Perhaps this is actually an upgrade, given how the “alternative” has performed lately.
But one thing should be obvious by now: in American politics, you never go full Marxist, and you certainly never go Full Hamasist. Yet Democrats seem determined to make that rule irrelevant. So why wouldn’t Democrat governors line up to embrace the Islamist-cheering socialist they just handed the keys to New York City?
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has spoken privately with several Democratic governors about how to take on President Trump and tackle other priorities, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: The meetings — with three potential 2028 presidential candidates — are a sign that Mamdani, a democratic socialist, is seeking advice on governing from Democrats across the party’s ideological spectrum.
Mamdani talked on the phone with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Monday and with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore on election night, three people familiar with their conversations tell Axios.
Gee…what could possibly go wrong?
Let’s break this down. Of course Mamdani would reach out to fellow Democratic executives — radicals tend to network with radicals. What should raise eyebrows is that these Democratic governors are actually taking calls from an openly anti-Semitic Marxist to “coordinate strategy.” Then again, given how far left the party has veered in recent years — especially in states like Illinois and Maryland — maybe it’s not all that shocking anymore.
Pennsylvania, however, is another story. Josh Shapiro was literally driven out of the governor’s mansion by an anti-Semitic firebomber who was whipped into a frenzy by the same kind of rhetoric Mamdani routinely used up until this year’s general election. Yet last week, Shapiro claimed Mamdani had simply “cleared up misunderstandings” and said he was ready to work jointly:
Shapiro credited Mamdani with an “incredibly impressive campaign,” and saw the affordability “through line” in the party’s wins outside New York. Asked about the Democrats who called Mamdani an antisemite, Shapiro, who is Jewish, noted that he’d been critical of how the mayor-elect dealt with extremism, but said they’d cleared the air.
“Mamdani called me, and we had a very lengthy conversation, and I was very direct with him about how hurtful some of the words were that he used or that he allowed to be used around him,” said Shapiro.
“He explained to me his perspective, which I thought was helpful for me to hear, and on some things, we agreed to disagree,” the governor added. “But I thought it was a healthy dialogue, and I appreciate the fact that he reached out.”
This part lays bare what’s really going on with all this so-called “strategic coordination” meant to energize La Résistance. Mamdani isn’t calling these Democratic governors to humbly seek their guidance. He’s staking a claim to leadership after cruising to an easy win in America’s biggest city. And why wouldn’t he? Democrats have been on a losing streak for years, capped off this week by Chuck Schumer’s disastrous shutdown stunt.
Last week’s elections rattled the party — especially its faith in the old guard. It’s natural for the winners to start asserting themselves. But take note: no one’s reporting strategy calls with Abigail Spanberger or Mikie Sherrill, both of whom won comfortably while signaling at least some centrist instincts. Governors like Pritzker and Moore could actually learn something from them.
Instead, Democrats are rallying behind a radical socialist and Hamas sympathizer as the tip of the spear in their never-ending Orange Man Bad crusade. They’re doubling down on Democratic Socialism and dragging the party even further left.
What does that mean? As Matt Taibbi has been warning Democrats (but also Republicans) — it means misery:
The major difference between Mamdani-style socialism and the leftism that swept over much of the globe in the last century is that this version is even dumber. It remade itself according to an ideology based less on class than a new intersectional theory of oppression that’s ridiculous, fantastical, grossly racist, and allows the old bourgeoisie to play leading roles.
It’s hard not to admire the innovation, which solves the problem Marxists have always complained about when it comes to the United States: a consumer economy that makes life just tolerable enough to discourage the masses from revolting. Now that rich people can be revolutionaries (by claiming gender confusion or waving some other intersectional flag), there’s no longer a need to wait for deplorable support for left revolution. Anyone can be oppressed, and they’re all welcome to join the cause. It’s brilliant!
What’s particularly ironic about last night is that the old, Clintonian version of the Democratic Party would probably be sitting in the White House right now if it hadn’t submitted to so many of the (deeply unpopular) tenets of this new ideology. The most humorous example involved last night’s loser, Andrew Cuomo, who gave Donald Trump years of ammunition when in an attempt to clown the MAGA slogan he said America was “never that great.” Trump probably wouldn’t have won many of the crucial swing states last year had it not been for the “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you” ad.
Similarly, Trump’s relentless attacks on DEI – a radical re-think of civil rights ideas that substituted the organic quality of equality for the bureaucratic concept of “equity” – were highly successful, and for good reason. Even the preposterous attempts to explain Trump’s success as a reaction to “whiteness under threat,” uttered by people who didn’t see anything odd about the proliferation of “whiteness studies” classes at universities, put wind in Trump’s sails.
Here’s the truly laughable part of this whole strategy: Trump will be off the stage in three years. Even if all this radicalism didn’t already prove every one of Trump’s warnings correct, the notion that an entire political party should orient its agenda around opposing one man who could be a midterm away from lame-duck status is absurd. It’s the kind of blatantly shortsighted thinking so boneheaded that only the ivory tower academics could possibly miss it.
Taibbi also had some thoughts on Mamdani:
To people who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, Mamdani is an immediately recognizable type, a disciple of the Leninist school of agitation that teaches effortless insincerity as a necessary means to reaching power. They would know that time and again, peasants and workers supported some general aims preached by visiting city revolutionaries but were extremely reluctant – like the mare Mollie with her ribbons in Animal Farm – to give up their hard-fought little farmhouses and slices of land, or Sunday mass, or a host of other worldly things.
That reluctance is what led to the vision of Mamdani-like intellectuals like Grigory Zinoviev, who explained an educated vanguard was needed, because “the working class does not understand completely today, but will understand tomorrow.” As we all know, nothing bad ever comes from an upper-class vanguard placing itself in charge of things.
For sure. And now the remnants of what used to be the Democratic Party’s leadership are lining up to bend the knee to a callow, upper-crust socialist. Nothing good’s going to come out of that, either, you can bet on it.
