What the Democratic Party can learn from the New York Jets
Yes, really.
The Democratic Party has had a bad year. The New York Jets may have a worse year.
Since the start of 2025, the Democratic Party has watched as Donald Trump seized complete control of government — and when I say watched, I mean only watched. Left leadership has failed to meaningfully respond to basically any decision the Trump administration has forced on the American people. Even as Trump tanks the economy and makes a whole host of other ridiculed choices, he’s not the most unpopular figure in government. Democrats are.
That widespread dislike isn’t just coming from Trump voters. The Left is divided, and any moment that could be celebrated as a victory just leads to debates about whether said outcome is best for the party’s long term future. Sure, Zohran Mamdani may be ushering in a new era of political engagement in New York City, but he’s also easier for Trump to attack and therefore him winning is Bad for the Left. Sure, Abigail Spanberger seems poised to coast to victory in Virginia, but she’s a wishy-washy moderate who doesn’t chart a clear path for the party’s future and therefore her winning is Bad for the Left.
Maybe some of these outcomes would be bad. But right now America has a lot of bad and not a lot of good — we should embrace the latter when it comes about. To combat that persistent internal pessimism, we might have to do something no one in their right mind has ever done: copy the New York Jets.
Earlier this year, the Jets cut a future Hall of Fame quarterback-wide receiver duo. The new signal caller for the Jets was a player whose time in the NFL is best summed by an Athletic headline from August: “At some point, Justin Fields will have to throw the ball — it would be nice to see it this summer.” The player whose only job it is to throw the ball can’t throw the ball. Very Jets.
The season itself has, um, not much better. The Jets lost their first seven games, and on the evening of October 25 were the only team in the NFL yet to win a game. The team’s owner had publicly derided Fields, making it clear he wouldn’t be back next year. Since about the fourth week of the season, as a Jets fan I had been rooting for the team to be the first franchise to ever go 0-17, hoping that would net them the #1 draft pick and a quarterback savior. Mind you, there weren’t any particularly good quarterbacks set to enter the draft, so each week I’d pick out a new favorite and come up with a catchy tagline for the Jets to rally around with each loss. Some weeks we were Misfiring for Mateer, other times the team was Sucking for Sellers, once they even had to Not Win for Nussmeier. Most recently, I had decided it was time to Misfire for Mendoza.
Yet despite the fact that I had spent most Sundays this fall rooting for my favorite team to lose, come October 25 I found myself sitting in DCA waiting for a flight to Cincinnati to see the winless Jets take on the Cincinnati Bengals. The trip was a wedding gift to a die-hard Bengals fan friend of mine. Conveniently, given where the Jets were in the standings, we were both rooting for the Jets to lose.
Until about 3 p.m. that Sunday, it seemed our mutual hope would come true. The Bengals jumped out to a 24-13 first half lead, powered by the 40 year old one-time Jet Joe Flacco. The Bengals, I learned, sing a multi-verse song every single time they score a touchdown. Flacco led his team down the field so many times that I had memorized the song by halftime. The only bright spot for the Jets was running back Breece Hall, who the team was expected to trade soon after the game concluded. He ran all over the Bengals, and each time he did I happily told my friend that the number of draft picks the Jets would receive when they traded him had increased.
But then come the second half, the Jets started to claw their way back. Down 38-24, with only a few minutes left in the game, the Jets scored a touchdown. Rather than kicking an extra point, and making it so another touchdown would tie the game, the Jets chose to attempt a two-point conversion. Now, anyone who’s ever heard of the New York Jets and their decades of misery probably had the same expectation for how this gamble would play out. The Jets would fail the conversion, lose the game by one point and be a little bit closer to a winless season. That was certainly what I was rooting for. I turned to my friend and told him that the Misfire for Mendoza hinged on that single play.
Against the odds, the Jets’ Justin Fields, the quarterback who couldn’t throw a pass, did in fact throw a pass, to backup running back Isaiah Davis. The Jets cut the lead to 38-32. The team’s defense, who hadn’t managed to stop the Bengals all game, sacked Flacco on third down, and were one drive from winning the game.
A few dozen yards later, the Jets were near the end zone. Fields lobbed the ball to Hall, who threw a touchdown to rookie tight end Mason Taylor. The Jets kicked an extra point, the score was 39-38, and much to the dismay of thousands of fans in orange and black the team had their first win of the season. I thought I’d be equally crushed, but I couldn’t stop reliving the ridiculousness of the game’s end — all the little moments where the entire enterprise could’ve spun out of control and yet didn’t.
In any objective sense, the running back who won’t be on the team in a week throwing a touchdown to secure a win for a quarterback who won’t be on the team in a year, potentially meaning the Jets miss out on the #1 draft pick, is bad long term. Maybe some quarterback prospect from this draft turns out to be a generational superstar and the Jets missed their shot to draft them because Hall threw that touchdown. Maybe in 10 years we look back at October 26, 2025 as the day the Jets really doomed themselves (unlike, you know, every other day in franchise history).
But maybe no quarterback in this draft class pans out. Maybe this victory helps the Jets’ new coach win back the locker room, and that moment kicks off a new era of Jets football. Maybe neither of those scenarios happen, and we end up in the middle.
Whatever the outcome, none of that was really on my mind as I saw the Jets eke out their 38-37 victory. I was just basking in the fun of an unexpected come from behind victory after so many weeks lacking that fun.
That’s the mentality I’m going into Election Day with. The Democratic Party hasn’t had a lot of moments worth celebrating this year. Tomorrow, regardless of what particular outcomes might mean for the long term future of the Left, we should enjoy the short term wins.