Dem
47
GOP
53
Politico had a piece this week talking about how Republicans are "giddy" about New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (D-ish), while moderate Democrats are gripped with "fear" that "his far-left politics will cost them at the ballot box."
The article does have some evidence, in terms of Republican digital ads and some slideshows that have been shown at various local committee meetings, as well as a few Democrats expressing anxiety. That said, we are not sure how much this is a real phenomenon right now, and how much it is a few anxious Democratic muckety mucks wringing their hands, and a few journalists looking to discover a horse-race angle in an election the Republicans have no chance of winning.
However serious this dynamic is right now, we'd make a couple of observations. The first is that Mamdani is, to a pretty large extent, a cipher right now. We know that worrying is what Democrats do, but perhaps any anxious Democrats should calm themselves for the moment, and wait to see: (1) if Mamdani actually wins, (2) how he governs, and (3) how good he is as making his views palatable to a larger audience. We are reminded of the quote by Upton Sinclair, an observation made nearly 100 years ago, and yet still salient:
The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC [End Poverty in California]. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to "End Poverty in California," I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them.
In a development that could be instructive, Mamdani has been winning over New York police officers, who have found that when he explains his ideas about policing to them, in person, they don't actually sound very much like the meaning that people take from "defund the police," a slogan that Mamdani once embraced (and whose meaning was ALWAYS distorted, usually deliberately).
Our second observation is that whether Mamdani wins election or not, and whether he personally becomes a right-wing bugaboo or not, the right-wing media is going to seize on someone to fill that role. If not Mamdani, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX). If not Crockett, then one of the Squad members. If not the Squad, then Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). If not Newsom, then some other Democrat. This happens every cycle, and has for at least decades.
What this means is that worrying about giving "fuel" to Republicans and their media apparatus is a waste of energy. The right wingers are going to FIND that fuel, damn it, and there's nothing that can be done to stop that. To us, then, that suggests that all the Democrats can do is work on ways to counteract that line of attack. For example:
Perhaps the person to study here is Mamdani's fellow New Yorker and Democratic socialist, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). There was a time when she fulfilled the bugaboo role, to the point that The Daily Wire, for example, was cranking out an average of over 8 pieces PER DAY about her. But now, she's basically gone mainstream. How? Why? Answers to those questions, which AOC herself might be able to help with, might be very useful to the Democrats. (Z)