National Review Online
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
On Tuesday night, Democratic primary voters chose
socialist Zohran Mamdani as their nominee for mayor of New York City. Mamdani,
a previously unknown progressive state legislator, defeated former Governor
Andrew Cuomo in an upset so decisive that Cuomo instantly conceded the race
rather than wait until the primary’s “ranked choice” ballot is recalculated
next week to reflect a two-man preference between Cuomo and Mamdani. Those
final numbers will look different, but the outcome is now a foregone conclusion:
Zohran Mamdani is the Democratic nominee and, as such, is likely to be the next
mayor.
Having editorialized once about the public
menace posed by a Mamdani mayoralty, we have little to add but to shake our
heads in despair at whom New York Democrats have selected. Andrew Cuomo — who
remains as corrupt and personally foul as he ever was while governor of the
state, and who ran his campaign as a joylessly inevitable coronation rather
than an appeal for votes — perhaps made the choice too easy for New Yorkers
eager for change. But they have been sold a bill of goods regardless.
To recap some of Zohran Mamdani’s more prominent campaign planks: He has called for citywide rent freezes
and promises to eliminate MTA bus fares at the risk of suffering service
reductions. During the George Floyd era, he was a “Defund the Police” activist;
he has since moderated to degrading them instead, in favor of using “social
workers” as opposed to armed force to contain urban violence and maintain
safety on troubled streets. He has advocated for the implementation of a $30
minimum wage. Mamdani proposes to pay for these splendid gifts to the city’s
voters by raising taxes even further on the city’s top income earners, in the
cynical belief that those who make up his tax base are stuck there, cannot
flee, and are thus cows to be helplessly milked.
Lurking behind Mamdani’s pie-in-the-sky socialist agenda
is his abiding commitment to anti-Zionism. It is alarmingly noteworthy that,
prior to his 2020 election as a state assemblyman, Mamdani’s sole perceptible
animating sentiment was anti-Israeli activism, which he was heavily invested in
(particularly the “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” movement). Mamdani
vehemently denies the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. Earlier this
month, he spent several days defending the use of the phrase “globalize the
intifada” as a legitimate statement of opposition to Israel, comparing Hamas’s
violence against Israelis to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Voters have rewarded
this rhetoric with a stunning victory. For a city with the largest Jewish
population anywhere outside of Israel, the omens could not be gloomier or
clearer: This is no longer the Democratic Party they once knew.
Perhaps the greatest fear of all is that Mamdani, like
most progressives new to power and eager to wield it, is simply unprepared to
govern. Mamdani’s experience with government — with any sort of employment
whatsoever, in fact — amounts to little more than four years spent in Albany as
a state house backbencher. Assuming he wins in November, he is going to be
handed the keys to the most complicated town in America to run — as a starter
job. Does he even know how to turn the ignition?
This morning, disappointed independents and Democrats are
reacting to the outcome in New York by hoping against hope that Mamdani will
somehow be suddenly moderated by the weight of his responsibilities; that once
he takes office and has to wrestle with a budget and city politics, he will be
forced to come to his senses and recognize he cannot run New York as a
progressive fantasyland. We see little reason for such optimism; in fact, we
have already seen what happens when a person of similar qualifications is
handed the reins to a major city, with the tragic example of Chicago’s Brandon
Johnson. Mamdani’s supporters counter this by claiming he is a much more adept
man than the lackwitted Johnson. But it has nothing to do with intelligence or
skill; anyone who seeks to keep even one of the maximally hard-left promises
Mamdani campaigned on will, as Brandon Johnson, destroy both himself and his
city as a result.
No comments:
Post a Comment