If you want to understand why New York — and virtually every other state — is drifting to the right, observe how so many in the Democratic establishment confuse triangulation with leadership and treat stability as a virtue in and of itself. There’s a chasm between what we say and what we deliver. We continue asking voters to show up while we refuse to show up for them. What makes this situation all the more frustrating is that we just saw what it looks like to connect with voters on the most important issue of the day: affordability. In June, Zohran Mamdani pulled off one of the biggest upset in New York’s modern political history.

Establishment Democrats have been talking about affordability for years and have very little to show for it. Mr. Mamdani got through to New Yorkers on the very same set of issues. Instead of lecturing them, he took the time to actually listen to what voters were feeling. He had the courage to directly engage with people, and then brought a laser focus on the issues that they care about. As a result, he shattered turnout records and brought out young voters in droves. It should have been a major signal to the establishment. Instead of embracing Mr. Mamdani’s success, as I have, many top Democrats have kept their distance.

To date, party leaders seem more interested in clinging to power than delivering for the people. Better to maintain an unsustainable economic status quo than be mislabeled a Communist, the thinking goes. Better to avoid being called soft on “illegals” than to do the hard work needed to truly protect hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers living in fear under Mr. Trump’s dragnet.

Mr. Trump’s appeal isn’t rooted in policy; it’s rooted in style. He uses delusional bravado to cosplay as a rebel against a broken system that both parties helped to rig. The Democratic establishment’s timid, survivalist politics can’t compete with that. You can’t beat an immoral agent of chaos with risk aversion. You beat him with moral clarity — the kind that’s willing to sacrifice corporate donations, political comfort and maybe even your own career for the sake of the greater good. Mr. Trump doesn’t win because people love his ideas. He wins because people stop believing in what Democrats have to offer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/opinion/antonio-delgado-kathy-hochul-democrats.html?unlocked_article_code=1.aU8.6f1Q.vR3ryW2eJY2l&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Direct flights from Moscow to North Korea have begun this week, amid a strengthening of ties between the two nations and a decline in options for Russian tourists travelling abroad. The first Moscow-Pyongyang flight, operated by Russia’s Nordwind Airlines, took off on Sunday, according to the Sheremetyevo airport’s website, and landed in the North Korean capital about eight hours later.

The route will initially be serviced only once a month, Russia’s transport ministry said, with the first return flight from Pyongyang to Moscow taking place on Tuesday. Nordwind Airlines – which used to carry Russians to holiday destinations in Europe before the EU imposed a ban on Russian flights – had tickets priced at 45,000 rubles ($570).

…Russia and North Korea have been forging closer military bonds in recent years, with Pyongyang supplying troops and weapons for Russia’s military operations in Ukraine. They signed a mutual defence pact last year when the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, visited North Korea. “For the first time in more than 70 years of diplomatic relations, we are launching direct flights between the capitals of our countries,” Russia’s deputy transport minister, Vladimir Poteshkin, was quoted as saying on the ministry’s Telegram account.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/28/moscow-pyongyang-direct-flights-russia-to-north-korea-tourists?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

For more than four decades, Robert Reich has been ringing the alarm bell about rising inequality in America. He did it as a member of three presidential administrations, including a stint as labor secretary under President Clinton. He did it as a revered professor at U.C. Berkeley, Brandeis and Harvard. He’s currently doing it online, where, somewhat improbably, the 79-year-old has become a new-media star, having built a devoted audience of millions across Substack, TikTok and Instagram. Through it all, his message has remained consistent: Inequality — be it economic, racial or political — erodes social trust, diminishes belief in democracy and can create openings for demagogues…He recently retired from teaching after more than 40 years. Indeed, the run-up to his final lecture is the subject of a documentary, “The Last Class,” which is currently in theaters. Reich also has a memoir on the way, “Coming Up Short,” which will be published on Aug. 5. In the book, and in our conversation, he reckons with the political failures of his fellow baby boomers, the rise of what he sees as a culture of brutality and bullying and why Democrats have failed to connect with struggling Americans.

…The title of your memoir is a pun on the fact that you’re short, but it also refers to your argument that your generation failed to strengthen democracy, failed to reduce economic inequality and, generally, failed to contain “the bullies.” What went wrong? We took for granted what our parents and their parents bequeathed to us. I was born in 1946, as were George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. The so-called greatest generation gave us not only peace and prosperity but the largest middle class the world had ever seen. What I try to understand is how we ended up with Donald Trump. Trump is the consequence, not the cause, of what we are now experiencing. He is the culmination of at least 50 years of a certain kind of neglect. And I say this very personally, because I was part of this failure. It is a reckoning that is deeply personal.

But how useful is the generational frame? Because alongside the shortcomings, baby boomers helped reduce racial discrimination, grew the environmental movement, bolstered feminism and gay rights and helped to shepherd along giant technological advances. So is it really accurate to describe the problem as a “generational” failure? Or is the issue more that conservative politics, which plenty of baby boomers have always held, have won some significant victories over the last 50 years? It’s not fair to blame a generation, but I think it is fair to say there has been, in America, a failure to appreciate the importance of democracy, the importance of holding back big money. Because as inequality has gotten worse and worse, the middle class has by many measures shrunk. That is an open invitation for corruption. We see more and more big money undermining our democratic institutions. We could not have stayed on the path we were on even if Trump hadn’t come along. We were opening ourselves to, if not a demagogue, then something like a demagogue, because so many people became so angry and were convinced even before Trump that the system was rigged against them. I don’t want to minimize the good things that have happened over the past 70 years, but the fact of the matter is we ended up with a very large number of Americans who feel that the American system and the promise of America was a sham.

…In a bigger-picture sense, are there reliable strategies for dealing with economic bullies? If you’re an average working person today, you are extraordinarily vulnerable. Nobody is protecting you. This is one of the attractions that Donald Trump wittingly or unwittingly presented in 2016 and continues to present. He has provided an explanation for people who have been economically and socially brutalized and bullied. An explanation that is, by the way, completely wrong and that has to do with immigrants and the deep state and transgender people. Part of the book is my attempt to help the Democrats, or at least the progressives, see that the way forward is to talk truthfully about why it is that so many people are powerless and bullied and feel so vulnerable and so angry.

What’s your diagnosis for why Democrats have struggled to do that? Some Democrats don’t want to tell the true story of concentrated wealth and power because they are drinking at the same trough as Republicans. This quandary has been growing since I was in my 20s, beginning to watch money and politics and the Faustian bargain that the Democrats were making. The Democrats want to be on the side of social justice and fairness and equal opportunity and political equality, and yet some Democrats — I don’t want to tar with too broad a brush here — are taking money and don’t want to bite the hands that feed them. I’ve seen it personally. I saw it when I was at the Federal Trade Commission; I saw it when I was at the Justice Department working in the Ford administration; I saw it very close up when I was in the Clinton administration and then at a distance when I was providing some advice to Barack Obama. One of the frustrating things about writing this book and reliving these years is that I came across memos and letters and videos of me at that time saying over and over again, like a broken record, “If we stay on this path, we are going to find ourselves in the not-too-distant future with a demagogue, and our democracy is going to be threatened.”

More at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/magazine/robert-reich-interview.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Zk8.bDLI.kL6dDECgA1rO&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

So here are my current thoughts on how Democrats — voters and elected officials — can or should try to deepen opposition to Trump and translate that into legislative seat gains.

The first is obvious. To the extent Democrats are weakened by their reputation for not effectively fighting Trump, they should be taking every opportunity to do that now. Yes, this is kind of obvious. But give me a moment and I’ll connect it to a point I think makes the meaning more clear. They should take every opportunity to fight and draw attention to unpopular things. They shouldn’t be worried about the downsides of opposing a president who now routinely has 55% of the population in opposition him.

Second, the campaign message is obvious and is the one every successful midterm opposition makes. Put a check on Trump’s illegal, out-of-control, violent, stupid policies. There’s no check on him. Put a check on him. This is the ultimate “don’t overcomplicate it.” People are really, really opposed to the stuff Trump is doing now. Say you’ll rein him in. The catch, though, is that to make that credible you really need to show that you’re maxing out the limited power congressional Democrats currently have. So fighting harder and more effectively today doesn’t just address damage to the Democratic brand — it’s essential to underpin the best campaign strategy and message.

Third, people should be mounting primary campaigns against pretty much every Democrat who is in a safe seat. The greatest attention is on a few right-leaning Dems who’ve managed to win in Trump districts. That’s stupid. Democrats need those seats. But in safe seats, run primaries. I’m not saying everyone needs to go, but everyone needs to be put to some test. To deal with the Trump crisis you need caucuses made up only of wartime consiglieres. So make way for one or become one. I remain convinced this is not mainly about ideology, it’s about who’s willing to fight and who isn’t. That’s my prescription.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/how-is-it-going-for-the-democrats

Last month, a few days after New York's Democratic mayoral primary, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., sat for an interview with ABC News. Asked whether he would endorse state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in the general election after Mamdani had effectively won the primary in a shocking upset, Jeffries declined. "We don't really know each other well," the congressman said. But he added he was looking forward to a "sit-down" with Mamdani to clarify his vision and his positions on various issues.

Jeffries and Mamdani had that sit-down Friday, but afterward, the Democratic leader still declined to endorse the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York, which includes the congressional district Jeffries represents. Politico reported that Mamdani left the meeting Friday "about an hour later with only the promise of another meeting."

…But Mamdani probably doesn't need Jeffries and company's endorsements to win the race. The absence of their endorsements could, theoretically, even give him a slight boost by riling up his devoted base….Mamdani would also have more to fear from Schumer and others not backing him if he wasn't winning any endorsements from Democrats. Yet he has backing from the likes of a number of New York Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, one of the city's most prominent Jewish leaders. Mamdani is also winning over powerful labor unions that had endorsed Cuomo in the Democratic primary, as well as local party organizations.

If Jeffries and other top Democrats ultimately refuse to ever endorse the new rising star in their party, that could only serve as further confirmation to Mamdani's base — which includes a massive grassroots army of volunteers — that he's the real deal. And it would cement the antiestablishment aura that catapulted him to his first victory.

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/rcna220025