New York Gets What It Asked For

By Jeffrey Blehar

Friday, January 02, 2026

 

Shake off the daze, National Review readers! I know everyone is still a bit confused about which day of the week it is — the glorious toll of a Christmas and New Year’s that both fell midweek — but whether or not you thought yesterday was Wednesday or Friday (it was technically Thursday), it was Year Zero for newly sworn-in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, on the day he formally took office.

 

And, however carefully cloaked and contoured his language might have been for the occasion, Mamdani showed his true colors as he let loose with the sort of inaugural speech that could have been delivered by a comic-book villain: “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” Mamdani proudly intoned. That doesn’t have quite the same ring as “We take Gotham from the corrupt, the rich, the generations of oppressors who have kept you down, with myths of opportunity, and we give it back to you, the people” — but very much the same spirit, I’d say.

 

Happy New Year, New Yorkers! You voted for this!

 

Spirits were high when Mamdani delivered his speech yesterday afternoon, with a crowd stocked with true believers watching their political dream “come true” in a way that felt like a curiously faint echo of the Obama era — faint if for no other reason than the earlier generation had more to believe in and hope for than the current wave of disillusioned souls hearkening to an uncertain banner. Zohran the Magnificent had many words for the residents — I would say “captive residents,” but they can leave any time they like, and after all they asked for this — of New York yesterday afternoon as he delivered his New Year’s inaugural address after his swearing-in as mayor of Gotham, but this was probably Hizzoner’s single most important bullet-point: “I was elected as a Democratic Socialist and I will govern as a Democratic Socialist.”

 

Let’s find out what that means! Mamdani’s audience — composed of his most devout activists — was both curiously sedate and also amusingly cued to react to what (for a battered midwesterner) seemed like grimly ironic applause lines. (“Universal child care for the many by taxing the wealthiest few” drew a cheer — and beleaguered Twin Cities Somalis no doubt quietly noted that whenever God closes a door, He opens a window.) “We will govern expansively and audaciously” Mamdani said, as he rose to a climax, and the crowd roared to Mamdani’s emphatic rebuke to Clintonism: “To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say this: No longer will City Hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorker’s lives.”

 

What can I add? Here’s to the genius of federalism, I guess. With apologies to my NR colleagues who still have to live and work in the city, the clear majority of New Yorkers, who believe themselves to be citizens of a similarly disaffected “world,” voted for this. We will see how policing and the rule of law evolves over the next four years. We will see how safe the city remains for its Jewish residents. I am not particularly optimistic — though I am willing to be surprised — but either way, this is the path they have chosen.

 

At the risk of localizing my perspective too much, realize: I speak with the zombiefied sangfroid of an Illinoisan. (From the vantage point of 2026, Chicago’s epitaph seems both clearly outlineable and yet written long ago: “We were dead before the ship even sank.”) I have a very clear sense of where I think New York will trend, quite simply because I have lived through all of this before. My progressive friends — honest enough to be frank about Chicago’s problems, as all intelligent progressives are — insist to me, with almost mantra-like repetitiveness: “Zohran is smarter! Zohran is smilier! New York has more money to play with! Give it a chance!”

 

Well, I don’t have to. I have enough on my plate as it is. As for New Yorkers, let Zohran Mamdani rule the roost for the next four years, and let’s see if a sleeker, more refined, and more media-friendly version of the Brandon Johnson experience can make it on Broadway. It sure hasn’t worked here; but as all the smartest people are currently saying, “True third-worldism has never been tried.”