As the New York City mayoral race looms, some conservatives are rooting for socialist Democrat Zohran Mamdani to win it. It is a dangerous folly to do so.
The reflexes of politicians seek every advantage. They love it when the opposing party picks a radical. The logic for conservatives is that if Mamdani is chosen in New York, it would alienate voters outside the city and help candidates on the Right win seats in the 2026 midterm elections and in 2028.
If “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” and Mamdani damages Democrats by revealing them as extreme, he can be seen as his own party’s enemy and an unwitting ally of Republicans. Or so the thinking goes. As the Wall Street Journal noted, “Nobody is happier than Republicans who represent the New York suburbs.”
It’s a common fault to care more about immediate electoral prospects than about long-term damage to the nation. But it’s the difference between statesmen and mere politicians.
And it isn’t just politicians. George Will, political and cultural commentator, told Bill Maher he wanted Mamdani to win. His reasoning: “Every 20 years or so, we need a conspicuous, confined experiment with socialism so we can crack it up again. Socialists’ slogan used to be, ‘Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.’ The new socialist slogan is, ‘Trust us this time; it won’t be a mess.’”
Mamdani may bring GOP victories and remind us all of the wreckage and squalor that is socialism. But Will said “confined,” and that is debatable. Just because Mamdani’s writ as mayor would not run outside the city, it doesn’t mean the rot would stay inside the Big Apple.
Mamdani’s policies would change the policies of the whole Democratic Party, and change its tenor and rhetoric, too. He is youthful, intelligent, fluent, and persuasive, just like Barack Obama in 2008. Former President Joe Biden might describe him, saying, “He’s the first mainstream Islamist immigrant who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy … that’s storybook, man.”
If he wins on Nov. 4, Democrats will want some of his gilt to rub off on them. That’s why New York Gov. Kathy Hochul belatedly endorsed Mamdani. She’s late to the party, but to save her political career, it’s better late than never. As the City Journal commented, it’s a Faustian pact, a deal with the devil because it will lead the party toward the manifest and manifold evils of socialism.
Seeing wider electoral danger, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) delayed endorsing Mamdani for as long as possible but eventually surrendered, coming out with faint-hearted and equivocal support, saying, “There will be areas of agreement and areas of principled disagreement.” Do you think this will impress or appease the socialists who think the party isn’t radical enough? No, it will take heart from Mamdani and then take over the Democratic Party entirely.
Like the Republicans of suburban New York, Jeffries and Hochul — will Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) jump on the bandwagon? — are thinking short-term while sacrificing eternity, which in politics means the next generation.
The late British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once said, “In politics, there is no use looking beyond the next fortnight.” Wilson was a byword for cynicism, but his opinion is now the norm rather than the exception.
What does it mean that Mamdani’s probable victory will accelerate the Democrats’ slide into overweening leftism, pushing policies of economic ruin at home and anti-Westernism and Islamist barbarism abroad?
The most important thing it means is that eventually those will be the policies of the federal government in Washington. No matter how much optimists believe Mamdani and his like will be unelectable on a national level, it is in the nature of democracies that the electorate gets bored with the people in power and throws them out to give the other side a try. This happens for the novelty value, if for nothing else.
A socialist Democratic president and socialist Democratic congressional majorities would become established facts, probably sooner, not later, and would not be the stuff of never-never nightmares. The socialist experiment will not be contained in New York City. When that happens, America will not be America anymore — at least not one recognizable to those who came to know it in the generations of its greatness.
HUGO GURDON: THERE’S LEFT, FURTHER LEFT, AND THEN MAMDANI
It is harder for Republicans to beat Democrats who are moderate or center-left, not way off in distant left field. That is what voters want in their central government. It’s natural that Republicans and conservatives think their best interests lie in Democrats nominating militants to stand for election. But it is shortsighted.
Eventually, those militants will get control of the whole Democratic Party. Then there will come a day when the electorate shrugs and, in a fit of absentmindedness, hands them the levers of power.
