New York Magazine

10/17/2025

As totems of New York’s liberal Establishment like the Times and Schumer have missed the point, appeal, and political prowess of Mamdani, so have many of my own specific demographic. I am a Jew, I am more than twice Mamdani’s age, I have mostly voted for Democrats, I have supported Israel since I first was able to “grow” trees for it while preparing for my bar mitzvah, and I will have a higher tax bill if he succeeds in his governing ambitions.

I have heard my peer group’s objections to Mamdani and often find them as disingenuous as the Times’ “Advice to Voters.”

No. 1: Mamdani has little experience. Absolutely correct. He has never run a large organization of any kind and has a slender political résumé. This puts him on a par with Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump (the Trump Organization doesn’t qualify as either “large” or an “organization”). But unlike them, he is willing to settle for being mayor of a single city, not president of all 50 states.

No. 2: His plans are impractical. Also true. Free buses? A crazy idea Mike Bloomberg also failed to make happen. Freezing stabilized rents? Yes, Bill de Blasio already did that, but even if it proves just a provocative opening gambit in addressing the crisis of affordable housing, Mamdani’s relentless focus moved it to the top of the election’s agenda. Five city-owned grocery stores as a pilot program to try to lower prices and expand shopping options in underserved neighborhoods? That the right-wing radio blowhard John Catsimatidis, who owns the Gristedes and D’Agostino chains, is one of Mamdani’s most vociferous adversaries is itself an argument for giving the experiment a shot.

No. 3: He is a democratic socialist. The Democratic Party has fallen so low in public approval — 63 percent disapproval, the lowest in 35 years, according to a Wall Street Journal poll in July — why not rebrand it? “The Washington Commanders” has already been taken, but even “democratic socialists” may be an upgrade.

Socialists, after all, is not the scare word it once was. The Cold War ended the same year Mamdani was born, and socialism’s political meaning has blurred ever since. A recent Cato Institute–YouGov national poll found that 62 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29, Democrats and Republicans alike, have a “favorable view” of it. Even Trump endorses socialism now. He claims, however deceitfully, to be the protector of Medicare and Medicaid, long demonized by his own party (along with Obamacare) as “socialized medicine.” He has announced a plan for a mammoth state-owned online drug supermarket, branded TrumpRx, that will exert government control over big-pharma retail prices. (Pfizer and AstraZeneca have already enlisted.) He is also semi-nationalizing Intel, Nvidia, and U.S. Steel by demanding the U.S. get a cut of their corporate profits. The favored Trump epithet “commie” has likewise lost its old zing. No one in New York did more to normalize communism than Trump’s stooge Adams. He and his political sidekick Winnie Greco have long been as thick as thieves with the Chinese government, its lobbyists, and its moneybags. Though Trump derides Mamdani as a communist, New York’s sitting mayor was truly our Manchurian candidate, may he RIP.

Even as Mamdani’s political opponents and opinion gatekeepers like the Times mocked the absurdity of his policy catechism, you would be hard-pressed to find a voter during the primary campaign who could name one, let alone three, policy planks favored by Cuomo or Adams. For all the rewriting of political norms in this era, one maxim is still inviolate: You can’t fight something with nothing. The Times’ editorial board’s veiled endorsement of Cuomo never specified which policies he was offering that promised to be “better for New York’s future” for the simple reason there weren’t any. He hasn’t lived in the city for decades and is so out of touch that in a postprimary Times interview he couldn’t name a single living Democrat he admired.