Blackcap Blog

Published at 10:48 on 25 June 2025

Well, not a complete surprise, because polling did show him surging in support, but a surprise nonetheless (the preponderance of polls still showed him missing the mark).

Paradoxically, I think, it shows basically what the support for Trump shows: that a significant number of Americans realize the political Establishment has not served them well and are upset at that Establishment.

Mamdani and Trump are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, so many political pundits cannot see this. But pundits are weirdos: they care a lot about politics. Most Americans do not care a lot about politics. Most Americans are stunningly politically ignorant, to the point that they are not even able to name their two Senators and one Representative in Congress.

Most Americans don’t think Trump is a fascist because most Americans have no idea what fascism actually is. To them, he’s just an outsider promising to shake things up. They can be convinced, with the right propaganda, to give his extremism a whirl (again, they realize the Establishment that Trump has disdain for has not served them well), or they can be convinced, again with the right propaganda, that he’s just too far outside the norm to be safe.

And, it turns out, many those same unsophisticates can be persuaded to vote for a candidate significantly to the left of that Establishment as well.

That latter point bears elaborating on. There are at this very moment democratic socialists opining that this election shows Americans (or at least New Yorkers) are coming ’round to their ideology. No they are not. They are merely dissatisfied with the political Establishment and what it has brought them, and are willing to entertain giving those from outside that Establishment a whirl.

Most Americans still have a generally negative connotation of what “socialism” means. Mamdani would have probably done better had he avoided that label. By which I mean he could have had exactly the same planks in his platform, just used slightly different branding, and done better as a result.

Donald Trump does not call himself a “red-white-and-blue American fascist,” a “21st century fascist,” or anything of the such. He could, and it would be an exercise in honest labelling, but he doesn’t. Yet one more example of why Trump is actually more politically savvy than most of the Left. (Of course he is. Just look at his winning record at the ballot box.)

Of course, this cuts both ways. The Establishment Democrats would have probably done better (and likely won) if they had put forth better standard-bearers than a disgraced mayor and a disgraced former governor. So what we have here is basically a situation in which one side’s incompetence cancelled out the other side’s.

But I am digressing here. The same Democratic Party Establishment that backed Cuomo in a desperate and ultimately failed effort to keep Mamdani from winning the primary is the same Establishment that is now only one for three in keeping the most extreme and unqualified candidate to ever seek that office out of the White House. (And when they did gain power, they refused to use it to crush fascism.) These are not people of either great political wisdom or great political morals, and we all need to spend a lot less time paying serious attention to what they have to say.

If Mamdani wins in November and accomplishes that alone, his victory will have meant something.

If, furthermore, his administration is a success and gets more Americans to seriously entertain more left-wing policies, it would be great. But even the former lesser case would prove politically beneficial.