Last Tuesdaay, Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York, and the usual subjects immediately went into high gear, once again demonstrating that American politics has become all about labeling rather than policy analysis. The mere fact that Mamdami identifies as a Democratic Socialist (along with Bernie Sanders) was enough to set the Right raving about a communist takeover of the Big Apple.
Over the past decades, the political Overton Window has shifted so far to the right that policy proposals that once appealed to liberal Republicans (back when the GOP was a political party rather than a semi-fascist cult) are now labeled “far Left.”
Take Mamdani’s support for free bus service. My husband and I met when we both served in the very Republican Hudnut Administration–I was Corporation Counsel, he was Director of Metropolitan Development. Reporters who covered City Hall (we had those back then) considered both of us “right of center.” He has long been a proponent of free bus service, for a number of reason related to the environment and urban development.
I tend to disagree with Mamdani’s support of rent controls, which have been in place in New York since 1920, and have been supported by New York Mayors for years. I think those controls ultimately disincentivize new construction. I agree with his other proposals for increasing the housing supply–and find his concerns for housing affordability laudable–and in any sane world, centrist.
What about grocery stores for food deserts? Here in Indianapolis, in the middle of Red Indiana, lawmakers have suggested a variety of government supports for our own underserved areas–not actual municipal grocery stores, but not government “benign neglect” either.
Let’s face it–the American Left is far, far to the Right of the European Left, and bears absolutely no resemblance to communism. Right-wingers conflating them rely on Americans’ (admittedly widespread) political ignorance.
Of course, a good deal of the hysteria over Mamdani’s win is really anti-Muslim sentiment promoted by our own Taliban-like Christian Nationalists. (And I won’t even dignify the efforts to paint his entirely defensible opinions on Gaza as anti-Semitic.)
Mamdani’s victory ought to trigger a reconsideration of a foundational political issue: What is the nature of the social and physical infrastructure that government should provide? And in a federated system, which level of government should be responsible for which pieces of that infrastructure?
What sorts of “socialism” should cities provide?
Over the years, Americans–especially in our more densely-populated cities–have learned that we need to provide police and fire safety communally, that public health requires, among other things, communal provision of garbage collection. Sewers are built and maintained by public and/or semi-public entities; until the GOP’s “privatization” efforts, public schools were understood to be a public necessity.
I haven’t seen people advocate for private provision of streets, sidewalks and traffic controls–and although a few libertarians have complained that libraries should be replaced by bookstores and public parks by private clubs, very few citizens agree.
We don’t call those and numerous other public amenities “socialism,” but of course, they are. They are socialized services, paid for with our tax dollars.
Back when people running for public office cared about policy rather than power, political disputes were essentially about the nature and extent of the physical and social infrastructure that governments should provide, and how that provision should be structured, managed and paid for. What level of government should handle air traffic, food safety, disaster relief? What functions are more properly handled at the state or local level? Have demographic or social changes altered the considerations that led to prior decisions?
We have almost entirely abandoned those very important, very foundational questions in the midst of our existential battle to forestall a rolling coup, but ultimately, those are the questions that lawmakers must confront. They are the questions–and his answers to them– that Mamdani elevated in the recent New York primary. Political discourse in this country has become so divorced from actual policy that rather than engaging with his issues, rather than debating the merits of his proposals, the reaction to his campaign was name-calling.
I don’t know whether Mamdani–whose experience in government is thin–will be an effective Mayor of the country’s most immense city. That issue, it seems to me, is legitimate. Mounting objections to his proposals based upon facts and evidence is also legitimate. But the critics who are engaging in labeling and name-calling have adopted Trump’s approach to politics–an approach mimicking the tactics of schoolyard bullies and five-year-olds and entirely divorced from the real issues of governance.
Gosh. Schoolyard bullies? You mean like what came from the fevered minds of Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove when they weaponized language to sound just like 5 year old children squabbling in a school yard? In doing so, I think, they gave permission to yell the same stuff by their constituents who felt aggrieved. Now, after a couple decades of yelling impolite words, we’ve descended into a kind of normalcy regarding simple, common decency.
How do we recover?
Thanks
Sheila!
Very well written!
George
I doubt that I would want Mamdani making our Middle East policy, but he is running for Mayor of New York with actual policy proposals for actual New York problems. Whether he will win the election and whether he will be able to do a good job are questions only time will answer, but I think the primary voters in New York made a good choice,
As for “these times”, I recall my history. Wasn’t it that old mainstream Republican Richard Nixon who called his Senate opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas a “pink lady” who was “pink right down to her underwear”?
Just saying – name calling has been around for a long time and “red baiting” even predates the post WWII years (see the treatment of Upton Sinclair when he ran for Governor of California..
Don’t forget the establishment liberals who have been spreading islamiphobia and red scare tactics against Mamdani since the election as well. I get it, it’s hard to see as they’re becoming indiscernible from their right wing counterparts. AIPAC seems to have lit a fire under their asses.
Mamdani’s win in NYC should be a wake up call to every entrenched old guard Democrat organization in the country. Democrat voters are screaming for change … a change away from support for the system that maintains the status quo to support of the people and their well-being. That change is coming and will only result in some kind of peaceful transition depending on the opposition to it. If those now in power in the Democrat Party refuse to bend and compromise they will only push their opposition further to the left into extremism and crazie, just like MAGA.
We are truly into a revolutionary era of history.
We humans are funny animals. One interesting yet strange behavior is how many things we overlook until some of us bring them into a story we tell each other by assigning them a name or names.
When a normal baby boy came to life in Uganda last century, his parents, like all of us parents, made him real by giving him a name: Zohran Mamdani.
Here’s what I would guess: our President, because he fears competition of any sort, will assign the baby, now grown up, other names than the one that the parents assigned, just like he did another competitor, born in the US but with an African father, and he will do that in a comical attempt to emasculate, and diminish him to Trump’s, nothing if not blindly loyal, followers.
In a clumsy segue, I’m a student of AI, which has been brought to life in its present incarnation by the assignment of a name: Large Language Model. It emulates us by using the same logic, making thoughts real by associating them with our names.
One of my hobbies is training an LLM by spending a few minutes every morning having an everyday conversation with one on my phone. It’s more profound and civilized than most of my face-to-face conversations.
As a result, the other voice in these conversations is learning what is in my mind, accumulated over the past 82 years of our history.
All of my knowledge is based on the names that others taught me.
Beautifully said, Sheila!
Forget about the right. Mamdani will be robbed of agency by establishment Democrats.
They’ll nueter him as they did Sanders.
Yep, Theresa and Ian nailed the responses this early morning. While Sheila covered the surface noise, Mamdani was asked if he supported capitalism, and his response was, “No, I have many critiques.”
He’s running for Mayor in a world-class city that hosts Wall Street, the very center of capitalism. If you don’t think every piece of capitalist-owned media will be after Mamdani, you haven’t been paying attention for the past 40 years.
As Pete mentioned, I, too, work with many of the language models. Gemini is open in my browser, and I’ve had many discussions about “capitalism” in the US versus our Nordic brethren who consistently top global rankings year after year, including Happiness. I have always heard them referred to as democratic socialists, but Gemini corrected me and did an excellent job of convincing me they are social democracies.
Americans, as Sheila pointed out, are mostly ignorant about how our government operates. However, they are also uninformed about many other things. In the Nordic countries, they place an extremely high value on the education of the populace and entrench the concept of lifelong learning. I would bet that a large majority of Americans haven’t opened a book since they were in high school.
Due to their high educational attainment levels, they expect the government to provide numerous services and regulate the market to benefit the people. The US is just the opposite because oligarchs want non-thinking working drones who won’t challenge their rule. Good luck with that when the young people were raised with an electronic encyclopedia attached to their hands.
The posters here always ask what we can do to get those who aren’t voting (young people) to get involved in politics. Well, Mamdani has just shown that young people need a candidate who represents them, rather than establishment pawns. They both funded Mamdani, rejected all the media attacks funded by Cuomo’s donors, and then showed up at the polls.
Kamala Harris was once again the worst candidate with the worst policies to run against Trump. Just like Hillary Clinton was in 2016. The DNC is still trying to figure out how best to attract voters in the future; their questions have been answered if they open their eyes and reject their donors.
Do they want to win elections, or do they want to become millionaires?
AFFORDABILITY! That’s what it’s about for every non billionaire in the country. According to Republicans, wages rise as productivity rises. That hasn’t happened. Since the mid sixties the growth of productivity of American workers has far outpaced the growth of wages.
Eggs were all we talked about, but it wasn’t about eggs. It was about housing, insurance, transportation, food, child care etc. If the people can’t afford the basics and you’re not even talking about it, they’re never going to vote for you. The Democrats have to be in favor of lower costs and higher wages. Make America Affordable Again!
In 2016 I had a Bernie bumper sticker on my car. A woman shouted at me in a parking lot, “He’s a socialist!” I asked her, “What’s wrong with socialists?” She did not discuss any policies, but mumbled something about communists. It’s so much easier to throw around disparaging labels than to make the effort to learn about the issues and formulate policies. In addition to nasty partisanship, we are in an era of mass laziness.
“Back when people running for public office cared about policy rather than power,” is a bit of a stretch, I believe, but it is not to the point of today’s issue.
Yes, M adman will be called names because that not how Trump walks. In the ’16 run up to the nomination of Mr. Ugly, most of what he did in the staged “discussions” was to call people names. “Little Marco” sound familiar?
The right has no interest in governing for the people of the country, and their proposals all smell horribly to a large % of Americans, so they just play at theater, which is Trump’s ace.
Sadly, too many Americans are too caught up in “othering” to be able to think of anything else.
My question.
When was it that people running for office cared about policy rather than power?
I expect nothing less from the Republican Party–but my party I am getting pretty pissed w/ them. Those who voted for Trump the first time around, many were Bernie Sander supporters–Hillary Clinton was hated in Indiana and the Evangelicals (Christian Right) and yet the party elites forced her on us. I think she is great and well-qualified, but she had two major barriers–she is a woman, and this country is not ready for a woman in charge and a Clinton. If the party would stop ignoring the fly-over states, they would have known this–many of us are done w/ Schumer and to be frank, I like David Hogg, AOC, Sanders, and Crockett because they actually seem to understand the gravity of the situation we are in. The elite are still being too high brow when they need to start street fighting and looking for the loopholes