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Mamdani’s Government Grocery Stores Will Require An ID to Shop — But Voter ID Is Racist

Updated: GOVERNMENT

The irony is so thick you could spread it on the subsidized bread Mamdani plans to sell at 30% below retail.

New York City’s socialist mayor announced this week that his five city-owned grocery stores will require shoppers to present identification proving they are New York City residents before they can access the government’s discounted prices. Mamdani’s exact words: “We are looking to make sure that we target New Yorkers … sort of a library card-esque thing.”

A government-issued card. Required to receive government food benefits. In a city whose mayor has spent his entire career treating voter ID as a tool of white supremacy.

Elon Musk posted the obvious: “Oh, the irony is too much.”

He’s right. But let’s go further, because this isn’t just irony. It’s the complete exposure of the Democratic Party’s ID argument as the fraudulent political calculation it has always been.

Democrats do not actually believe requiring government ID is racist, discriminatory, or impossible for poor people to obtain. They believe it when the ID requirement benefits their electoral interests to oppose it. When the ID requirement serves a purpose they like — limiting their government grocery discount to residents who will vote for them — they require it without a second thought.

You need photo ID to buy alcohol. To buy cigarettes. To purchase Sudafed. To rent a car, drive a car, board a plane, open a bank account, cash a check, apply for a credit card, rent a hotel room, apply for most jobs, collect SNAP benefits, collect Medicaid, visit someone in prison, pick up a prescription, buy a gun, get married, sign a lease, or donate blood. Not one Democrat has held a press conference calling any of those ID requirements racist.

But requiring the same ID to vote — the most fundamental civic act in a democracy — is “Jim Crow 2.0.”

The consistency of the position is: ID requirements are fine when Democrats control the ID-gated benefit. ID requirements are racist when Republicans want to verify the electorate.

The grocery store situation also previews exactly how socialist distribution systems work in practice — which is to say, badly. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez launched Mercal, a government grocery network, in 2003 under the same premise: subsidized food for working people, administered by the state. Within years, it had produced corruption, black-market reselling, supply shortages, and eventually a system so dysfunctional that the government had to assign shoppers specific shopping days based on national ID numbers and require mothers to bring babies before they could buy diapers.

Mamdani’s program is smaller and more limited. New York City has alternatives — for now. But the underlying economics are identical. You cannot sustain unlimited artificial demand for artificially cheap food. The question isn’t whether the system will develop problems. It’s when and how severe.

The ID requirement will come first. The shortages will come second.

History says so. Venezuela says so. The laws of supply and demand say so.

But at least you’ll have your library card.