Two Revealing Jokes Highlight the Democrats’ Internal Struggles

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

 

They say that there must be at least a little nugget of truth inside every joke — usually a revealing truth. Indeed, better jokes tend to highlight an unspoken, even taboo, feature of our shared circumstances. In the past several days, we’ve been privy to two attempts at humor from Democratic aspirants for high office that illustrate this phenomenon. To the extent they entertained their respective audiences, it’s because they were not really jokes.

 

The first enlightening witticism of the week was provided by Rahm Emanuel, the former representative and Chicago mayor, who is testing the political waters ahead of a potential 2028 presidential bid. Emanuel’s media tour recently landed him in Megyn Kelly’s studios. There, the host asked her guest simply, “Can a man become a woman?” “No,” Barack Obama’s onetime White House chief of staff replied simply. Later, when Emanuel was asked if a biological male should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, Kelly received another staccato negative. Zero hedging, no flowery rhetorical turns of phrases meant to preserve the fragile egos of every possible viewer — just “no.” Should federal and state officials put “men claiming they’re women” in female correctional institutions? Once again, a simple “no” sufficed.

 

“Thank you,” Kelly said midway through the interview. Emanuel’s candor seemed to her “so easy” that it rendered the visible discomfort that most Democrats experience when pressed with similar inquiries that much more inexplicable. “Why don’t more people in your party say that?” Kelly asked. Here comes the kicker: “Because,” Emanuel replied, “I’m now going to go into a witness protection plan.”

 

Emanuel earned the laugh by being the man in the arena — the high-wire artist for whom the audience is rooting. There is hyperbole in the degree of danger Emanuel faces for his honesty — the former mayor is not going to be hunted down by a hit squad like a mob informant. But the exaggeration serves to comically emphasize a real feature of the modern political landscape. Democrats are ruthless enforcers of gender-identity shibboleths to which much of the country does not subscribe. The Democratic consultant class knows it, and its avatars are attempting to gingerly shift the Democratic coalition closer to the median American voter.

 

Emanuel is subtly referencing the degree to which real social, reputational, and even legal consequences were imposed on Americans who, at some point in the last decade, failed to adopt the latest linguistic fashion. Perhaps Emanuel seeks solidarity with the rest of us by opening himself up to caustic denunciations from his own side’s true believers. Regardless, the joke is an admission — his party is the party devoted to a revolutionary redefinition of what constitutes gender, and there are repercussions associated with violations of their preferred creed.

 

The other joke of the week — a far worse joke, you should know at the outset — comes to us via New York City’s likeliest next mayor, Zohran Mamdani.

 

In a recently resurfaced video of the mayoral front-runner addressing a 2023 conference of Democratic Socialists, we find Mamdani introducing the pastor, Palestinian activist, and failed city council candidate Khader El-Yateem. “If you don’t clap for El-Yateem, you’re a Zionist,” Mamdani chided his audience. The line did not exactly kill. “It’s a joke,” he continued, “you don’t have to clap.” Mamdani should know that the clap is the consolation prize.

 

The New York Post has assembled a variety of reactions to the joke from New York City’s increasingly unnerved Jewish voters and representatives. They didn’t find the line particularly funny. Their humorlessness can be excused given the 110 percent increase in antisemitic incidences in NYC in 2023 — a staggering rate of growth that increased over that baseline by another 45 percent in 2024. If the joke contributed to their apprehension, that’s only because they see the truth in it — Mamdani’s truth — which is that the “Zionist” in this construction is a contemptable, irredeemable figure.

 

Everyone in the audience got it. You probably got it, too. Indeed, the zinger makes little sense unless we assume that those who believe that Jews have a legitimate claim to a homeland in the Middle East are unwelcome — at least, among self-described “socialists,” which is itself a confounding turn of historical events. Nevertheless, like Emanuel’s, Mamdani’s joke is a revealing send-up of a genuine menace. Unlike Emanuel, Mamdani isn’t the high-wire artist in this scenario. Rather, it’s New York City’s Jews who find themselves in the crosshairs. You never want the audience to root for the butt of your joke.

 

Shortly before he passed away, the great P. J. O’Rourke told me that “jokes are supposed to upset people.” They are, after all, a “form of sprung logic” — “bad syllogisms” or “two planes of meaning” intersecting at an “unexpected angle.” “All jokes offend the mind to one degree or another, just on the basis of rationality,” he observed. The two jokes above are certainly representative of the “sprung logic” that prevails in the modern Democratic Party. But while one of our jokesters is attempting to drag his party out of its irrationality, the other exemplifies how difficult that project will be.