There is already a queue as long as the one conjured up by Saatchi & Saatchi on their famous Labour Isn’t Working poster to have a pop at the self-declared ‘democratic socialist’ Zohran Mamdani, the man who will probably be the next mayor of New York.
Friends of mine in the city have told me they think he’s a mad man, not least because he wants to banish billionaires from Manhattan (”I don’t think we should have them”) and inject some good old-fashioned Bolshevism into Manhattan’s famous antediluvian arteries. Admittedly, New York needs a new mayor – Eric Adams has been a disaster – but electing Mamdani will simply semaphore to the average American that the left is perfectly happy to stay where it is, outside the White House, still gawping with envy and disbelief through the railings.
Especially when their new superstar has been publicly endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as well as that most selfish of far-left politicos, the awful Bernie Sanders. Right now, Gavin Newsom is the most well-known Democrat, but if Mamdani becomes mayor, he will immediately become Donald Trump’s new whipping boy.
Has the left learned nothing? Will it learn nothing?
In the same way that Einstein’s Parable of Quantum Insanity is almost certainly a fiction – he never said “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” – so the American left is behaving as though last year’s election was some kind of fantasy. And because Donald Trump continues to act in such an extreme way, the left continues to frame him as an aberration, almost as though he is existing in a parallel universe, a universe they think they can alter by frowning and shouting like a teenager.
Their response has been echoed by Elon Musk, who for some bizarre reason thinks that by launching a rival party – whose only policy appears to be a recently acquired but obviously deep-seated dislike of the President – he will immediately become a potential candidate. If Musk means what he says, his only core tenet will be buying advertising, but even that won’t help him win. Many on the left think America will be literally crying out for change after four years of Trump, but without a centrist firebrand to lead the charge, they don’t have a hope.
One of the most dispiriting things I’ve heard recently was Kamala Harris publicly suggesting she was in something of a professional quandary. Should she, she asked theatrically, try and become the next Governor of California, or should she run again for President? That’s right. Having been ritually humiliated at the polls, having been told in no uncertain terms that her brand of politics wasn’t wanted, and that she was far too extreme for the vast swath of floating voters who hover between New York and California, she seemingly ignores it all and blithely ploughs on as though nothing has happened.
Naturally, many democrats have concluded that Trump’s success was rooted in the idea that for the previous four years, their party simply reflected the priorities of white-collar, college-educated coastal elitists rather than the issues which tend to effect blue-collar families, such as crime, inflation and immigration. But by electing Mamdani they’re basically papering the outside of City Hall with banners proclaiming, ‘Business as Usual’.
And that really would be insane, as Einstein almost certainly didn’t say. Watching Elon Musk try and wrestle some of the limelight away from the President will certainly be good sport, but watching the left try and redefine themselves in spite of irrefutable evidence to the contrary could be awfully embarrassing.
The United States isn’t Glastonbury, and it’s not interested in people from the entertainment industry jumping up and down waving flags and telling them what they want. It’s also not interested in entitled liberals telling them they were wrong.
A few years ago, waiting for a friend, I was standing outside a downtown bar in Austin, Texas, which is probably the most liberal place a person could be between Manhattan and San Francisco. This was during the first Trump administration, when the country was still coming to terms with the newly elected President. Two elderly and rather grumpy gentlemen staggered by me, looking not unlike Statler and Waldorf, the cantankerous old geezers from the Muppets. Like me, they were tourists.
“The thing is, I don’t like him, and I never did, and to be honest with you, I never probably will,” said Statler (I think), with a scowl, “but I sure as hell don’t want somebody else telling me that, especially some rainbow-hatted clown from Austin.”
As far as I know, Zohran Mamdani doesn’t have a rainbow hat, and I think it would be unfair to call him a clown, especially as the mayoral election isn’t until November. But if you ask me, he’s already doing the devil’s work.
Dylan Jones is editor at large at The Standard
