Zohran Mamdani is the latest sign establishment Democrats donât know how to handle a populist challenge.
They havenât learned anything from the defeats right-wing populism inflicted on them with Donald Trump. Now theyâre knocked on their backsides by a new generation of left-wing populism in their own party.
Making Mamdani mayor of New York is like electing Bernie Sanders president â maybe even worse. But in an era when populism keeps gaining momentum, Democratic insiders habitually turn to political has-beens to rescue the party.
First it was Hillary Clinton, who staved off Sanders only to lose to Trump. Then it was Joe Biden, who got lucky in an election dominated by COVID lockdowns and George Floyd protests, even as Democrats knew he was far past his best-by date.
So the setback Trumpâs right-of-center populism suffered in 2020 only set the stage for a comeback of historic proportions four years later. Democrats should have noticed their playbook wasnât working even back in 2021, when Terry McAuliffe, the ex-governor and old Clinton crony they trotted out to run for Virginiaâs top office, went crashing to defeat at the hands of Glenn Youngkin â a Republican who didnât have a populist background but spoke to popular fury at lockdowns and rising crime.
Mamdani is the crudest kind of left-wing populist, offering outright socialism, including state-owned grocery stores, as his answer to New Yorkâs problems. His medicine would in fact make things a lot worse, driving more high-earners out of the city, in a second exodus after the one COVID triggered.
A city already spending too much will have less revenue to pay for the even higher spending Mamdani wants, but that didnât register with Democratic primary voters last week. What they saw and heard was a young, handsome Mamdani telling them more free stuff could be theirs â all they had to do was end Andrew Cuomoâs political career.
Cuomo didnât take Mamdaniâs challenge seriously enough, but then, top Democrats didnât take voters seriously enough when they got behind Cuomo in the first place. He was damaged goods as well as yesterdayâs news, a man whoâd left the governorâs mansion in disgrace four years ago.
At a time when all the old idols are falling, did hauling this one out of the dumpster really seem like a bright idea? The party establishment might as well have run Anthony Weiner â and in fact, he was on the ballot last week, too, running for a City Council seat.
MAGA populism, unlike Mamdaniâs, doesnât spring from thinking there shouldnât be billionaires. On the right, populism is about getting rid of barriers to middle- and working-class prosperity, by bringing jobs back to America and eliminating taxes on tips, for example.
And the rightâs populism is cultural as well as economic, emphasizing common sense, the rejection of woke ideology, and patriotism. In a clash between rival populisms, the conservative kind prevails against what Mamdani and Sanders represent â in most places.
But New York is a blue city where Democratic loyalties run deep, and now that Mamdani is the partyâs nominee, stopping him in the general election will take everything that non-socialist Democrats, independents and Republicans together can muster. The only way center-left Democrats will avoid this kind of debacle in the future is if they end their recycling program for Clintons, Bidens, Cuomos and Weiners and figure out what a mainstream Democratic populism in the 21st century might look like.
Democrats need a populism with less socialism and more patriotism, even if that looks a little more like the GOPâs formula â after all, itâs what works. The party of Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy used to know how to compete with Republicans for voters who were proud of being Americans, before identity politics and the Davos mindset took over the partyâs elites.
But today the few Democrats who point their party back in the direction of Middle America are shunned for doing so: Sen. John Fetterman, for one. The party that made excuses for Biden up to the minute he was humiliated on national TV has been lately seeding the press with claims Fetterman isnât mentally fit for office.
His fitness wasnât an issue when he was elected in 2022 â Democrats stood by him despite the stroke he suffered that May. But that was before he started to buck party orthodoxy.
Late last month, Susquehanna polling found Fetterman doing better with Republicans than Democrats in his home state, with 45% approval from GOP voters versus just 40% from his own party. Democrats are shooting the messenger.
Without a populist message that isnât as far left as Mamdaniâs, theyâre doomed to defeat in the country â and doomed to victories in blue cities that may hurt even more.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To read more by Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com.
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