Reflections on Zohran Mamdani’s victory with veteran Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf.
Do you think that Mamdani’s election marks a turning point for New York, or is it just politics as usual?
It’s absolutely a turning point, and not just for New York but for the whole country. It represents the continued indication of the death of the Democratic Party. It’s a dead carcass that is now being taken over by an entity that is not the Democrats. That entity is the Democratic Socialists of America. They have a very clear agenda, and if they are successful, they will change the very nature of politics in this country, which will likely lead to the beginning of the end of the American pluralistic democracy as we know it.
It also reflects the strange merger—or perhaps marriage—of various political forces.
It is a merger of the DSA, an entity that is decidedly anti-Israel as a major part of its platform, and another entity that is wavering on its commitments to pluralism, the State of Israel and the Jews. Because you can’t be in three places at the same time, meaning that you’re nowhere at all.
You live on the Upper West Side, and many if not most of your neighbors voted for Mamdani.
That shows our failure as Jews and as those of us who are conservative in that we lost a generation and maybe even a generation and a half of people who will vote for someone who hates us and has made that public. He has said that he believes in “globalizing the Intifada,” which means murdering people like us. And it also tells us that we failed to provide Jewish education and taught people that the Holocaust is what Judaism is about, meaning that they have voted to become victims. So why are we surprised?
There are other political machines in New York City and New York State. How much damage can Mamdani do, and how much pushback is he likely to face?
He can be very damaging because the legislature will likely not take him on, even though they won’t agree with him on most issues. That’s number one. Number two is the leftist hype. The left is in ascendancy in New York because Trump is the alternative, and he is seen as the worst person possible. Whatever he sees as a negative is embraced here, so it’s not that difficult to run against him. If Mamdani continues to push himself as the anti-Trump, you can anticipate that he will enjoy tremendous popularity among his former colleagues in the Assembly, which he already has.
The fact that the DSA has made strides in local elections tells you that politicians who are not the most brainwashed are also part of what I now call the “political industrial complex.” We now have a generation of politicians who have never done anything else but be politicians. They are being paid more now and receive better benefits than most non-politicians. They’ve never worked for a living and never got a callus on their hands. How can they know how to do anything but that? And that’s what they will continue doing.
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