We’re waking up to a political earthquake here in the Big Apple. Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist and state assembly member, upset disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary, and it wasn’t particularly close (a self-avowed socialist won the Financial District, including the precinct that houses the Stock Exchange. Unreal!)
The thing about NYC politics is it matters even if you don’t live here, just given how much money, power and influence flows through the city. And this race exemplifies the pickle Democrats find themselves in across the country.
If you haven’t been following this campaign, here’s the gist: Cuomo, who resigned from office amid a cloud of sexual harassment allegations back in 2021, decided to stake his political comeback on becoming mayor. He ran one of the worst, most non-existent campaigns I have ever seen in my life. Barely out there, giving almost no interviews, no clear platform to speak of beyond “will take on Trump.” He didn’t even look like he wanted the job (he didn’t, he thought he could still be POTUS one day and this would be his launchpad. But voters see right through that and find it insulting).
Mamdani, meanwhile, did the opposite. Young, handsome, charismatic, killer smile (this stuff matters), he was all over the place. I think his canvassers knocked on my door half a dozen times over the last month. He went on podcasts. He walked the length of Manhattan over the weekend, just talking to voters, looking like he was having a blast. He connected with people in a visceral way, sort of similar to both Obama and Trump in that regard.
The problem is that Mamdani has zero experience running anything, much less a bureaucracy the size of NYC. I literally have more management experience than this guy, who as mayor would oversee a workforce of 300K with a budget of $112B. But more importantly, he suffers from having some of the Worst. Policy. Ideas. Ever.
Here’s a sampling: He wants to convert empty retail space in the subway system to homeless shelters, an idea so bad I honestly have a hard time imagining someone who actually lives here could dream it up. He wants to build city-run grocery stores (for those times when you ‘re at the supermarket and think, ‘What this place needs is the consumer experience of the DMV’). And then a bunch of other progressive nonsense that will end up having the opposite effect of what it’s intended to do. Freeze the rent, make the buses free, more taxes on wealth that will drive even more of the tax base out of NY.
Mamdani’s victory is not a done deal. There’s a general election in November, and our old pal, the formerly indicted-turned-Trump-bootlicker Eric Adams will be running as an independent. He was left for dead but could actually win now! The Republican candidate is a perennial joke since the GOP gave up on competing in NYC, which is a shame because a competent, centrist R could absolutely win here (think Giuliani before he went insane). But there’s gonna be a big push from the establishment to try and torpedo Mamdani in November. If you thought your choices in the presidential election were bad, this is what we’re dealing with in the financial and media capital of the world. Embarrassing.
This upset also illustrates some of the themes we talk about here, vis a vis the Democrats. Dem voters across America are fed up with the status quo of the party. If you run a crappy, old candidate hoping to coast on name recognition alone, it won’t be enough anymore. If I were Chuck Schumer I would be waking up mighty scared today. If and when AOC decides to primary him, she will win under present conditions.
But Democrats will likely take exactly the wrong lesson from this, which is that they need to field ideologically extreme candidates who excite their base, but who then will have no chance of winning a general election except maybe in the deepest-blue cities. This is a serious problem. The candidates who excite Dem primary voters are the ones with positions that are toxic to normie voters.
The lesson should be: you can win as a moderate but you need to find a way to connect with people on the cost-of-living issue, which is the Biggest Thing That Matters in America Today. Mamdani’s bad ideas, like freezing the rent, will only exacerbate the underlying causes of the affordability crisis in NYC. But at least he’s talking about it! He’s throwing spaghetti at the wall, which is more than you can say for Cuomo, Biden, Schumer or any of the ancient Democratic standard-bearers who presided over a complete destruction in the standard of living, and then have the gall to ask us to keep them in power in perpetuity. Welp, that era just ended.
President Donald Trump has again described the result of U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities as “total obliteration,” after multiple reports on a top secret early intelligence assessment indicated that key elements were not destroyed in the attacks. The intelligence said Iran may have removed much of its highly enriched uranium from the sites before the strikes, and that components such as centrifuges could have survived. The White House had earlier called such claims false. Read more.
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