What happened Tuesday is serious and big, but I start in a roundabout way. Throughout the 20th century it was the general way in American politics that when you made a lurch—1932 was a lurch left, from the presidency on down, 1980 a lurch right—you stuck with the lurch a while until you moved on, usually toward the center. In this century we lurch around more. This might suggest an enduring dynamism (strong people don’t fear new directions) or a constant fevered state (the weak thrash about). Whichever, we’re lurching, and afterward trying to understand our own logic.
An aspect of the modern conservative disposition is that we like the arts, culture and technology to be interesting and exciting, but we prefer government be boring, a stabilizing force while we act up in other areas. But it’s never boring now and likely won’t be in this century. Too bad.
So, on to Tuesday night’s returns and the Democratic sweep.
Yes, it was Donald Trump (both his substance and style) because everything is. We warned here that his workplace immigration raids would offend even his supporters; Hispanics, who’d been trending right, snapped back left across the board.
But it was also, obviously, what used to be called the high cost of everything, and a sense the government isn’t doing much in that area. And I believe it was that so many people feel that what stability they have is provisional and temporary. Artificial intelligence is coming to eat your job, you better have a thick social safety net when it does.
I want to focus on New York, which did the biggest lurch. In 2021 it elected the most conservative Democrat for mayor. This time it chose the socialist.
Zohran Mamdani got the mandate he wanted, and it was big. He broke past 50% in a three-man race as a declared, not hidden, socialist, the first such mayor in New York. He did this at 34, with no real résumé, and as a Muslim, again a first. It is a most extraordinary achievement.
And he didn’t come to do nothing. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was elected to Congress in 2018 and went to Washington, where she posed for magazine covers and did TikTok rants. She didn’t accomplish much after she ran into a little iceberg named Nancy Pelosi.
Mr. Mamdani won’t take a page from that book. He’s as serious as a heart attack. He told us in his victory speech. This is a man who six months ago was unknown to the vast majority of New Yorkers and 10 months ago was polling at 1%.
Was he humbled by New York’s open-minded, open-hearted embrace? Not in the least. He delivered a declaration of dominance: “To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.” Billionaires “can play by the same rules as the rest of us.” “We have toppled a political dynasty.” “We will put an end to the culture of corruption.” “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.” He declared a “new age.”
He made Barack Obama look modest and self-effacing.
Van Jones, watching it live on CNN, said, “I felt like it was a little bit of a character switch here.” During the campaign Mr. Mamdani was the warm, embracing fellow with the dimpled smile who loved everyone with an undifferentiated warmth. The night he won, he showed who he was: a serious ideologue who means it.
In a day-after interview in the New York Times he spoke of the size of his win: “It is a mandate to deliver on the agenda that we ran on.” The conversation turned to his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy. In the past he had implied there might be other ways to raise funds for his programs, but not now. “I think that our tax system is an example of the many ways in which working people have been betrayed.” The Times headline: “An Emboldened Mamdani Sheds Conciliatory Tone.”
A good guess: He won’t start out “moderate” but he will be clever, because he is. He’ll focus first on city services such as garbage collection, knowing he can lose it all if he shows incompetence on the basics. He won’t quickly impose the Democratic Socialists of America criminal-justice agenda and allow crime to spike. He won’t wear down popular and respected Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch right away—he’ll wait. But as months go by he’ll be an inch-by-inch bulldozer.
His economic agenda is to hike taxes on millionaires, billionaires and corporations. Nobody minds if he gets another $5 million a year out of a billionaire; even the billionaire will hardly notice. I wonder if the Mamdani administration is going to find out that billionaires and corporations have many legal ways to protect their wealth and profits, but high-salary “millionaires”—people who own a $1.4 million apartment and earn a joint $600,000 a year and have two kids in Catholic school, each with tuition, and are highly taxed (federal, state, city, property and sales taxes) already—are going to get clobbered. I wonder if socialists care about these fine points or just want to raise taxes on “the rich,” any rich, and get the credit with their followers. I suspect the latter. I suspect they think: Why should anyone have a million-dollar apartment when the homeless sleep in the streets?
There will be some interesting aspects of his rule. Mr. Mamdani didn’t just have a million votes; he had 100,000 volunteers. The young who supported him won’t disappear; they’ll do everything they can to help him. Many are underemployed, for many reasons. They’ll volunteer at the public grocery stores. They’ll make lettuce chic. They’ll haul sacks of sweet potatoes through Park Slope, and their hedge-fund fathers will say, “I sent him to Brown for this?” But a lot of us will be moved and cheer them on.
Republicans should understand Mr. Mamdani isn’t your bogeyman to use for your electoral amusement. You think you’re going to make him “the face of the Democratic Party,” in that stupid phrase, and everyone will hate Democrats and you’ll profit without even trying. But he’s cleverer than you, he understands the world of right now better, and in any case he has an ideology he swallowed whole, at father’s knee, with mother’s milk, and has fully absorbed and digested. He thinks he knows his historical meaning. Do you?
It isn’t necessarily true that Mr. Mamdani, unless he is an utter failure, will sour those outside New York on the Democratic Party. Americans think New York is a place apart, a liberal city that will always be New York-ing. In the coming AI crisis his brand of leftism may start to look good to some people. Mr. Trump can’t moderate himself or his policies and will continue to rouse wild opposition. He’s the face of his party.
“Mamdani can’t do anything alone, he needs the governor.” Kathy Hochul is up for re-election, faces a primary challenge from the left, and is surrounded by progressive legislators. She’s your bulwark? Against him?
Take him both literally and seriously.
