New York City's socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, was in an expansive mood when he appeared on ABC News’ This Week. He claimed, “We don’t have to ask ourselves what life looks like if a socialist wins,” he said. “I won last November, and over the course of these last six months, what we’ve delivered for working people are the very things we were told were impossible.”
Of course we don't have to "ask ourselves what life looks like if a socialist wins." We saw socialism's failures in Russia and the entire Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, and can catalog its continued horrors in Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea today. But Mamdani is repeating the socialist fiction that's been used since the 1930s to excuse socialism's failures: If only the "right" people were put in charge, socialism would work like a charm!
After bragging about passing a record $125 billion budget, Mamdani waxed poetic about socialism's success.
Mamdani claimed that “if these past months have shown us anything, it is that socialists not only understand economics as well as the capitalists who came before but that we can solve their years of mismanagement through an embrace of our principles.”
We could make a good argument about whether the definition of "socialism" proves conclusively that socialists don't understand economics at all, but that's not what this article is really about.
This is about how Zohran Mamdani is an ignorant fool.
Josh Appel, writing in The Free Press, begs to differ with Mamdani on the efficacy of socialism. "On the contrary, Mamdani’s first six months in office indicate the success of capitalism and the regular machinations of municipal government, not democratic socialism."
In fact, none of Mamdani's signature ideas were passed into law. He gave up on the idea of free busing. He will only build two city-run grocery stores, and they won't be up and running until 2027. And remember the $30 minimum wage? Mamdani has forgotten about that, too.
He faced off against New York Gov. Kathy Hochul when he threatened to raise property taxes unless she forced the legislature to raise taxes on the rich. He backed down when his city council speaker called his bluff. Mamdani didn't hear the news about California proposing a 5% wealth tax, leading to an exodus of people and wealth when an estimated $536 billion in tax revenue left the state even before the measure had qualified for the November ballot.
Mamdani did manage to pass a "rent freeze," which is hardly a socialist idea, considering the fact that former Mayor Bill DeBlasio initiated several rent freezes over his terms in office. They don't work and have never worked in making housing more affordable.
Mamdani's tenure so far has been more evolutionary than revolutionary. New York City continues to evolve into a failed state, with its mix of socialist nonsense and crony capitalism.
What Mamdani’s supporters don’t admit is that, until pressured by the city council, he declined to pursue a genuinely redistributive housing policy: CityFHEPS. During the campaign, Mamdani promised to expand the CityFHEPS voucher program, a move that would have required dropping an Adams administration lawsuit that had blocked a broader expansion. Yet after taking office, he upheld the lawsuit; in March, he appealed a ruling against the prior administration before dropping that effort and finally approving a $175 million expansion of the program—far short of the roughly $500 million sought by housing advocates.
City job numbers continue to disappoint, and unemployment remains above pre-pandemic levels. Mamdani supporters continually point to pothole fillings during his first 150 days as “socialism.” But even there, his numbers are far lower than both de Blasio and Michael Bloomberg.
On the most visible statistic of all, Mamdani deserves no credit: city crime numbers stand at historic lows, not because of socialism but because of NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch’s tough-on-crime policing, which got started under Eric Adams’s administration.
Mamdani is a politician. It's not unusual for a politician to take credit for stuff he had no hand in creating or claim ownership of a policy he didn't initiate. But to say that six months in office is proof of concept for socialism is idiotic. Even Communists took a couple of years to destroy the Russian economy.
Give Mamdani time. In the immortal words of Ronald Reagan, "You ain't seen nothin' yet."
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