A Bunch of Irish Lobsters

On Mamdani, Megadonors, and Burning Down the House

I keep saying I’ll share big book news, but there’s something I want to write about asap so I’ll put it off for another few days.

In the meantime, though: It’s Only Drowning was just selected by Apple as a “Must Listen Audiobook of July”! It’s narrated by yours truly, so I take this as a full endorsement of the various accents I forced myself to do while recording it.

As always, if you haven’t yet gotten your copy, audio or otherwise, you can get one from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or a local independent bookstore via Bookshop.org. Thanks!

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Usually when I say that working in the Obama White House was a “dream job,” I mean that it was a very good job. 

But sometimes, I mean that when describing certain things that happened at my old job, it sounds like a person recalling a very weird dream. 

For example, I was once in a big room. There was lots of gold paint. I was surrounded by people in suits but I can’t recall any of their faces or names. Also, the Prime Minster of Ireland was there. 

I have absolutely no memory of why I was in that room, what time it was, or whether anyone else spoke. What I do remember was that the prime minister (the “Taoiseach,” technically) looked a little like Bilbo in The Lord of the Rings, and he told the following joke: 

A man sits down for dinner at a fancy restaurant. He asks his waiter what the house special is. 

“Lobster,” replies the waiter, pointing to a tank full of live crustaceans. To the man’s surprise, he realizes the tank is completely uncovered. 

“Don’t you worry they’ll escape?” he asks. 

“Oh, no,” replies the waiter. “These are Irish lobsters. When one of them gets close to the top, the others reach up and pull him down again.” 

I found myself thinking about Irish lobsters yesterday. I was in New York to talk about It’s Only Drowning on MSNBC. (I’ll try to find and post a clip for you all.) Katy Tur was hosting, and she generously let me spend a few minutes just talking about the book. Then the panel discussed the manosphere, and after that, Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. 

There’s a lot to talk about where Mamdani is concerned - and while I don’t plan to get into all of it here, I’ll put a few cards on the table just so you know where I stand. 

• I think (and this is the part I said on TV) that having charismatic candidates who inspire people is a kind of magic, and just because you can’t quantify its effects doesn’t mean those effects don’t matter. 

• I’m glad Mamdani focused on affordability - Democrats nationwide should learn from that - but I worry some of his signature policies to make life more affordable are half-baked. 

• I think the business community sees itself as the adult in the room. But if the candidate you offer voters is a disgraced sex pest who covered up nursing home deaths during the pandemic, voters are unlikely to see you as a paragon of responsibility. 

• I don’t think Mamdani is an anti-Semite, or that it’s anti-Semitic to criticize Israel, and I won’t feel less safe as a Jewish person if Mamdani becomes mayor. That said, “globalize the intifada” is an unambiguous call for violence against Jews, and his answers regarding that phrase have been too clever by half. 

If you want me to write more about any of these issues, let me know, maybe I’ll do a follow up post.But for now, I want to put all that stuff aside. 

Because both wings of the Democratic party - the institutionalists and the populists - are at risk of becoming Irish lobsters. And nothing would please Trump more. 

MAGA isn’t subtle about it. Within hours of Mamdani’s primary victory, JD Vance was congratulating him as “the new leader of the Democratic Party.” Partly, this is because Vance is an internet troll, and trolling is what trolls do. 

But Vance is a savvy troll. He’s offering Democrats a deal, a power-sharing agreement that has long been used (just ask the former Taoiseach of Ireland) to keep marginalized groups on the margins. 

Vance’s offer is as follows: MAGA gets to run the country, while Democrats duke it out amongst themselves for control of the cities and the bluest states. 

We often think about facism as complete control over every part of government - and in some authoritarian regimes, such as China or Russia, that’s how it works. But in the model of authoritarianism Viktor Orban refers to as “illiberal democracy,” the opposition party gets to continue existing. It even has some power. It’s just never allowed enough power to threaten the party in charge. 

Here’s an example: in Hungary, Orban tried to ban the Budapest pride parade. The mayor of Budapest found some legal loopholes, and this year’s pride parade became the largest in the city’s history, with over 100,000 people. 

I saw a lot of social media posts about how amazing this was. And in a way, it was amazing. But on the other hand, it also underscores the broader powerlessness of Hungary’s progressives in a system rigged against them. Like the United States, Hungary has progressive, populous, vibrant cities that drive both the economy and culture of the country. Yet those cities - and the preferences of those living within them - doesn’t really matter when it comes to national politics.  

It’s not just Hungary. In Turkey, the mayor of Istanbul was Erdogan’s biggest opponent. He was allowed, despite some harassment, to stay in power. But then he tried to expand beyond his city and challenge Erdogan for national leadership. Now he’s in jail.

The United States has some structural advantages that countries like Hungary and Turkey did not. Most crucially, our elections are run by states, not by the federal government, making them harder to rig. Also, Trump is unpopular, and losing ground with non-urban voters as well as urban ones. 

But none of that will matter if Democrats focus more on yanking each other down than on defeating MAGA. And that’s the part that really worries me. 

I could start at either end of this dilemma, so I flipped a coin, and it came up megadonors. I think a lot of institutionalist Democrats see Trump as an existential threat to the country. But judging by their actions, they see Mamdani as equally threatening, even when deep down, even they know he’s not. 

I’m not speaking for all institutionalists here, of course. But there have been plenty of reports of Democratic megadonors treating Mamdani’s win as a five-alarm fire, and preparing to do anything they can - including backing Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams - to stop him. That’s energy and money that could go into fighting MAGA. More than that, declaring Mamdani persona non grata risks dividing the anti-Trump opposition at the exact moment when it needs to united. 

I think a lot of prominent Democrats understand this in theory. But they’ve never experienced what it’s like to have the political deck rigged against you. They’ve never needed to be hyper-disciplined about prioritizing among the risks we face. At a moment when even institutions like Harvard are under attack, infighting has never been more costly.

But that’s not only true for megadonors. And I worry that despite their differences, too many on the left wing of the Democratic party share a common feature with many of those in the center-right. They care deeply about opposing Trump. But their most visceral anger is toward fellow Democrats. They want to beat Republicans and win the Senate, or the White House in 2028. But they relish the intramural victories even more.

That doesn’t mean the Democratic big tent needs to start singing kumbaya. It means we need to disagree while lifting each other up, rather than constantly tugging each other down to the bottom of the tank. 

Democrats on the center-right don’t need to love Mamdani, but since it seems likely that the only legal alternatives are Eric Adams, Andrew Cuomo, or Republican Curtis Silwa, they should support him, or at least stop joining JD Vance in using our nominee as a wedge issue to splinter the anti-Trump coalition. I’m not a Democratic Socialist. But if you treat Democratic Socialism and Trumpism as equally dangerous threats, that’s a gift to Trump. 

The left wing of the party, meanwhile, ought to recognize that donors who spend gazillions of dollars to elect candidates who will raise their taxes and provide healthcare to more people aren’t the opposition. All the stuff you love about America that Trump is destroying? It was brought to you by the Democratic establishment. That doesn’t mean the establishment shouldn’t change, or in some cases be replaced. Primaries are a good thing! But if you see “the Democratic elites” as the enemy, then MAGA sees you as an unwitting ally. 

Back in high school, my wrestling coach used to say that for a team to be really good, you needed at least two solid wrestlers competing for each weight class. If someone knows their starting spot is guaranteed, they won’t push themselves as hard. I always resisted that idea - I wanted to be certain that I’d start - so I usually wrestled in weight classes without internal competition. 

Not coincidentally, our team was fine, but not great. 

It’s odd to say we face a choice between being a tank full of Irish lobsters and being a great high school wrestling team, but I’ll admit that after two weeks of book tour my brain is a little fried so that’s where I’ve landed. And you know what? I stand by it. Competition isn’t always friendly. It can breed resentment, frustration, feelings of being unfairly left out. But if we can remember that we were on the same team, we can push ourselves to be better. We can build a party that excites its base in blue cities while also having candidates that can compete everywhere. We can fight for the future of America, not just an ever-shrinking non-MAGA slice. 

The deal that I just described isn’t perfect, or easy. But it’s way better than the one offered by JD Vance. 

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The book’s been out for a little more than two weeks, and I’ve been loving your reviews, thoughts, and questions about It’s Only Drowning. So please keep leaving those comments below! And if you haven’t yet, you can get a copy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or a local independent bookstore via Bookshop.org.