

Remember that Chevalier was a student with no thought of running for office when she mouthed off on Twitter. Since then, she has completed her PhD. coursework at Columbia—not half-bad for a working-class Dominican kid—and, as Mamdani said, she has evolved.

Listening to a series of post-election interviews, I was impressed by Chevalier’s thoughtfulness and compassion. I’ve posted the toughest interview here. The most important answer she gave is about her attendance at the Oct. 8 Times Square rally in support of Palestinians, the same rally that caused Lander to leave the DSA. For the record, again: The rally organizers did not endorse Hamas, as some right-wing Jewish commentators have stated. But they came damn close, while preserving a shred of deniability amid what reads like a bad imitation of old-fashioned agitprop.

I imagine the rally attracted a range of activists. Chevalier had been to the West Bank as a student. She told Velshi that she attended because she had seen the outsize response by Israel to Hamas attacks before and she feared the same thing would happen again. This concern was shared by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who wrote:

What Israel’s worst enemies — Hamas and Iran — want is for Israel to invade Gaza and get enmeshed in a strategic overreach there that would make America’s entanglement in Falluja look like a children’s birthday party. We are talking house-to-house fighting that would undermine whatever sympathy Israel has garnered on the world stage, deflect world attention from the murderous regime in Tehran and force Israel to stretch its forces to permanently occupy Gaza and the West Bank.

Friedman certainly nailed the worst case scenario, exactly what came to pass. Chevalier’s description of her virtually identical concerns impressed me with her perspicacity, assuming that it isn’t scripted, and if it is, I’d say it’s well-scripted, so points for that. What’s important is that Chevalier has repeatedly said that she does not endorse Hamas or any violence or killing. She strongly criticized the way Hamas fighters celebrate the taking human life.

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The Media Gets It Wrong. Again.

As naive, over the top, and often glaringly irresponsible as much of the Free Palestine sloganeering has been, the movement has galvanized a generation of young Americans the same way Vietnam formed the beliefs of Baby Boomers. If the movement breeds a strong bench of candidates dedicated to breaking corporate power, getting money out of politics (or at least trying) and restoring the welfare state, it’s a hell of a lot better than disaffected GenXers with their unearned cynicism, although it would be nice if the pro-Palestine kids also focused on Myanmar, Sudan, Yemen, and Ukraine - Ukraine, for god’s sake! Well, maybe later.

One of the worst things I’ve seen is reporters in respected news outlets using one of Chevalier’s student tweets to suggest she does not believe in Israel’s right to exist. I searched for quite a long time and found no evidence that this is her current position. All I found was this from CNN:

In August 2020, Avila Chevalier reposted a tweet responding to a social media prompt that asked, “Israel suddenly disappears, your third emoji is your reaction.” The reposted tweet replied, “Trick question – Israel doesn’t exist!”

Clever, if quite snarky. In those student tweets, Chevalier called for open borders, abolishing the police and prisons, blamed the U.S. for Russia invading Ukraine (dear God) and insulted Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. She has since called Harris to apologize. I suggest she call Joe, too. Seriously.

Chevalier deleted that Twitter account several years ago, and she has repeatedly said these posts no longer reflect her views, although according to the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg, who wrote a column that I think unfairly represents Chevalier as a rigid academic, she still opposes all deportations, even those of violent criminals, a stance I don’t find particularly shocking or outlandish. Her stance on incarceration didn’t seem clear to the Times editorial board.

What raises an interesting question is the fact that neither Chevalier nor Claire Valdez, a 37-year-old New York Assembly member who’s a more seasoned politician, have refused to take PAC money. Chevalier gained crucial financial support from Justice Democrats, a left-wing group that works to unseat incumbents, and American Priorities, a super PAC created to counter AIPAC. (American Priorities is funded by a dodgy character who also supports Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Thomas Massie.) Her margin of victory was thin, and without the cash, perhaps she might not have won at all.

Claire Valdez took PAC money from Leaders We Deserve, the youth-oriented PAC run by David Hogg, and Justice Democrats. Each spent $175,000 for Valdez. A separate PAC, New Yorkers for Lower Costs, which has some linkages to Mamdani donors, spent $250,000. Her opponent, Antonio Reynoso, received money from individuals linked to AIPAC. The battle lines are clear, and one expects that pattern to repeat in other parts of the country.

It’s hard to blame these young insurgents for taking the cash, especially from like-minded PACs. In particular, I can understand Chevalier pulling out the stops. Espaillat ran a really nasty, dirty campaign, using bots and ethnic smears against Chevalier resulting in threats to her safety. In my view, because of these tactics alone, he deserved to lose. Chevalier is against outside spending on principle, so let’s see if once she establishes herself, she refuses PAC money.

What troubles me most is the scurrilous coverage I’ve seen. Chevalier’s tweets were bad, but at this point journalists shouldn’t be hammering incessantly on online youthful indiscretions at the expense of facts and policy. If any of the reporters in question are reading this, please send me any evidence you have that Chevalier has denied Israel’s right to exist apart this tossed off tweet. If that’s all there is, you may want to check your Israel obsession. Honestly, I’m more concerned about the insurgents’ stances on campaign finance reform, far and away the most important issue in the U.S. right now. Espaillat was once a young, idealistic insurgent, too. Power corrupts, as we see time and again.

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What the Tea Leaves Show Us

It’s not business as usual for a mayor to take such an active role, but Mamdani clearly did the math. Mamdani has shown that he has political chops that go beyond his cute social media and indefatigable energy. The one open-seat congressional race in which Mamdani did not endorse was the 12th District, a race to replace respected liberal lion Jerrold Nadler. This race was an AI proxy war, a sign of things to come. The AI industry tried to take out state Assemblyman Alex Bores, a relative neophyte who worked for Palantir and went way far off the reservation, campaigning to rein in AI.

Assemblyman Micah Lasher, a former Nadler aide, won. Lasher is a liberal and he’d paid his dues. Notably, in his victory speech, Lasher directly confronted the oligarchs:

I have some news for the two big AI companies who’ve taken such an unusual interest in who won this congressional seat: I won’t be taking my cues from either of you when it comes to protecting our kids, our jobs, our environment.

Good call, Mayor Mamdani. Mandani also failed to endorse DSA candidates running for the state legislature. He needs to stay on good terms with Governor Kathy Hochul, so this was also a savvy move. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did endorse the DSA candidates and all six won. One, Aber Kawas, is the first Palestinian-American woman to be in the State Senate. She’s also got some dodgy social media posts in her past. I mean, who doesn’t?

Most importantly, in December Mamdani refused to endorse Chi Ossé, a Gen Z council member who wanted o challenge Hakeem Jeffries in the Democratic primary. Mamdani didn’t just refuse to endorse; he pressured the DSA to do the same, and they did. Ossé was forced to drop out.

Hakeem owes him now.

Think about Mamdani’s record so far. Fast and free buses. Free childcare. Freeze the rent. The guy stayed on message so relentlessly it would have been obnoxious if his videos hadn’t been so endearing. According to the Searchlight Institute, words associated with prices and affordability appeared in 78 percent of Mamdani’s ads, YouTube, and TikTok videos, versus 32 percent of his rival Andrew Cuomo’s content.

So far Mamdani has delivered on two out of three. And that’s in one year, dude.

Of course, that wasn’t the only reason he won. Mamdani connected with immigrant communities that had changed the New York electorate, but didn’t necessarily register with the traditional Democratic Party: Sikhs, Pakistanis, Jamaicans, Uzbeks, the list is too long to enumerate.

The Israel thing? Mamdani cut his teeth on pro-Palestinian campus politics. His father is a post-colonialist scholar. He’s 34, part of a generation whose activism was formed by the Palestinian struggle the way opposition to the war in Vietnam shaped Baby Boomer values. There’s no way he wouldn’t be a hardass on this issue.

As The New York Times succinctly put it, Mayor Mamdani “has accused Israel of committing genocide, vowed to arrest its leader and said he could not support the country as long as it is an officially Jewish state that gives lesser rights to Palestinians.”

Big deal. Benjamin Netanyahu is under indictment by the International Criminal Court, so Mamdani’s cover—that he believes in international law—is contrived but holds up logically. I’m guessing a lot of liberal Israelis would be relieved to get Netanyahu out of their hair.

Up until now, Mamdani’s positions have been rational and not outside the mainstream of international law and human rights. His recent statement about AIPAC is the only time I’ve seen him be intemperate.

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

Antonio Gramsci

Channeling Antonio Gramsci, Mamdani described “monsters” including “those who fund television ads that blanket the airwaves with misleading and bad faith attacks” against his three endorsed candidates. Mamdani then ripped into AIPAC, which has spent millions to boost pro-Israel candidates in congressional primaries this year, often by running ads that reference domestic issues rather than foreign policy. That includes funding Espaillat.

“They move millions in dark money to accomplish a single goal, to preserve their power, so that they can turn us against one another, instead of our leaders turning towards the moral change we all know to be necessary,” Mamdani said.

On cue, the usual phalanx of conservative rabbis and Jewish leaders drafted a letter accusing Mamdani of anti-Semitism, yet again. Yawn.

Not everything is anti-Semitism, guys. Mamdani’s statement was an artful riff on the Gramsci quote, but, yeah, might not have been the best word choice. Personally, I think we should be concentrating on Jared Kusher’s $2 billion in graft from the Saudis (or did they pony up the additional 2 billion now?) and the folly of sending Kushner and Witkoff to parlay for peace in the Mideast.

Like it or not, we live in a world where our neighbors wear hijab or speak Urdu. It’s not always comfortable but they are not our enemies. It would be nice if Mamdani and the other DSA kids occasionally acknowledged old school New York, too. I’m talking about the ladies with their little dogs on the Upper East Side, like my mom, who certainly would have voted for Mamdani if she were still alive, and my friend Sarah’s mom (minus the little dog) who taught me to write essays. She was a descendant of one of New York’s oldest families, a brilliant woman who also would have voted for him.

We were all once immigrants. Even the Native Americans, who trudged across the land bridge from Siberia 10,000 years ago.

So it goes. Mamdani has proven himself to be a tough adversary in the bare-knuckled world of New York politics. Gangway!

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Are these the kind of supporters of Israel you want to endorse? I sure don’t.