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A scandal-ridden alleged sex pest or socialism with Queens County characteristics: These were the inspiring choices New York City Democrats faced in today’s primary. In a pick your poison race, it appears voters opted for the socialist. The Democratic establishment has only itself to blame. And if the party doesn’t heed the lesson out of New York, this local contest could presage a disastrous 2028 presidential primary.
I won’t waste much time on the winner, Zohran Mamdani. Suffice it to say, I’m not a fan of what he stands for. Not a fan of his freebie policy proposals, which smack of a grade school student council president promising ice cream and video games in the classroom. Not a fan of his radical left, anti-Zionist worldview [ [link removed] ], with which I’m well acquainted from my Soviet childhood.
And if Mamdani’s ideology were not a sufficient turnoff, I’d point to his thin resume. The mayor of New York City is responsible for the wellbeing of more people than the prime ministers of several NATO member nations. A prospective New York mayor needs more than Mamdani’s four years in the state assembly to prepare for the job. Sure, a geriatric candidacy won’t energize voters, but there’s a middle ground here—to quote a JFK campaign jingle: “old enough to know, young enough to do.” [ [link removed] ]
Given all of that, how did someone like Mamdani win? If you step outside of Manhattan and the East River shoreline, you’ll find that New York City is more purple than deep blue progressive. Many New York Democrats hew more moderate than their counterparts in other big cities. In a typical primary, a more sensible candidate would win.
Andrew Cuomo positioned himself as just that person—the normalcy candidate. The problem is that the disgraced former governor wasn’t. Normalcy is not having over a dozen sexual harassment [ [link removed] ] allegations to your name. It isn’t massaging coronavirus death counts [ [link removed] ] to burnish your reputation (although the architects of the Chernobyl coverup might be proud). Suddenly returning to politics less than half a decade after ignominiously resigning isn’t normal. A do-nothing, ChatGPT-written [ [link removed] ] campaign from someone who only moved to the city full-time last year reeks of entitlement. We should not be surprised that these things turn voters off.
An extremist victory is what happens when the normalcy candidate isn’t actually normal.
There’s precedent for my conclusion. Look no further than the 2024 presidential race. Joe Biden desperately wanted to be the normalcy candidate. Yet being the president while you have significant age-related impairments [ [link removed] ] isn’t normal. Kamala Harris, for all intents and purposes, became a stand-in for this abnormality. And voters chose Donald Trump.
Democrats had the experience of 2024 going into Tuesday’s election and still did nothing. As with last year’s presidential election, there was no coordination. No concerted effort by any power brokers to get on the phone with Cuomo and say “You can run—it’s a free country—but we’re not supporting you.” The party somehow failed to find an alternative in the largest city in the country, which, as my friend Bill Kristol pointed out, is home to both House and Senate Democratic leaders [ [link removed] ]. (Technically, the field was wider than Cuomo and Mamdani, but the other candidates were non-entities). Every endorsement of Cuomo, from former President Bill Clinton on down, is an indictment of the establishment’s judgment.
It’s easy to see a similar scenario playing out in three years as the Democrats gear up for another presidential campaign. The establishment will coalesce around a candidate with real baggage—perhaps someone too intimately involved with the coverup around Biden’s health or Kamala Harris’s failed run. Skeptical voters will then opt for a radical leftist. It would be hard to fault them for their disillusionment, just as we can understand why so many New Yorkers didn’t want Cuomo.
Yet in choosing someone from the far-left fringe who’s unpalatable to many in the broader electorate, Democratic primary voters will risk handing the Oval Office to JD Vance or some other unscrupulous Trump disciple. Similarly, Republican mayoral hopeful Curtis Sliwa—New York’s resident Batman in a red beret, more costumed character than proper candidate—or Turkey-bribed [ [link removed] ] Trump hostage [ [link removed] ] Mayor Eric Adams could have at least a fighting chance against the radical socialist.
Never say never. Mamdani himself started at the bottom of the polls only to leapfrog a former governor in a matter of months while the Democratic establishment watched on. A political party that’s as passive as this is just one sleepwalk away from never waking up again.
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