What happens when a political candidate attracts the support of his party’s most extreme officeholders but fails to secure the endorsements of the actual leaders of his own party, the ones who hold the most sway? That is the dilemma faced by New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani. Though polling suggests the race is clearly his to lose, Mamdani has become a lightning rod for a party that has hit the skids. Looking for any port in a storm, he turned to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), of all people. The elite champagne socialist from Massachusetts showed up on Monday to give her blessing – though some might think it a curse – to the man who has risen out of nowhere to dominate the national conversation about the Democratic Party.
After a feeble showing in the 2020 presidential primaries that marked her as unmistakably not ready for prime time – she was overwhelmed by Joe Biden, for heaven’s sake – Sen. Warren seemed to all but vanish from the stage. So what exactly does she bring to the table now? Well, mockery, for one. She has long been a laugh line, ridiculed by Donald Trump as “Pocahantas” after one of the most ridiculous and gratuitous decisions ever made by a prominent politician, undergoing a DNA test that wound up putting the lie to the fake Indian heritage she claimed. So much for her political judgment.
But absent the support of mainstream Democrats, Mamdani appears ready to settle for whatever endorsements from the far left he can vacuum up. And the backing of fellow socialists – some say Marxists – from the likes of Jasmine Crockett of Texas, Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, et al. is fully indicative of the political ecosystem in which he operates.
Will Liz Warren Help or Hurt the Cause?
What Mamdani does not realize is that attaching himself to a loser like Warren may actually have weakened his position. And it accentuated the equally ridiculous claim by Mamdani on a college application that he is “African-American” because he was born in Uganda, before moving to the US at seven years old. The front-page headline about it in the New York Post is one for the ages: “African-American Meets Native American,” subtitled, “Mamdani and Warren in Liars’ Summit.”
By traveling to New York to endorse the self-proclaimed democratic socialist, all Warren really accomplished was to draw unwanted attention to the three powerful Democrats – Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and Gov. Kathy Hochul – who have refused to endorse the mayoral nominee. In fact, not a single mainstream, establishment Democrat has dared to endorse Mamdani for fear of being labeled as a socialist in a country now dominated by the ever-ascendant Donald Trump and Republicans.
How many New Yorkers appreciate that the long-ridiculed senator from a state they instinctively dislike injected herself into the race? At best, they will likely chuckle at the notion and dedicate little or no thought to it. But at worst, they could resent the interloper from “Tax-achusetts” preaching to them. Either way, an argument could easily be made that the alliance only draws further attention to Mamdani’s extreme beliefs.
But Warren acted as if she were a native New Yorker, stating: “For me, New York City is the place to start the conversation for Democrats on how affordability is the central issue, the central reason to be a Democrat, and that delivering on it in meaningful, tangible ways that will touch working families is why we’re here. When someone stands up and says, ‘I will lead this city by making it more affordable — and here are my plans, real plans, plans to deliver on childcare, plans to deliver on housing, plans to deliver. We’re going to experiment. We’re going to try things on groceries.’ That is the Democratic message.”
One wonders how the city’s residents fancy being the subjects of “experiment,” especially after revelations about city-funded markets in Kansas City featuring mostly empty shelves and rancid produce. The stores, known as KC Sun Fresh, lost nearly $900,000 over the last year after receiving tens of millions of dollars in subsidies dating back to 2018.
The one certainty about this race is that a Mamdani victory would set off another exodus from New York by businesses and people of means that could make the flight of New Yorkers under the miserable tenure of Bill de Blasio look like a mere trickle. New York has already lost 546,000 residents since Joe Biden took office in 2020. The people who have already fled or plan to flee if the once-obscure 33-year-old assemblyman is elected mayor are the ones whose tax revenues have kept the most expensive city in the country afloat. God knows where the money would come from to pay for Mamdani’s socialist utopia centered around his promise of “free” childcare, public buses, and government-run grocery stores paid for by soaking “richer and whiter neighborhoods” (headlined in the NY Post as “The Price is White.”)
Mamdani’s Naked Anti-Semitism
Just as frightening is the fate of the city’s Jewish population, the largest in the country and second only to Tel Aviv in the entire world. Mamdani is an anti-Semite through and through, as confirmed by, among other things, his participation in post-October 7 demonstrations, his promise to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu if he sets foot in the city, and his refusal to renounce the term “globalize the intifada,” an unambiguous aspiration to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. How can that be reconciled with the 1.8 million Jews who call the city home? It seems clear that if this voting bloc is organized, it could block Mamdani’s election. But incredibly, while the radical disconnect between an anti-Semitic Muslim and the city’s Jewish population has been a source of considerable conversation nationally, there has so far been minimal uproar among voters in the Big Apple, a product of shrinking support for Israel among the city’s Jews.
Just under one million New Yorkers voted in the Democratic primary in June. In a city with 4.8 million eligible voters, many more will likely vote in the November general election. However, voter turnout has not exceeded 40% in a NYC mayoral election since 2001 and has been below 30% in every mayoral election since 2009. If there were ever a race likely to attract high turnout, it is this one, though the reality is that at least one of the three other candidates – sitting Mayor Eric Adams running as an independent, vanquished Democrat Andrew Cuomo, and Republican Curtis Sliwa – would almost certainly have to drop out in order to stop Mamdani. And while hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers will undoubtedly pull the lever for the socialist-cum-Marxist, they will hardly do so because of the endorsement by Elizabeth Warren – or their ultimate self-interest.
