During a sleepless election night, David Hyman had had enough. He’d seen clips of State Representative Chris Rabb’s primary victory party, with the crowd chanting “Fuck AIPAC!” over and over — reminiscent of the night nearly a decade ago when Larry Krasner first won the election for Philadelphia District Attorney and chants of “Fuck the police!” filled the air.

Hyman is a widely-respected attorney and political player in town — an advisor and close friend to Mayor John Street back in the day. This behavior, to him, was angry, grievance-ridden, purely performative politics. He tossed and turned. Finally, he posted to Facebook:

Sleepless night. After more than 50 years as a registered Democrat, I have decided to reregister as an Independent. Inspired by leaders like Hubert Humphrey, Barbara Jordan and Scoop Jackson, I was excited to sign up as a teenager. I felt welcome. No longer. I doubt that the Democratic leaders of my youth could even win the Party’s nomination today. I hope this is a temporary separation. Time will tell. (FB friends: I needed to get that off my chest so that hopefully I can fall back to sleep. I am NOT interested in debating the merits of my decision. Thanks for understanding.)

Wow, I thought. If the Democratic Party has lost David Hyman, trouble is on the way. As in: Hello, President Rubio. Make no mistake: Our congressional primary is a signpost of a schism that may ultimately fuel Trumpism after Trump. Sure, Hyman supported one of Rabb’s opponents, State Senator Sharif Street, the son of his longtime friend, in the race for the Democratic nomination for PA’s 3rd District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

But when I caught up with him after seeing his post, it became clear this was no case of sour grapes. Hyman speaks for many who see moral confusion in the politics of figures like Rabb and Zohran Mamdani — so-called progressives who, in some voters’view, betray traditionally progressive values.

“The goal is to feel morally superior, and they’re good at that,” Hyman told me. “Like AIPAC is the biggest enemy our country has. JFK said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you,’ and Chris Rabb said on election night, ‘We deserve the very best.’ What do the two have in common, other than the name of their party? It’s become a grievance-based expression of entitlement.”

Hyman is a Jew who doesn’t donate to AIPAC and has protested Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war in Gaza on the streets of Tel Aviv. But early on, he noticed the subliminal messaging in Rabb’s campaign fundraising emails that heralded “AIPAC is coming” — mirroring many of Mamdani’s dog whistles, like his recent post commemorating “Nakba Day,” the “catastrophe” that led to the founding of Israel and the displacement of Palestinians, without mentioning that it followed a war launched by 22 Arab states who rejected a two-state UN plan.

But this isn’t really about Middle East history or Israeli politics. Like Hyman, I’m a critic of Netanyahu. In fact, I may go even further: The expansion of settlements in the West Bank, combined with apartheid-like checkpoints, feels fundamentally illiberal. But when words like “genocide” are casually tossed around — as Rabb did during the campaign — and when he appears side by side at rallies with “influencer” Hasan Piker, who has said the U.S. “deserved 9/11” and “Hamas is a thousand times better than a fascist settler colonial apartheid state,” and when The Inquirer declines to highlight the sheer illiberalism of all this, you really have to wonder: Where have all the serious people gone? People like those that Hyman invokes. (You want some inspiration? Check out Barbara Jordan’s speech to the 1972 Democratic National Convention.)

Not ready for prime time

I like Chris Rabb — he’s a fun and funny guy. But if you attended our Ultimate Job Interview event with the candidates, you would have seen that much of his appeal rests in a kind of frustrated stand-up routine. Unlike fellow progressives like State Senator Nikal Saval, he doesn’t appear especially interested in building relationships across the aisle to help the people of Pennsylvania.

That’s what makes his win such a troubling signifier. His ascension — and The Inquirer’s fervent backing of him — should concern anyone who actually cares about achieving the ends Rabb claims to champion. If you believe that serious people are required to confront serious problems, The Inquirer endorsement of Raab contributed to our downward slide by essentially arguing that Congress needs more shouting and less compromise — fewer sober problem-solvers, in other words.

Moreover, we’re already seeing examples across the country of politicians in Rabb’s ideological lane unintentionally undermining working class mobility, despite their best intentions. Take New York, where Mamdani’s plan for city-owned grocery stores has run up against the interests of mom-and-pop bodega owners — the sort of hardworking folks once formed the backbone of the Democratic coalition. And, when it comes to Rabb’s shameful invocation of “genocide” in Gaza, he is contributing to a broader blizzard of moral confusion sweeping the land.

In sum: Rabb’s election is part of a movement that plays right into Trumpism’s hands, because his version of progressivism struggles to govern. We’re seeing it right now in New York, where Mamdani has already had to table or back away from many of his extreme campaign promises. He recently filmed a viral video promoting his tax the rich agenda in front of the home of Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, which has now led Griffin’s company to question whether it would follow through on a $6 billion development project that would mean 15,000 jobs for Mamdani’s city. Oops.

Nor is New York alone. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson has outsourced City Hall to the teacher’s union, made rookie mistake after rookie mistake, and hovers at 26 percent in the polls. In Seattle, Democratic Socialist Mayor Katie Wilson has pursued policies so hostile to employers that companies have begun relocating elsewhere — including the transferring of 2,000 Starbucks jobs to Nashville.

All progressive firebrands, all simply not ready for prime time.

It may be inconvenient for progressives, but national polling underscores just how far outside the mainstream figures like Rabb remain. Yes, voters appear poised to support Democrats in the midterms. Yet, according to Real Clear Politics polling, voters still prefer Republicans to the Democratic Party. A CNN poll found that 58 percent of Americans believe the Democratic Party has gone too far left — an all-time high. Yet 33 percent of Democrats — and 42 percent of those under 35 — identify, like Rabb, as Democratic Socialists. Other polling shows that more Americans view Democrats as slightly more out of touch than Trump. This is what years of left wing cancel culture, extreme trans activism, and porous border enforcement under Biden have wrought. It’s as if Rabb’s party is putting on a production of The Producers: These guys must be trying to lose.

Be like Barney

Which brings us to the final thoughts of Barney Frank, the brilliant progressive former congressman who died this week. His final public reflections amounted to a warning to his own side: Slow down on issues like trans rights and Medicare for all for the sake of winning.

“The key to liberal democracy being able to come back is to get rid of the perception, that we have allowed to grow, that the entire Democratic Party is committed to a series of very drastic social reconstructions that go beyond the politically acceptable,” he advised his party in a remarkable New York Times interview while in hospice. “The problem with my friends on the left today is that they want these things to be litmus tests, immediately. They don’t want to spend any time. So what happens is they demand that more mainstream liberals sign on to these things, and then they lose because of it.”

Frank was no neo-liberal or corporatist Democrat. He was the type of fighter Democrats lack today — a pugilistic wordsmith, a master of the political put-down, but also a left-leaning pol who knew how to get shit done. Mamdani passed three bills in the NY State Assembly before becoming mayor. Check out Rabb’s legislative record here and be prepared to be mightily underwhelmed.

Frank’s feelings about the fragile state of liberal democracy echoed Hyman’s this week. “It scared me, watching the election night videos,” Hyman told me, “because it felt tribal, not based on thought. A mob mentality, just like at Trump rallies.”

And that, perhaps, is the most important takeaway in the aftermath of Rabb’s ascension. The danger is not simply that Democrats lose elections. It’s that, in trying to defeat Trumpism on its own terms, they absorb its habits — until outrage becomes the ideology and performance replaces persuasion. In that case, reasonableness is actual the loser.

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