Douglas Murray: Will NYC fall for the selfie-entitled Zohran Mamdani?

New York Post

5 days ago

What do you do if something doesn't work?
Why, surely you should double down even harder on the things that make it not work.
Right?
That seems to be the attitude of voters who decided that Zohran Mamdani was the candidate for them in the New York City mayoral race.
There are plenty of excuses that can be made for how New York ever had this woeful candidate put before us.
A self-professed 'democratic socialist.'
You could point to the failure of the Democratic Party to put up viable and talented candidates.
You might wonder at how Andrew Cuomo honestly thought that there was a way back for him in city politics.
And you might blame the vanity of a man who even now seems unwilling to drop out of the race.
Or you might wonder why the Democratic Party has decided to make the same mistake on the city level that it has made on the national level in putting forward tested but failed candidates instead of successful and talented ones.
An American tale
But in the end we have to face the fact that the present front-runner for mayor is the most woefully inadequate candidate possible.
Promising the most woefully impossible agenda.
On Mamdani's qualifications the facts speak for themselves.
Mamdani may be presenting himself as the representative of struggling New Yorkers, but he himself is anything but.
Privately schooled at the Bank Street school, he went on to study at Bowdoin College in Maine.
From there he loafed around for a bit, trying to make it as a rapper before deciding to become a political activist.
Truly a story of American struggle.
He had the cushion of his parents, of course.
Because while Mamdani would like to present himself as the voice of the voiceless, he is in fact the perfect megaphone for a type of entitled coastal elite.
His father is a professor at Columbia University — of course.
And it seems that his father's interest in colonialism, post-colonialism and decolonization has formed his son's political worldview.
The political base that Mamdani junior has decided to appeal to is exactly the sort of person who thinks 'decolonization' is one of the big issues of our time.
A couple of centuries after it had even the slightest impact on the lives of people in this country.
But if you have been educated by people like Mamdani Sr. then you might well think that decolonization is the great issue of our time.
Because there are empires and colonies everywhere these days, aren't there?
Ugly racial politics
Yet that is just the mood music.
The real crux of Mamdani's campaign comes down to just two things.
The first is the playing of overtly racial politics, bringing the most divisive approach to the forefront of his campaign.
This comes not just in Mamdani's promise to tax white New Yorkers, or to pretend that it is white New Yorkers who somehow have the power these days (doubtless because they're all still running those darn colonies).
It is also there in his appeal to communities based on his own ethnic and religious background.
Not just the Muslim card, but the Ugandan immigrant card, the Asian card.
He used this not just to appeal to New Yorkers from South and East Asia but to young, white, college-educated New Yorkers who like to fetishize and glamorize anyone who they think of as 'other.'
It doesn't matter how little Mamdani has achieved in his life to date, or how impossible his promises like rent control are.
Mamdani need only release a video of himself eating without a knife and fork for these grads to coo with appreciation.
You might put this down to the TikTokization of our politics, where a relatively fresh-faced candidate can make a sound bite seem long-winded.
This is politics for a post-sound bite generation, where someone's 'vibe' matters more than their actual platform.
Still we can glimpse where Mamdani might still unravel.
In recent days we had confirmation that Mamdani lacks basic accounting skills.
His promise that as mayor he will use $140 million to fund socialist grocery stores is something he claimed was already accounted for.
It turns out that the money he thought was available for his free-food scheme is private spending which he mistook for government spending.
Still, who cares what is private and what is government when you're promising a socialist utopia?
Anti-white tax scheme
As for his claim that white people need to be taxed more, again this is pure 'decolonization' bunkum.
All recent studies show other racial groups exceeding the earnings of white Americans in this country.
In fact the two groups which nationwide exceed the earnings of white Americans are Asian Americans and, er, Indian Americans.
I wouldn't put it past Mamdani to attack these groups as well in due course.
After all, the only sectarian politicking which Mamdani is keener on than antisemitism is his anti-Indian sentiment.
Mamdani is one of those sectarian politicians who is never happier than when accusing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being a 'war criminal.'
Modi is one of the international leaders who Mamdani has said he would like to ban from coming to New York.
But it isn't his grandstanding on the world stage that is his biggest drawback.
Rather it is his incompetence and wishful thinking on the home front.
After all, this city has been run by left-wing politicians for a long time.
If you think the city is unequal, unfair and just begging for more left-wing policies, then why have these policies to date provided such terrible results?
A sensible voter might conclude that it is because left-wing policies don't work.
A naïve voter might be persuaded that it's because they haven't been tried enough, and conclude that what New York needs to thrive is for the rich to be chased out and everyone else to be given free stuff.
There are 5 million voters in this city.
The only way that Mamdani can win is if the only people who come out to vote are the minority of New Yorkers who are as delusional as he is.