Democrats hit the trifecta. It’s worse than that. Atop winning the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia and Gracie Mansion in New York City, Proposition 50, which allows for a redrawing of congressional districts on a partisan basis, won overwhelmingly in California, and that turkey Jay Jones, who fantasized about murdering Republicans and their children, captured the office of attorney general in Virginia. Republicans rule over all three branches of government. The party in power almost always takes it on the chin in off-year elections. Still, there’s little in the way of a silver lining on this cloud or a moral victory here for Republicans to point to.
Mamdani the New AOC
Add up the Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa vote. It still does not beat Zohran Mamdani. Donald Trump’s insertion of himself in this race on behalf of a liberal Democrat, which necessarily kneecapped a solid Republican, looks even more foolish given the predictable outcome. Mamdani possesses no ideas in his head that are not foolish. But he speaks well, looks good, and emits a likeable vibe to people who do not know anything about politics. (You might not know as much about politics as you think if you did not know that most people do not know anything about politics.) Mamdani becomes a posterboy for Democrats and a boogeyman for Republicans.
New York Has Elected Commies Before
Zohran Mamdani isn’t the first communist to win elective office in New York City. Benjamin Davis Jr. served a term on the New York City Council in the early 1940s. At the beginning of the next decade, he served a term in a federal penitentiary as one of the 11 Communist leaders convicted for violating the Smith Act. Vito Marcantonio made a career representing Communists after he impersonated one in Congress. Samuel Dickstein won election 11 times to the U.S. House of Representatives. His Soviet handlers, who thought very little of him given his frequent demands for money, codenamed him “Crook.” (There’s a block named after him in Manhattan — but that Teddy Roosevelt statue is gone from the Upper West Side). New York City survived all of those red fools. It will survive this one, too.
READ MORE:
Electing the Image: Mamdani and the Mimetic Turn in Democracy
Daniel J. Flynn, a senior editor of The American Spectator, serves as a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution for the 2024-2025 academic year. His books include Cult City: Harvey Milk, Jim Jones, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco (ISI Books, 2018), Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America (ISI Books, 2011), A Conservative History of the American Left (Crown Forum, 2008), and Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas (Crown Forum, 2004). In 2025, he releases his magnum opus, The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer. He splits time between city Massachusetts and cabin Vermont.
