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Swirling confetti, blaring music, loud cheering and excited applause are not the sort of things one expects to see at a funeral.
Yet there was an undeniable aura of excitement Friday as New York Democrats laid their party to rest.
There were no mourners at the last rites in Syracuse, only several thousand giddy born-again socialists.
The convention formalities were limited to perfunctory nominations of incumbents for statewide offices.
Despite some grumbling, there was never any doubt that Gov. Hochul, Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and Attorney General Letitia James would be on the fall ballot.
The only real significance was that the party’s agenda now increasingly echoes that of the Democratic Socialists of America.
The end of the Democratic Party as we know it comes as a shock, though not a surprise.
The signs of demise were impossible to ignore as the party bosses and many voters moved further and further left with each election.
The arrival at this juncture recalls the great Hemingway line from “The Sun Also Rises.”
Asked how he went bankrupt, a character responds, “gradually and then suddenly.”
So it is with the embrace of socialism by New York Dems.
It was only a few short years ago that Hochul repeatedly flashed her upstate “moderate” roots as proof that she was no fan of the radical leftists who were making inroads in the party nationally and in Gotham.
Zo’s setting the agenda
The sudden part has everything to do with the city’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who has in a flash become the pied piper of socialism and the dominant force in the party.
He’s mayor, not governor, but he, more than Hochul, is setting the Albany agenda.
To be fair, credit must also be given to President Trump.
His personality and policies have infected many Dems with Trump Derangement Syndrome, a disease that compels them to irrationally resist him, no matter the facts or shared interest.
Another symptom is the compulsion to suddenly and fervently embrace fringe ideas, the more radical the better.
A plague of antisemitism is now sweeping through the left’s swamps, and Mamdani is propelling it forward.
Another obvious example of the rise of the fringe is the infatuation with economic policies that have failed every time and everywhere they’ve been tried throughout history.
Then there’s the compulsion to defend the idea of throwing open the border to all comers, and refusing to arrest and deport the worst of the worst — brilliant!
Anyone calling for the elimination of ICE is effectively supporting freedom for criminal aliens and ignoring the safety of citizens.
Hochul’s rapid migration on those issues has been instructive and serves as an example of how formerly sensible people can succumb to the fever.
Her latest proposed budget is one sign.
At $260 billion, it is an increase of $105 billion from just a decade ago, but of course it’s never enough.
Perhaps the ultimate proof of her conversion is the evolving embrace of Mamdani’s agenda, which is a flip-flop for the ages.
Just last June, she gave an emphatic “no” to his call for big tax hikes on the wealthy and large corporations in the five boroughs.
“I’m not raising taxes at a time when affordability is the big issue,” she said then.
“I don’t want to lose any more people to Palm Beach. We’ve lost enough.”
A week later, Mamdani scored a smashing victory in the Dems’ mayoral primary, and that rattled her.
Hochul endorsed him in September and cheered him on as he completed his remarkable rise by riding a wave of his followers to City Hall in November.
From that moment on, she’s been praising him and yielding to his agenda.
Most notably, she supported his call for free child care by having Albany shoulder the entire cost for the first two years of the program in the city.
The mayor repaid the debt Thursday with his endorsement where he lavished her with praise, called her a partner and declared their alliance a “model” for the party.
Some of Mamdani’s allies in the Democratic Socialists of America are not yet sold, as they chose the day of her re-nomination to blast Hochul as “a puppet for billionaires” because she hasn’t backed his tax hikes.
Pressure’s on
The criticism should rightly be seen as part of a coordinated strategy to ramp up the pressure on her until she adopts the mayor’s entire agenda.
My bet is that she will do that sooner or later by waving the white flag on taxes, so as to give the mayor what he wants and secure the support of his motivated, hardcore supporters, for her re-election campaign this year.
One indication of her approach is how she has pleased her new best friends by shedding her previous talk of working with Trump.
In her Friday acceptance speech, she said she never dreamed “the pillars of our very democracy, justice, truth, the rule of law, would be under attack, not by a foreign power, but by our own president.”
A year ago, she was boasting about her calls and private meetings with Trump.
Hochul had a closer-than expected victory four years ago, but polls now show her with a big lead over Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County Executive and the all-but-certain GOP nominee.
Dems hold a 2-1 registration advantage over Republicans among the state’s 12 million registered voters.
In addition to motivating their own voters, any GOP chance of victory depends on winning the battle for the 3.6 million third-party and unaffiliated voters.
Blakeman is already focused on that mother lode by painting Hochul as a captive of Mamdani and other radicals, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who also endorsed the incumbent.
In a statement after the Dem convention, Blakeman accused Hochul of advancing a high tax and anti-police policies.
He also aims to flip the “affordability agenda” and use it against her, saying four more years of Hochul “would lead to even higher taxes, soaring electric bills, and weaker public safety.”
He’s right, but early polls show he faces a very steep uphill climb in trying to persuade a majority of voters.
Trashing his reputation
Because history is being rewritten in Gotham, a classic line from Fiorello La Guardia needs an update.
“There is no Republican or Democratic way to pick up the garbage,” said the Little Flower, who ran on a fusion ticket and governed as a fierce, nonpartisan independent.
But given Mayor Mamdani’s leftist orientation and the horrible performance of the Sanitation Department during and after the January snow storm, we can add this clarification: “The socialist way of picking up the garbage and cleaning the streets is not to pick up the garbage or clean the streets.”