Mamdani: The Political Ipecac of Our Times?

I have to say I am annoyed and alarmed at the number of people willing to elect Mamdani.in New York City, and the number of people outside the city willing to financially support the guy. The Siren call of socialism is for some hard to ignore, I suppose, but I do have to wonder if, in the end, Mamdani being Mayor will convert a large number of folks into raging anti-socialists.

I'm quite serious!

I have always said that the best thing for turning people against the left is leftist policy, enacted. The Democrats, sensing this truth, have already started in with the excuse-making. National Review’s Noah Rothman says:

For years, says reporter Kate Santaliz in her scandalized dispatch, the GOP has made former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into a “bogeywoman.” Her capacity to “rile up the base” was unrivaled. But with her diminished role, “GOP strategists are testing new symbols of the party’s left, and hope Mamdani will fill that void.”

Indeed, Santaliz’s item exerts itself in contending that the national GOP’s goal is to frame Mamdani’s victory as the triumph of the anti-police forces that briefly captured the Democratic zeitgeist in 2020. “Mamdani has backed away from his calls to defund the police, among other positions,” she writes in a parenthetical. Rhetorically, he has. But his plans to close city jails, promote social workers as an alternative to police, and grant 911 dispatchers the authority to assess the relative level of threat on the other end of the line would absorb resources currently devoted to law enforcement.

The thing is that we know the man is at least shading the truth. The PDB Podcast shows us at least one case where he’s already been caught:

Rothman goes on from there, describing how Mamdani has handled some of the other problem spots in his messaging:

Sure, Mamdani has backed away from defending calls to the “globalize the intifada,” which, for the uninitiated, represents calls to murder Jews on buses and in pizza parlors, in synagogues and at Passover seders, and in their very beds. But he still denounces Israel’s defensive actions in its region — either as “occupation” if they are active or as a “siege” if they are passive — and he insists that Israel is an “apartheid” state that maintains a “hierarchy on the basis of race and religion.” That’s a lie, but it’s a lie that advances the notion that Israel cannot exist as a Jewish state and still convince the Mamdanis of the world that its existence is justified. That is an extreme outlook, and Republicans are obliged to make note of it.

I’ll tell you with no doubt in my mind what is going to happen if, as it appears, Mamdani wins the election: Once he gets the power in his hands, the resulting economic and social disaster will be turning people away from the man and his policies, like a cold wind on a winter’s day. As the PDB cast indicates, the exodus has already begun. (No, that little bit of irony — Exodus — was NOT unintentional.)

I admit that’s an odd thing to say, suggesting that his winning this thing will in the long term be a good thing, particularly among those who have been out here fighting against Mamdani and his ilk for most of our existence on this side of the dirt. But irony abounds here because he will end up not only saving New York, but before that happens, he’ll end up saving the rest of the country from the very policies he espouses. It will be hard for the word of such a disaster NOT to get out, and even harder for Mamdani himself to be blamed for that disaster, given that most of the leftist news media is based in the center of it.

Over the last 40 years or so, and particularly over the last 20, we have all noticed a split in the voting public. In reality, what we’ve got now is two Americas, two sets of cultural values. One group fighting in the end for dependency on an over-sized and over-powerful government, operating as I’ve said in previous columns, under the guise of “Compassion." These tend to be centered around major cities, such as New York, Philly, San Francisco, Portland, and so on. The other, still operating on the models of individual freedom, smaller government, and individual responsibility laid down by our founders. Guess which one supports Mamdani.

Some have suggested that these two groups are moving headlong and heedlessly toward a civil war, but I disagree. I believe we are instead headed for a market correction in what Reagan called the marketplace of ideas.

Rothman notes in his piece (which, by the way, I urge you to read):

Likewise, it’s not exactly dirty pool to accuse Mamdani of harboring a deep hostility toward the capitalist enterprise. “No,” he replied simply in a June interview with CNN when asked, “Do you like capitalism?” Mamdani added that he had “many critiques of capitalism.” In a subsequent interview, he insisted that billionaires should not exist, presumably because the state should requisition the capital they earn and redistribute it as central planners see fit. What else would you call that outlook but Marxian?

There is no question that, like Gavin Newsom in California, Mamdani will be a disaster for New York City. The gag reflex of the people of New York will be nothing short of epic, with moving companies not being able to keep up with the demand as people leave the area as fast as the Cross Bronx will allow. Those that are left behind will suffer greatly at the hands of their supposedly compassionate masters until such time as even among their erstwhile supporters, people will be crying for mercy.
 
Injuries are often quite painful, and, as a result, so too are the medical procedures and medicines required to repair the damage. So it is that I view the projected election of this avowed socialist and Islamist as the medicine, the political ipecac if you will, needed to cure the patient, and serve the purpose of individual liberty.

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