No, Zohran Mamdani Is Not the Democrats’ Future
Editor's Note
In recent years, the campaign to destroy America has moved from academic salons and the radical fringe into the mainstream of the Democratic Party. This fact became clear to many with the victory of avowed socialist Zohran Mamdani in the party’s primary for mayor of New York City. Peachy Keenan argues, however, that the real threat to the American way of life comes not from Mamdani or the communist chic set, but from Gavin Newsom’s attempt to make the destructive Left’s agenda palatable to middle America.
Zohran Mamdani the TikTok communist is running away with the mayoral race in New York City, and all the other Democrats in Congress got the memo from Obama and are falling into line to support him. Just a few short months ago, they were swearing they would find a way to appeal to young men who loved Donald Trump and the white working class, and now they are getting behind an Indian immigrant who said he was black on his college applications.
Of course, they also made this promise in the aftermath of the 2016 election, and they broke that one within a few weeks. And so, a buffoonish TikTok personality who sides with Hamas and wants to impose racially segregated socialism on Manhattan is poised to run the most important economic center in the world.
They all saw the same poll, I guess. Democrat voters now say they overwhelmingly support Palestinians over Israel, which is an earthquake in American politics. Supporting Israel was something even left-wing Democrats always did. Among Democrats, 59% now sympathize with the Palestinian side; just 21% still support Israel. A massive shift has tilted the party wildly to the Left.
Harry Enten on CNN broke down the cratering of Israel support on the Left. “In 2017, the Democratic Party was a Pro-Israeli party. They sympathized with the Israelis by 13 points. But look at this sea change! Oh my God, that is a change in the margin of 56 points over the course of just 8 years.”
The war on Hamas and the insane unaffordability of life in New York City gave Mamdani his opening, and he took it. It wasn’t even that hard: Anyone who has gazed upon the affectless, frozen terrain of Andrew Cuomo’s visage could see that he’d lose. Mamdani was running against a man with less charisma than a fire hydrant.
Clearly, the Mamdani effect is alive and well in expensive dark blue cities filled with poor immigrants and rich white liberals desperate for a new way to virtue signal to their peers. But while smart people see cataclysm as a one-off event that is extremely specific to a city and an election and a population of voters that includes large numbers of new arrivals, Democrats do not. They are catastrophically misreading Mamdani’s ascent as a trend the rest of the nation will follow. They think blue-state progressive populism is the answer to getting back in power.
And it might be, but only in big Marxist enclaves like Los Angeles and New York. This is because they have no choice. They looked in the mirror and realized that all their attempts to fake “white, blue-collar Midwesterner but woke” to fool Trump supporters would never work. They see Tim Walz fumbling with his shotgun and prancing down the runway at a Kamala rally, flapping his jazz hands around, and they know that they have a testosterone deficiency. You know you’re in trouble with men when Doug Emhoff is the only man left in the party of philanderers who can still impregnate a nanny.
And so, because the Liberal Straight White Guy like Bill Clinton path is forever sealed off to them, they are going with a guy whose citizenship papers are fresher than the halal he just got off a food truck and is currently eating with his dirty fingers on a subway car.
This path, of course, may pick up a few House seats. Maybe the Squad will add a few new Hamasniks to its ranks. But the real power is still wielded by Americans who will not ever vote for a Communist who openly pledges to tax people different rates based on skin color. The next presidential election will be decided by the people who elected Donald Trump three times. They are not going to sit around and watch as some rookie intern with an Antifa pin on his man purse decides to reimagine the government.
Nope, populist socialism is not going to sweep the nation. It may sweep college campuses, but 2028 is safe from the likes of Zohran.
But guess who else has done the Mamdani math? Our old friend Gavin Newsom. He saw Mamdani’s numbers with black voters and he flew directly to South Carolina (an important primary state) to shake hands with black voters. They loved him for it. Newsom knows that black people know about how Mamdani put on blackface to get into elite colleges (and failed). He also no doubt has seen Pete Buttigieg’s numbers with black people: currently zero percent support.
Newsom sees his opening: He is the only viable alternative black voters and moderates who hate Trump but don’t like Communists are going to have.
Therefore, my prediction long ago still stands. 2028 is coming up soon, and it will be Newsom vs. Vance.
The only thing standing in Trump’s way — and Vance’s, soon — is something that will almost instantly set off an economic boom, build morale, and diminish the chances any more two-bit commies take a major metropolis: the mortgage interest rate. Making mortgages affordable again is the one thing that will end the careers of these grievance sellers. Whether it comes down, quickly, could be the difference between a long and glorious Golden Age and a short-lived respite before Real Communism™ gets tried here for good.