Mamdani’s bigoted views are shared in the highest echelons of the Democratic Party.
Politico says that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s decision to endorse Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s mayoral race is a pusillanimous capitulation to the “pressure” from the activist left. Indeed, the endorsement was the result of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Mamdani camp and Jeffries’s team, with the activist Al Sharpton serving as an intermediary. But no one forced Jeffries to abandon the prudent trepidation he previously had when asked for his thoughts on the campaign of the democratic socialist candidate. Jeffries took this step of his own free will. He and his party should be made to account for it.
As the most recent mayoral debate demonstrated, Mamdani seems to have given little thought to the city’s problems or the unintended consequences that will follow his proposed solutions. Mamdani defers to the activist class for his policy outlook, so it’s no surprise that his policy preferences would give the activist class more control of city governance.
He wants to give teachers’ unions more power over the schools they’ve underserved and the students they’ve failed. He wants to give progressive reformers more influence over housing and construction policy and rent guidelines, and he’d light a fire under private construction interests by expanding the fibrous thicket of red tape through which they already struggle to navigate. He would make social workers first responders and give emergency dispatchers the authority to decide the level of threat on the other end of the line, providing a backdoor to the “defund” activists from whom Democrats have spent the last several years trying to distance themselves.
But Mamdani is no empty vessel. He’s a passionate and genuine opponent of Israel’s right to exist in its present form. As Mamdani stressed in an earlier New York City mayoral debate, Israel can be considered a criminal state merely for having permanent strategic interests in places like Gaza. If the IDF is engaged in defensive operations inside the Palestinian territories, it’s guilty of “occupation.” If it withdraws while still maintaining a defensive posture, it’s guilty of laying “siege” to those territories. It is an “apartheid” state that maintains a “hierarchy on the basis of race and religion” — charges that would come as a surprise to Israeli citizens of Arab descent, including those who serve in the Knesset and regularly protest the Netanyahu government’s actions.
Mamdani’s outlook is nothing short of bigoted. It’s the product of a cultivated ignorance that the candidate has shown no interest in correcting. Indeed, he clings tight to his preferred misconceptions. Hakeem Jeffries is unlikely to offer a qualified endorsement. More likely, he will throw his arms around this unacceptable mayoral prospect for the benefit of the progressives and socialists who are attempting a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party. Jeffries’s endorsement is cowardly, and it provides the GOP with ample opportunity to make the case, with evidence, that Mamdani’s views are shared in the highest echelons of the Democratic Party.
You’re going to hear that argument a lot in advance of next year’s midterm elections. Previously, moderate Democrats could contend that Mamdani is an outlier — unrepresentative of the party and its views. No longer.