With code words and dog whistles, Zohran Mamdani puts a pretty face on hate
Zohran Mamdani sure is good at putting a pleasant face on hate.
His platform's pointed reference to boosting property taxes on white New Yorkers is 'just naming things as they are,' he claimed Sunday, simply 'an assessment of what neighborhoods are being under-taxed versus over-taxed.'
So why make a point of linking it to race, unless you're talking code?
Similarly, he wouldn't back down on his defense of the phrase 'globalize the intifada,' which along with 'from the river to the sea' is blatantly about opposing Jews as Jews and eliminating Israel.
But 'that's not language that I use,' he blurred: His language is about 'a belief in universal human rights' — rights that, strangely enough, Israel actually respects but not the Palestinian territories.
Even his plans to hike taxes on businesses and the rich are somehow 'a vision for every single New Yorker, including business leaders across the city.'
Sure, everyone has a place in his vision — but for many, it's as his villains who'll have to pay.
His supporters hear the dog whistles; the rest of us are supposed to be snowed by his aw-shucks claims about how he's just being 'frank' and perhaps a trifle impolite in 'naming things as they are.'
Let's see if he can keep up this nasty game all the way to Nov. 4.
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Boston Globe
24 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
‘Nepo baby' Zohran Mamdani is still a breath of fresh air
If Zohran Mamdani's 'luxury beliefs' turn out to be even half as effective as those of fellow 'nepo baby' Franklin Delano Roosevelt's — social security, minimum wage, and that pie-in-the-sky idea of a 40-hour workweek — he will be a great mayor. Sandy Huckleberry Jamaica Plain Globe Opinion writer Carine Hajjar's analysis of Zohran Mamdani's victory in the New York mayoral primary fails on several counts. First of all, her accounts of being harassed on the New York City subway presumably happened under current or prior administrations. None of them are socialist. How Mamdani will handle subway crime is unknown at this point. Bernie Sanders, a strong supporter of Mamdani, is hardly a self-soothing progressive. He is a genuine populist, and presumably so is Mamdani, who cites Boston's Mayor Michelle Wu as a role model. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up As for calling him a nepo baby, where does that come from? His father is a professor and his mother is a film director. So what? Is no one with a college degree allowed to be a populist? Advertisement Michael Keating Cambridge In her recent column, columnist Carine Hajjar turns her sights on Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor. She paints a picture of a city beset by dangerous, mentally ill, unhoused people, and insinuates that 'nepo baby' Mamdani doesn't have the best interests of New York's most vulnerable, particularly women, at heart. She cynically pits various groups against each other to advocate for more policing. Advertisement Ironically, she fails to acknowledge that the aforesaid crimes and misdemeanors are happening on the watch of 'tough on crime' Mayor Eric Adams. Similarly, while bemoaning the experiences of harassment faced by women, she makes no mention of Andrew Cuomo's well-known history of harassing his female staffers and employees. Cuomo, a former New York governor, conceded New York City's Democratic mayoral primary to Mamdani on Wednesday. Hajjar suggests that Mamdani's ideas for advances in mental health care and community violence prevention are pointless — dangerous, even. Yet we know from our experience here in Boston that these types of innovative community violence prevention efforts do, in fact, work. It is just such initiatives, put in place by Mayor Michelle Wu, that have helped crime rates in our city Katie Sutton Hingham New Yorkers rejected the Democratic status quo While no one can predict how successful Zohran Mamdani will eventually be, there is little doubt that his victory was due to an overwhelming desire on the part of New Yorkers to believe in, to quote from his victory speech, 'the power of the politics of the future: one of partnership and sincerity.' Bruce Goldberg Newburyport Mamdani only promises more chaos Carine Hajjar states that the current NYC policies — such as neglect of the mentally ill and the homeless, and the deliberate nonenforcement of misdemeanor crimes, have made everyday life more miserable and dysfunctional in the city. Mamdani promises more of the same, only less law enforcement in the interest of public safety and even more neglect. How would that lead to better personal security, cleaner neighborhoods, and an improved quality of life? Advertisement J Q Public
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Zohran Mamdani knocks Donald Trump criticism, denies accusation he's a communist
Democratic candidate for New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani denied President Donald Trump's accusations that he supports communism, saying the president wants to "distract from what I'm fighting for" in a new interview. Mamdani, a 33-year-old state Assembly member, won the Democratic primary over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who was long considered the frontrunner and establishment candidate. Current New York City Mayor Eric Adams is running as an independent on the November ballot. When asked to respond to Trump's repeated assertions that he is a communist, Mamdani told "Meet the Press" on June 29 that he isn't, explaining that "I've already had to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I'm from, who I am." "He wants to distract from what I'm fighting for," Mamdani said. "I'm fighting for the the very working people he ran a campaign to empower that he has since then betrayed." Several leading Republicans have also called for Mamdani, who immigrated to the United States as a child, to be deported. Earlier in the day, Trump called Mamdani a communist and a "radical left lunatic" on Maria Bartiromo's "Sunday Morning Futures" on Fox News. "He's a communist. I think it is very bad for New York. I don't know that he's going to get in. It is inconceivable that he is," Trump said. Mamdani is not a communist. He is a democratic socialist. A communist believes in collective ownership of all property and the end of capitalism. A democratic socialist doesn't believe in ending capitalism, but aims to reform it through democracy Mamdani also said that he is committed to keeping New York a sanctuary city. "Ultimately, we've seen that this is a policy that has kept New Yorkers safe for decades. It's a policy that had previously been defended by Democrats and Republicans alike, until the fear mongering of this current mayor," he said. Adams called for changes to sanctuary city laws that advocates say protect migrants in New York. He has also pushed for more cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a move that requires a vote from the city council. The changes came shortly after the Department of Justice dropped federal corruption charges against Adams. Democrats accuse him of cozying up to Trump to avoid the legal challenges. Trump said Mamdani would be "very unsuccessful" if he tries to keep New York a sanctuary city. "If he does get in, I'm going to be president and he's going to have to do the right thing or they're not getting any money. He's got to do the right thing," Trump said. Trump said he would not publicly back a candidate in the race, which along with Mamdani, Cuomo and Adams includes a third independent candidate and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. "Whoever is the mayor of New York is going to have to behave themselves or the federal government is coming down very tough on them financially," Trump said. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mamdani knocks Trump criticism, hits back at communism accusation
Fox News
7 hours ago
- Fox News
Ex-NBC News host Chuck Todd laments Democratic Party a 'collection of people that don't like Trump'
Ex-NBC News host Chuck Todd lamented on Thursday that the Democratic Party was just a collection of people who disliked President Donald Trump when pressed on whether the Democrats were a left-of-center party. "I think this is the identity crisis that they have. I think it's just a collection of people that don't like Trump right now, right? And that's served them well in '20, but imagine trying to create a big tent that had AOC and John Kasich in it, right? You know? Or Liz Cheney and AOC. You sort of got to rip a hole in the middle, right, as you're trying to stretch that tent," Todd told disgraced former CBS News anchor Charlie Rose. Todd and Rose discussed Zohran Mamdani's New York City mayor primary win and more during the conversation. "It feels like they're way too poll-tested. It feels like that they're trying so hard to sort of keep their suburban voters, and that's been part of their problem. The growth in the Democratic electorate is in the suburbs, wealthy suburbs, and so the growth of the Republican electorate has been in the working-class exurbs and actually, even in working-class urban areas. And, I think that that's been their disconnect, is that their voters are in one place, their messaging is in another, but when they try to message to their suburban voters, they've sort of lost touch with their working-class roots," Todd continued. Todd said both parties' coalitions were too big and added, "we would probably be a better democracy if we could have 4 major parties." The ex-NBC "Meet the Press" moderator has been critical of the party in the wake of former Vice President Kamala Harris' loss to Trump. He questioned whether the public was sold a "40-year bill of goods" with regard to former President Joe Biden's family-man image during a conversation with CNN host Jake Tapper on the "Chuck Toddcast." "You and I covered, for most of our professional lives, the story of Joe Biden was: This guy cared about his family so much he commuted home every night from Washington," Todd said. "You know what else you could say is, this man was so ambitious that after his family went through that tragedy, he commuted every day to work, like it's the same story. I sit here, I look at this, and I think, were we sold a 40-year bill of goods?" Todd said in March that Democratic leadership, specifically House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, were feeling "paralyzed" by the two different constituencies within the Democratic Party. "Jeffries and Schumer are acting paralyzed because they have two different constituencies. They have ones who are worried about a left-wing tea party, and they should be worried about that, because I do think this anger inside the base is real," Todd said. "Then you have others who are like, hey, I won, and Trump carried my state. So I've got to do this. So, I think that's why Jeffries and Schumer come across as paralyzed, because they're trying to placate a coalition party that doesn't know which direction to go to." Todd suggested during his conversation with Rose that the Republicans might not have stuck with Trump as their nominee if Biden didn't run for re-election at all.
