In every election, the voters choose a candidate to do a job. In some races, they also have an opportunity to send a message.
Sometimes, in a change election, voters pass over the best person for the job in favor of making a statement. Although she certainly wasn’t “the most qualified person ever to run for president,” former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was clearly more politically experienced and temperamentally suited to the presidency than Donald Trump, reality star and real-estate grifter, in 2016. But Americans, especially those in the Rust Belt swing states who felt ignored as their communities were ravaged by NAFTA and opioids, were angry—and they wanted Washington to know it. Trump represented a raised middle finger to the establishment, which always expects us to be satisfied with business as usual, even when usual really sucks for a lot of people.
Not every election grants you an opportunity to send a message with your vote. Mitt Romney, whose personality and politics differed only minimally from Obama’s, offered us no way in 2012 to tell the Beltway to drop dead for bailing out Wall Street rather than Main Street after the 2008-09 financial meltdown.
New Yorkers are poised to make the 2025 mayoral race a change election with a clear message to the Democratic National Committee: the progressive base of the party will no longer be sidelined.
It’s not just about picking a mayor. If it were, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, 67, with decades of experience navigating the state capital with outsized influence over the city’s budget, would easily prevail over a 34-year-old state assemblyman.
New York voters are sending a message to the city’s business class—we hate you and your high rents and your rampant gentrification—and the DNC: not only can you not make us vote for your preferred candidate, we will vote for your least favorite candidate because you tell us not to.
Zohran Mamdani got my vote and those of most people I know. And it’s not because he’s the most qualified person for the job. By objective standards, that’s Cuomo. New York is the biggest city in the U.S., incredibly diverse and complicated, and someone who knows Albany and is willing to bully and threaten those who impede progress is often what’s required to get anything done. And while I dislike the credible butt-grabbing allegations, it wouldn’t stop me from voting for him. If we rule out scumbags, will any politicians be left?
I cast my ballot for the future boy-mayor because Michael Bloomberg financed ads claiming that socialism is dangerous and other billionaires can’t stand that Mamdani supports the Palestinians and more billionaires—so many billionaires, why not me?—say that Mamdani would cause another 9/11. The way I see it, anyone whom billionaires dislike can’t be that bad. When The New York Times and New York Post screamed that Mamdani was a socialist menace, we fell in love with him. And when the landlords began howling that they were going to leave the city, that cinched the deal.
Bye, bastards!
Mamdanism isn’t about MeToo-ing Cuomo, or lingering resentment for the corrupt Trump-loving Democratic incumbent Eric Adams, or the rise of the Millennials, or even Mamdani’s highly focused and disciplined campaign. Voters are angry. They’re tired of squalid subways and ransacked drugstores and lawless streets and greedy landlords at the same time as prices are soaring. New York was dangerous in the 1970s and 1980s, but also cool and more affordable. Normal New Yorkers feel ignored by ruling elites who insulate themselves from urban decay as they scoot from their high-rise penthouses guarded by doormen to private clubs to the first-class lounge at the airport.
Those elites shake their heads over their VSOPs as they bemoan an electorate willing to turn over the nation’s biggest city to some commie twerp. Don’t they know that state-run grocery stores are a bad idea? Do they want the bad old “Bronx is burning” days to come back because landlords can’t raise the rent to cover their costs?
We know. We just don’t care.
(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou.”)
2 Comments. Leave new
1. “The most qualified*** person for the job” in the US, chosen by election, from mayor of any city of population >100k and upwards to president means: doing the electoral dog-and-pony show ONLY to seek approval, $$$$$ and power by coddling corporate (obscenely) fat cats and eagerly anticipating ruining the lives of up to the other 350 million Americans, if warranted, in order to do so.
2. A “leftist know-it-all” ground swell of “Mamdani is merely sell-out #43” grumbling may well be correct but a) the alternative is an “optimally qualified” insult to the voters’ intelligence and political self-respect and b) while no campaigning politician should be taken for his/her word, the person ultimately taking office will DO something “progressive^^^” only if he/she has previously promised it and will certainly NOT do it if previously unmentioned, opposed or attacked with characteristically vicious DNC contempt. Note added in proof: Also in NYC, Rep AOC was thrust onto the electoral stage a bona-fide media darling. That was the first hint of her political populist “legitimacy.”
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***Secretary Clinton WAS exceptionally optimally qualified for US president in 2016 … meaning we would not be reading this article if she had been elected since the average surface temperature of most US cities would not yet have fallen below the boiling point of water, the result of the total global nuclear annihilation she would have rather joyous provoked within weeks of her inauguration.
^^^ intended in favor of the mass of people
“former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was clearly more politically experienced and temperamentally suited to the presidency than Donald Trump, reality star and real-estate grifter, in 2016”
Politically experienced? Temperamentally suited? We’ll have to disagree.
As for Mamdani. I suspect that, as usual, the Very Rich (TM) have it so that they come out ahead either way.
Assuming Mamdani wins (despite the polls, I know that “socialists” fail to win elections) … so what? The first day/week/month in office, and the various unions will probably all go on strike. Why? Because that’s what the people who control the unions (the very wealthy) want. But even if there aren’t strikes, there’s a million other ways to kneecap anything Mamdani tries to do. And kneecapping will happen. End result: Mamdani’s time as mayor goes down as a disaster. Another demoralizing loss to the progressives.
If Mamdani loses? Another demoralizing loss to the the progressives.
The rich will win either way because, despite all his talk-talk, Mamdani is never going to really go after the wealthy. Sanders would have. AOC might. But Mamdani? I think there will be a lot of voter’s remorse.