Who knows? Maybe this is an upgrade, considering the recent performance of the alternative.
On the other hand, one point should be clear by now: You never go the full Marxist in American politics, let alone the Full Hamasist. But perhaps the Democrats have made that a moot point already. Why not, then, have Democrat governors embrace the Islamist-cheering socialist they just made mayor of New York City?
What could go wrong?
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has spoken privately with several Democratic governors about how to take on President Trump and tackle other priorities, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: The meetings — with three potential 2028 presidential candidates — are a sign that Mamdani, a democratic socialist, is seeking advice on governing from Democrats across the party’s ideological spectrum.
Mamdani talked on the phone with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Monday and with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore on election night, three people familiar with their conversations tell Axios.
Let’s take a moment to parse this out more fully. It’s not surprising that Mamdani would reach out to other Democrat executives to attempt to coordinate on strategy. What should be surprising is that other Democrat governors would take the calls of an anti-Semitic Marxist for that coordination. It isn’t surprising at this stage, however, because of the radical drift of Democrats over the last few years, especially in places like Illinois and Maryland.
Pennsylvania, on the other hand, is a bigger surprise. Josh Shapiro got chased out of the governor’s mansion by an anti-Semitic firebomber revved up by the same kind of rhetoric Mamdani routinely used until the general election this year. Last week, though, Shapiro claimed that Mamdani cleared up “misunderstandings” and that he was ready to work with him:
Shapiro credited Mamdani with an “incredibly impressive campaign,” and saw the affordability “through line” in the party’s wins outside New York. Asked about the Democrats who called Mamdani an antisemite, Shapiro, who is Jewish, noted that he’d been critical of how the mayor-elect dealt with extremism, but said they’d cleared the air.
“Mamdani called me, and we had a very lengthy conversation, and I was very direct with him about how hurtful some of the words were that he used or that he allowed to be used around him,” said Shapiro.
“He explained to me his perspective, which I thought was helpful for me to hear, and on some things, we agreed to disagree,” the governor added. “But I thought it was a healthy dialogue, and I appreciate the fact that he reached out.”
This passage is more revealing about the nature of the strategic “coordination” intended to boost La Résistance. Mamdani isn’t connecting with these Democrat leaders to learn at their feet. He’s asserting his primacy over existing Democrat leadership in the wake of his easy victory in the Big Apple. Democrats had been on a losing streak under previous leadership, and that losing streak extended to this week with Chuck Schumer’s idiotic shutdown follies.
The elections last week shook up the party and especially its confidence in previous leadership. It would be inevitable for the winners last week to assert some authority from victory. Note well, however, that no one’s reporting strategic-coordination calls involving Abigail Spanberger or Mikie Sherrill, both of whom won by wide margins by at least hinting at more centrist policy agendas. Both Pritzker and Moore might benefit from such consultations.
Instead, the party is lining up to put the radical socialist and Hamas sympathizer at the spearpoint of its Orange Man Bad strategy. They are doubling down on Democrat Socialism, and pushing the party farther to the Left. What does that mean? Matt Taibbi tried to warn Democrats (and Republicans, separately) what they are buying — misery:
The major difference between Mamdani-style socialism and the leftism that swept over much of the globe in the last century is that this version is even dumber. It remade itself according to an ideology based less on class than a new intersectional theory of oppression that’s ridiculous, fantastical, grossly racist, and allows the old bourgeoisie to play leading roles. It’s hard not to admire the innovation, which solves the problem Marxists have always complained about when it comes to the United States: a consumer economy that makes life just tolerable enough to discourage the masses from revolting. Now that rich people can be revolutionaries (by claiming gender confusion or waving some other intersectional flag), there’s no longer a need to wait for deplorable support for left revolution. Anyone can be oppressed, and they’re all welcome to join the cause. It’s brilliant!
What’s particularly ironic about last night is that the old, Clintonian version of the Democratic Party would probably be sitting in the White House right now if it hadn’t submitted to so many of the (deeply unpopular) tenets of this new ideology. The most humorous example involved last night’s loser, Andrew Cuomo, who gave Donald Trump years of ammunition when in an attempt to clown the MAGA slogan he said America was “never that great.” Trump probably wouldn’t have won many of the crucial swing states last year had it not been for the “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you” ad. Similarly, Trump’s relentless attacks on DEI – a radical re-think of civil rights ideas that substituted the organic quality of equality for the bureaucratic concept of “equity” – were highly successful, and for good reason. Even the preposterous attempts to explain Trump’s success as a reaction to “whiteness under threat,” uttered by people who didn’t see anything odd about the proliferation of “whiteness studies” classes at universities, put wind in Trump’s sails.
Here’s the dumbest aspect of this strategy: Trump will go off the stage in three years. Even if all of this radicalism didn’t make Trump’s points more obvious, the idea that an entire party should calculate its strategy for one man who’s a midterm away from lame-duck status is so obviously stupid that only Academia could possibly miss it.
Taibbi has some thoughts on Mamdani himself, too:
To people who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, Mamdani is an immediately recognizable type, a disciple of the Leninist school of agitation that teaches effortless insincerity as a necessary means to reaching power. They would know that time and again, peasants and workers supported some general aims preached by visiting city revolutionaries but were extremely reluctant – like the mare Mollie with her ribbons in Animal Farm – to give up their hard-fought little farmhouses and slices of land, or Sunday mass, or a host of other worldly things. That reluctance is what led to the vision of Mamdani-like intellectuals like Grigory Zinoviev, who explained an educated vanguard was needed, because “the working class does not understand completely today, but will understand tomorrow.” As we all know, nothing bad ever comes from an upper-class vanguard placing itself in charge of things.
Indeed. And now the extant leadership of what used to be the Democrat Party has come to bend the collective knee to the callow, upper-crust socialist. Nothing good will come out of that either.
Editor’s Note: Zohran Mamdani is an avowed Democratic Socialist and has a real chance to become the next mayor of New York City.
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