A Few Final Points Re: Mamdani
Published at 18:06 on 26 June 2025
Because, really, it is not my point to make. It’s a decision for New Yorkers to make, of which I am not one.
But, at over eight million people, it is the largest city in the USA, and as such has more peoople living in it than live in most US states. That alone gives it a prominence that ensures what happens in NYC often doesn’t stay there. Then you have how it is a world-class artistic and cultural centre. Yet more prominence. If Mamdani wins in November, he will likely become one of Trump’s foils, and thus affect US politics as a whole. And what affects US politics affects world politics.
When New Yorkers say their city is the capital of the world, it is, in other words, no idle boast.
Andrew Cuomo has been so humiliated by his primary loss that most pundits are predicting he will entirely drop out of the race, and not even attempt to run as an independent in November. Not so for scandal-plagued incumbent Eric Adams, who has already loudly announced his candidacy.
Here’s another point, though: If Adams continues to hog the limelight, and the centrists line up behind him, he probably loses. Mamdani has already dispatched one corrupt centrist career politician and can probably dispatch another.
If the centrists line up behind someone like Jim Walden, however, they have a good shot at things. Not a sure one (there are no sure shots in politics), but a good one. Walden looks like an outsider who is free from the taint of scandal. It’s that, and not the democratic socialism, that was Mandani’s real secret sauce in the primary. Sure, Mamdani’s base loves that he’s a socialist, but that base alone is not enough to see him through to victory.
It’s not yet clear who the centrists will line up behind.
Right now, there is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth from some of the centrist crowd about the primary outcome. Something tells me that they wouldn’t be whining so hard if Cuomo had won, despite Cuomo being the very epitome of a corrupt, out of touch, elitist, career Democrat. You know, the sort of epitome that tilted enough swing voters to Trump the last cycle.
If that crowd really cared about electability, they would care about their own team’s electability issues at least somewhat. But they don’t. So yeah, they just might well fall in line behind Adams.
Or, in other words, the establishment just might just continue unwittingly helping Zohran Mamdani all the way to Gracie Mansion. Which would be fine by me.