We passed Peak Woke. The Politically Correct were in retreat. Muscular nationalism would replace limp liberal internationalism. Tariffs were in, globalisation out. Energy independence in, climate change actions out. Drill, baby, drill! As well as winning the white working class, Trump did better with racial minorities than previous Republican presidential candidates. His support surged especially among young men of minority racial backgrounds. Trump didn’t win a majority of these voters, but he won a bigger minority of them than previous Republicans.
He stole a demographic Democrats thought they owned. Trump also represented regular fellas, Joe six-pack, left behind by liberal elites.
The next step in this analysis is that to recover electorally, Democrats will move to the centre. We’ve seen this movie before. Ronald Reagan established conservative hegemony and the Democrats eventually got the White House back only when they chose a southern conservative, Bill Clinton. As Arkansas governor, Clinton was an enforcer of the death penalty and a proclaimer that “the era of big government is over”.
I’m not so sure we’re going to see that American movie this time. To effect long-run change in the political culture, you need a big win and sustained success in office, and for the losers to recognise the new culture. It’s not happening so far. I present as Exhibit A the astounding triumph of 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary for New York mayor. Mamdani trounced the grizzled former governor of New York state Andrew Cuomo, who enjoyed massive financial backing. It’s as if radical congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat Joe Biden in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.
Mamdani is a socialist and an extremist, a former rapper with almost no serious job experience, though in 2020 he won a seat in the New York State Assembly. In his own words, he’s “a progressive Muslim migrant”, which, according to him, makes him Trump’s worst nightmare.
In fact the Republican presidential candidate in 2028, whoever that may be, would pray to have an opponent like Mamdani. It can’t be Mamdani himself because presidents have to be born in America. If Mamdani wins the mayoralty, he’ll demonstrate one effective Democrat response to Trump: be equally combative and make wild, unrealistic promises. But having extremists dominate politics is terrible for America.
Mamdani is a long-standing member of the Democratic Socialists of America. His hatred of Israel is intense. At college, he founded a branch of Students for Justice for Palestine. The day after the horrific Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023, this group’s national body hailed “the historic win for the Palestinian resistance”. Mamdani did later condemn the Hamas massacres. As a rapper, Mamdani performed lyrics praising Hamas fundraisers. He favours the boycott of Israel. He supports laws restricting American Jewish charities sending money to Israel. He wants to “globalise the intifada”. And he accuses Israel of genocide, apartheid etc. He supports Columbia University’s anti-Israel demonstrators and says he wouldn’t send police to such demonstrations. Yet hate crime in New York is overwhelmingly anti-Jewish.
He’s a Jeremy Corbyn-like repeat demonstrator who long supported “defund the police”. He’s modified that position and also tried to avoid mentioning Israel in the primary campaign. He’s not running on those policies. But they demonstrate what a genuine, longstanding extremist he is. Critically, none of these offences against elementary political decency has disqualified him, or even hurt him, in his mayoral campaign.
He will be the official Democrat candidate in November, with endorsement it seems from all the party big wigs. The Democrat normally wins in New York.
The specific policies Mamdani proposes as mayor would be disastrous for the endlessly fascinating but grossly dysfunctional Big Apple. He promises a big increase in city corporate taxes and state income taxes. He promises to freeze rent increases for a giant slab of New York’s apartments. He promises free childcare and free buses, and a $US30 an hour minimum wage by 2030. He’s a passionate climate change activist and demonstrated against gas power stations. He wants the city to own and run low-cost grocery stores, presumably at a loss.
Mamdani hasn’t won election for mayor yet. And it’s not his exotic extremism he’s running on but his impossible promises. He’s a good campaigner, smooth, clever, articulate, very effective on TikTok, the son of a Columbia academic father and an acclaimed filmmaker mother. He’s the ideal liberal hero of progressive undergraduate fantasy. Mamdani’s program is pure left-wing economic populism. It’s tricky to define populism properly. Sometimes populism involves popular wisdom, but sometimes it involves simplistic and wildly unrealistic solutions to complicated problems, a despairing impatience with reality.
Rents too high? Freeze them. Groceries too expensive? Get the government to sell them at a loss. Climate change? Ban gas. Government deficits? Raise taxes, again and again and again. The essence of left-wing economic populism is that it’s totally divorced from economic reality. Freeze rents and apartments go off the market. Make the minimum wage too high and low productivity jobs disappear altogether. Ban gas and electricity prices rise while power becomes unreliable.
Do these all at once and businesses and well qualified individuals flee New York for Florida, Georgia and Texas. A lot of right-wing populism is like this too. Disappearing industries? Impose tariffs. The working class doing it tough? More government benefits. Deficits? Promise more welfare, more spending on almost everything, tax cuts and a balanced budget.
Mostly, right-wing economic populism, like left-wing economic populism, can’t be delivered. One promises more spending and a balanced budget. The other promises more spending, more debt and no consequences. Neither of these combinations can apply in the real world. American politics is about motivating the base so extremes do well. Both sides, when they win, win narrowly. So instead of the Democrats moving to the centre, you could get failed right-wing populism followed by failed left-wing populism, each side winning narrowly, with half the country always bitter about election results, always denying the other side’s legitimacy.
We have very dysfunctional politics in Australia, too, but we do our dysfunction a bit differently. No Western politics is working well at the moment.
In America, you could for quite a long time get a dizzy and bitter rotation of fairly extreme populists unable to deliver on the economy, searching for enemies, demonising their opponents. Mamdani, like Trump, is an authentic New York creation. He offers nothing good to America or to the broader international political culture that needs American leadership and tends to follow American examples, for good and for ill.
Glastonbury blends a deep self-loathing of the West while maintaining all of its privileges
When it doesn’t flood at Glastonbury, a little piece of me dies. I could not wish more misfortune on a gathering that has come to symbolise Western ennui.
Under Xi’s thumb, Hong Kong cedes identity to China
How to subjugate a rambunctious modern city? China’s paramount leader, Xi Jinping, pondered long and hard. Then he acted decisively.
The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump’s election victory last year, in which he won, for the first time, the popular vote as well as the Electoral College, was a signal of profound change in America’s political culture. I’m not saying I entirely endorse the conventional wisdom but here it is: Trump’s victory means a turn to the right by the US electorate and a turn against the left.