If you’re reading The Critic, you probably won’t need me to elaborate on why Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat nominee for Mayor of New York City, will be bad for New York City. He supports rent freezes, which do more harm than good. He supports government-run grocery stores, which should perturb Central and Eastern Europe migrants who entered the US in the 70s and 80s. He has defended the slogan “Globalize the Intifada”, which he claims is peaceful (and a “great leap forward” sounds wonderfully positive). He supports federal funding for transitioning kids. He has endorsed attempts to “defund the police” (because New York is just too safe nowadays). It might be unfair to judge him before he is even mayor, but if a builder wanted to construct your house out of toilet paper, with an open fireplace in every room, you might struggle to give them a chance.
I would have understood them choosing the Son of Sam over Andrew Cuomo
But I don’t come here to bury Zohran Mamdani. I come here to bury Andrew Cuomo. Frankly, I can understand why Democrat voters chose Mr Mamdani over Mr Cuomo. I would have understood them choosing the Son of Sam over Andrew Cuomo.
Andrew Cuomo, former governor of New York, who has lost to Mamdani, would make a great political grotesque in a gangster film. He’s the sort of shameless politician who really and truly embraces the role.
As a non-American, who has never been to America, never mind New York, I’m a bit ashamed that I even know who Andrew Cuomo is. But I was captivated when he published a book about “leadership lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic” in October 2020 — six months after the pandemic had begun in earnest. It took me a year to write a book and I didn’t have to run New York during a pandemic.
Cuomo had been receiving praise for the un-Trumpian maturity of his televised briefs about the pandemic. But the apparent competence was all an act. Cuomo’s reckless treatment of care homes is just one example of how the performance did not match the reality.
Cuomo was brought down by his alleged handsiness, which he rationalised by saying that he was Italian. (A good excuse for objecting to particular styles of pizza, but not for handsiness.) Out of office, he became a noisy advocate for Israel — a theme that he has carried throughout his campaign. “I am going to call the question for Democrats,” Cuomo has said, “‘Do you stand with Israel or do you stand against Israel’?” If I was a politically undecided New Yorker, struggling with my rent and dodging psychos on the subway, it would be essential to me that my mayor was a passionate defender of a nation thousands of miles away.
Watch out if you criticise Cuomo. Allegedly, if his Democrat peers breathed a word about him, he would call them up and scream down the phone at them. Cuomo denies this, of course. Say what you like about Donald Trump, but at least he doesn’t pretend not to bully people.
Given all this, no one can claim that it is unsurprising that New Yorkers chose the young, handsome, cheerful and untested Zohran Mamdani. It doesn’t make it right. But it makes it pretty damn predictable.
A problem with “moderates”, here represented by Andrew Cuomo, is that they think they are entitled to rule. I don’t mean “moderate” here in the sense of being rational, and practical, and civilised. I mean it in the sense of appeasing broadsheet columnists and lifelong bureaucrats. Mr Cuomo appears to have thought that he could breeze back into office, despite all his scandals, on the wings of a mature, sensible and moderate reputation. It didn’t matter that he was a raving narcissist with a seriously chequered past who had only recently moved back to NYC and often appeared to be more interested in the Middle East than in New York. He was a moderate, damn it, so he deserved to be mayor!
Keir Starmer has suffered a similar fate in the UK. He bulldozed Corbynism on the grounds of electability, but has discovered that a “moderate” reputation among well-heeled journalists does not amount to an ability to govern. It is one thing to appeal to broadsheet columnists and quite another to appeal to a nation.
There is something Trumpian about the radical newcomer, Mamdani, sweeping away the corrupt establishment. It makes it far more difficult to really dislike him. But of course his combination of socialism and third worldism will be a hideous failure. Perhaps at least Americans will find it to be an educational experience.
