Both Trump and Mamdani aim to smash the structures that have organized American politics since the end of the Cold War. Their voters are those willing to follow them on that mission; hence the overlap.
There’s a temptation to strike fundamentalist poses when talking about the rise of Zohran Mamdani, an unapologetic member of the Democratic Socialists of America, to the mayor’s office in New York City.
If you hate Mamdani, the explanation comes easily: New Yorkers inhaled too much second-hand cannabis, lost their minds, and elected the communist who will destroy them.
If you love him, you can be just as glib: the revolution has begun, the old order will be overthrown, and nasty old New York will be transformed into an egalitarian utopia.
Of course, when it comes to 21st-century politics — and to New York at all times — things are never that simple.
Voting patterns can be parsed any number of ways. From one perspective, as Renu Mukherjee has observed, “the racial demographics of Mamdani’s winning coalition resembled that of President Trump’s from 2024.”
Like Trump, Mandani also won big with men — and he far exceeded Trump’s inroads among young voters.
One doesn’t have to be a genius to discern the connection.
Both Trump and Mamdani aim to smash the structures that have organized American politics since the end of the Cold War. Their voters are those willing to follow them on that mission; hence the overlap.
Mamdani was fortunate to be running against Andrew Cuomo, a repellent specimen of the old regime. His victory signals the catastrophic collapse of the Democratic Party establishment, an outfit that only yesterday could foist a senile candidate for the presidency on the party’s ambitious young lions without eliciting a murmur of complaint.
Anyone who doubts that those days are over should walk a mile in Chuck Schumer’s shoes. The implications for the 2028 presidential race are, quite literally, incalculable.
Trump, however, is an America-first populist, whereas Mamdani is a DSA-style radical — that is to say, a Marxist who would be a Leninist if he could get himself organized. So mere repudiation of the system can lead to diametrically opposed positions.
Did New York vote for socialism? That case can be made.
A different take on the voting patterns would show that Mamdani was propelled to victory by two groups: the young and the college-educated.
Both are often the same person, lolling in skinny-leg pants and colorful sneakers at a coffee house in Brooklyn — the borough that gave Mamdani his largest margin.
Opinion polls reveal large numbers of the young applauding socialism as a really amazing idea. Conceivably, it could be that youthful New Yorkers hoped to turn the city into some version of Romania circa 1960.
But I doubt it.
For over a century, socialism has failed dismally everywhere it has been tried. Enthusiasm for the ideology, we can safely assume, is proof of a profound ignorance of history.
Zoomers and younger Millennials attended college to learn grievance, not the Battle of Hastings.
