Zohran Mamdani And The Future Of The Democratic Party

OK, I know that all you smug people out there in the hinterlands are now snickering at me behind my back because I’m about to get stuck with one Zohran Mamdani as the Mayor of my city.

Probably, you have already read enough about this guy to know just how crazy and ignorant he is. If you haven’t yet studied up, here is a small sample of his stated positions: free transit buses for all, free childcare for all children 6 weeks to 5 years old, city-owned grocery stores, a rent freeze on all regulated apartments, vast expansion of city-owned subsidized housing (building on the success of NYCHA!), “cracking down” on landlords, plus some kind of a mental health intervention corps to intervene with violent criminals in lieu of police, all of this to be paid for by “taxes on big corporations and the wealthiest New Yorkers.” And of course, “globalize the intifada.” This guy founded the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Bowdoin College.

And don’t get the idea that he doesn’t mean it. When pressed on any of these issues, he has absolutely declined to back down or moderate on any of it. His no-limits version of the leftist project has earned him the endorsement of a who’s who of the far left of the Democratic Party: Bernie Sanders, AOC, New York AG Letitia James, New York City “Public Advocate” Jumaane Williams, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, ex-U.S. Congressman Jamal Bowman, and so forth.

If this guy actually gets elected in November, he will give the far left a trifecta of mayors of the big three U.S. cities: Karen Bass in Los Angeles and Brandon Johnson in Chicago, in addition of Mamdani in New York.

However, being the eternal optimist, I would note that this guy can serve a very useful function for the sane people of the country: he can be pointed to (along with Bass and Johnson) as representing and defining what the Democratic Party actually stands for, and what the Democrats will do if put in charge nationally.

Mamdani’s ascendancy puts what passes for the national leadership of the Democratic Party in what I would think is a rather tough spot. Or, maybe they don’t see it that way. But their choice at this point is either to support this guy enthusiastically, or repudiate him and try to get other Democrats to join in the repudiation. So far, from the big guns, it’s mostly support.

Consider Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the most senior of the elected Democratic leadership. From New York Jewish Week, June 25:

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader who likes to call himself the “shomer” (guardian) of Israel, spoke with Mamdani Wednesday and congratulated him on social media. “I have known @ZohranKMamdani since we worked together to provide debt relief for thousands of beleaguered taxi drivers & fought to stop a fracked gas plant in Astoria,” Schumer posted on X. “He ran an impressive campaign that connected with New Yorkers about affordability, fairness, & opportunity.”

(The New York Times does point out here that Schumer stopped short of a full-on endorsement.). Uptown Manhattan’s prominent Jewish Congressional Representative, Jerrold Nadler, did not stop short, and made the endorsement:

U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, the pro-Israel stalwart on the Upper West Side and parts of the Upper East Side, was even more enthusiastic in a statement intended to assure pro-Israel voters that he understood their qualms. “Voters in New York City demanded change and, with Zohran’s triumph, we have a direct repudiation of Donald Trump’s politics of tax cuts and authoritarianism,” Nadler said Wednesday, as he endorsed Mamdani in the general election.

The Times points out that a few Democratic Congressmembers from swing suburban districts expressed hesitancy about Mamdani. But did any of them actually repudiate him, and say something like “this is not what our party stands for”? Not that I can find.

The fact is that Mamdani in fact represents what the young and activist wing of the Democratic Party supports and believes in. The Democratic leadership cannot and will not stand up to this faction. So Mamdani provides an excellent opportunity for the Republicans to define the Democrats in a way that the large majority of voters will recoil from.

Meanwhile, I would not at all be sure that Mamdani will win in November. In this primary, Mamdani got about 432,000 votes out of about a million cast. That represented about 43% of a 30% turnout of the Democratic electorate in a closed primary. The total number of registered voters in New York City exceeds 5 million. Granted, the heavily Democratic general electorate tends to support whatever the primary voters have tossed their way. But in this upcoming election, there are plenty of votes that can be marshaled to defeat Mamdani if the opposition can get organized and can coalesce around one candidate. The most likely such candidate is the current incumbent, Eric Adams, who himself is rather badly flawed. But then, everything is relative.