Two apposite headlines today
“JD Vance Gave A Speech To Almost No One.” “Meanwhile, Zohran Is Just Getting Things Done.”
Tag: Zohran Mamdani
Channeling Marxist philosopher G.A. Cohen, Zohran proves he’s the greatest living politician in the US
If you watch this short clip of Zohran Mamdani getting heckled, you’ll see why he’s the greatest living politician in the United States today. Without batting an eye, Mamdani says, in response to the heckler: I want that man to be able to afford to keep living in New York City. Because the day that I don’t hear him yelling at me, it means he got priced out of this place. And I don’t want that. I don’t want that for him. I don’t want that for anybody in this city. We need to make this a city where it’s affordable enough to yell at your politicians. Notice the four things Mamdani is doing. First, he remains unflappable, gracious, calm, […]
- Categories Economies, Political Theory, The Left
You want to know what democratic socialism means? This!
One of the critical distinguishing features of the communist movement of the 19th century was its insistence, in the words of Marx, “that the emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves.” Where other movements were willing to advocate on behalf of the working class or other oppressed groups, the First International demanded that it be the oppressed who liberated themselves. It may seem a leap from that vision to the fact that all New Yorkers, in the next few years, will get childcare for their two-year-olds, and once that is established, perhaps their younger children as well. But I don’t think it is as much of a leap as we sometimes think. One year ago, […]
Jewish Voters and Mamdani
The opposition of Jewish voters to Zohran Mamdani has been, and will continue to be, a flash point of commentary and conflict over the mayor. It reminds me a bit of how Black voters were often the flash point of commentary and conflict over Bernie Sanders in 2016. In the last year, Michael Lange has emerged as the sharpest analyst of NYC electoral politics. When it comes to the unlikely campaign and career of Mamdani, hardly anyone has equalled Lange’s record of analysis and prediction. In his latest post, Lange takes on the question of Jewish voters and Mamdani. Long story short: Cuomo performed best…among wealthier and older Jewish voters, while Mamdani performed best among younger Jewish voters and those […]
- Categories Foreign Policy, Jews, Palestine and Israel, Race, The Left
Mamdani’s inauguration speech: three more observations
In addition to what I wrote earlier today, I want to make three other observations about Mamdani’s inauguration speech. First, Trump was almost completely absent from the speech. He came up, by name, only once, when Mamdani referenced the voters who cast their ballots for Trump in 2024 and then for Mamdani in 2025. He came up, by act, only once, when Mamdani made a reference to ICE raids. I don’t think anyone believes Mamdani is not aware of Trump or what Trump can do to New York. So we have to ask why he refused to make Trump a feature of his speech. It’s not because Mamdani was only interested in going positive and being hopeful; he referenced all […]
The Moral Imagination of Mamdani
Speaking at Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration as mayor today, Imam Khalid Latif invoked the phrase “moral imagination.” Those of you historically inclined and theoretically attuned will instantly recognize the term. It was coined by Edmund Burke in the eighteenth century and beloved by midcentury writers like Lionel Trilling and Gertrude Himmelfarb. So we now have, in the twenty-first century, at the invocation for a Muslim political leader, a Muslim religious leader repurposing the words of two of New York’s greatest Jewish intellectuals from the twentieth century, who had repurposed the words of an Irishman from a Catholic family that had converted to Anglicanism in the eighteenth century. That’s quite a historical and political tapestry being woven here, no? If you stayed […]
- Categories Economies, Education, Political Theory, The Left
Excellence over mediocrity, from Mamdani to Marx to food
If you were paying attention on election night, you might have heard Zohran make two claims in his victory speech that often code as conservative: Excellence will become the expectation across government, not the exception….We will leave mediocrity in our past. The minute I heard those words, and the talking heads’ murmuring that it was odd for a socialist to talk up excellence and talk down mediocrity (aren’t socialists supposed to care only about equality, and a leveling equality at that, which drives down the quality of everything), I remembered a passage in Marx’s Capital. In the last pages of his chapter on original accumulation, Marx discusses the earliest days of capitalism or last stages of feudalism, when farmers still […]
From Red Scare to Socialist Wave, from 9/11 to Mamdani
If you were to cast your gaze across the America of a hundred years ago, the America of 1925, you would have had many reasons for despair. That was the year that the Second KKK reached its all-time high in membership. The previous year, immigration to the US from all Asian countries was banned, and immigration from southern and eastern Europe (home of Italians, Jews, Poles, and other undesirables) was drastically limited. And behind all that stood the Red Scare, in which Jews, Italians, anarchists, socialists, communists were drummed out of American life in an orgy of violence, mass arrests, and deportations. Just ten years later, those same forces that had been put on their back feet in the 1920s […]
- Categories Repression, The Left, The Right, The State
Where have all the grownups gone?
For a long time now, I’ve thought that you’re never really a grownup until you realize that there are no grownups. We all have a fantasy, inherited from childhood, that somewhere, someone, is truly in charge and knows what they’re doing and has got things under control. I remember the moment when I realized that’s not true. There is no such person. It’s on you, me, us, to try to be a little wiser than we are, which involves, as a first step, giving up the fantasy that anyone in the actual world knows entirely what they’re doing. I was thinking about this last night as I watched Andrew Cuomo repeatedly try and fail to belittle Mamdani as a kid, […]
- Categories The State
New Socialists versus Old Democrats
I finally had a chance to read that long Astead Herndon profile of Zohran Kwame Mamdani in The New York Times, which I recommend. I was especially struck by this passage. Gaspard first met Mamdani in South Africa in 2016, at the premiere for “Queen of Katwe,” a Disney movie set in Uganda and directed by Mamdani’s mother, Mira Nair. Gaspard said the young man, just 24 at the time, showed flashes of the charisma that would later serve his entrance into politics. He compared the curiosity and demeanor of young Mamdani to that of — yes — Barack Obama. But Mamdani’s is a story that, like that of many other first-generation immigrants, doesn’t fit neatly into American political conventions […]
- Categories Foreign Policy, Palestine and Israel, The Left
Mamdani’s New Birth of Freedom
Reading this New York Times report on Eric Adams’ dropping out of the race—where Adams is described, with no sense of irony, as “politically moderate” and is quoted as warning against Mamdani’s desire to “destroy the very system we built together over generations” while Cuomo is quoted as saying, “We are facing an existential threat in an extreme radicalism that threatens the existence of this city as we know it”—it dawns on me that we on the left are being presented with a golden opportunity. An opportunity that reminds me, seriously, of something only Lincoln was able to pull off. Zohran Mamdani is running now against Andrew Cuomo, a corrupt sexual harasser, who has been aided from the start by […]
I spoke with Ezra Klein
I had a long conversation with Ezra Klein about the current moment, its parallels and divergences from the Second Red Scare of the McCarthy era, and three recommendations for books to read. I chose one book of poetry, which I hope you will all ready, one book of history, and one book of political theory. Klein had nice things to say about my book The Reactionary Mind: “in my opinion,” he said, it’s “one of the most insightful books you can read on the Trumpist right and what is behind it.” He read it twice, and I could see all the notes he had taken on it. The funnest part of the interview happened off-screen. I wore my “city workers […]
- Categories Repression, The Right, The State, Violence
Stalinism at the New York Times
I found this a most unbelievable passage, in a New York Times article about why tech and other professionals who are worried about affordability are turning to Mamdani: They ruled out the other candidates for a range of reasons. Some cited concerns about the sexual harassment complaints against Mr. Cuomo and the corruption investigation into Mr. Adams and his administration. The charges against Mr. Adams were dropped, but some in his orbit have remained under investigation. We all know, and the Times itself reported on it intensively and extensively at the time, that the Trump administration dropped the corruption charges against Adams back in February because of a promised quid-pro-quo: if the government dropped the charges, Adams would cooperate with […]
- Categories Media
Butler, Berkeley, and Fear
Judith Butler is one of 160 faculty, students, and staff members at UC Berkeley whose name the University of California has turned over to the Trump administration to help with the federal government’s investigation into alleged antisemitism on the Berkeley campus. Let’s slow that statement down so we can understand its components more clearly. Since February, Trump’s Department of Education has been investigating universities, including Berkeley and other UC campuses, for their handling of alleged antisemitism on their campuses. In March, the Justice Department announced a separate but parallel investigation of the UC campuses. In July, a House congressional committee called three university leaders to testify about alleged antisemitism on their campuses. One of the summoned was the chancellor of […]
- Categories Education, Labor/Workplace, Law, Media, Palestine and Israel, Repression, The Left, The Right, The State, Violence
Rosh Hashanah at Brooklyn College
Here are some findings from the last two days of the New York Times. Let’s put these pieces together. New Yorkers stand with Palestine. New Yorkers think that Mamdani has the best position of any of the mayoral candidates on Palestine. Jewish New Yorkers stand with Mamdani. Younger (and educated) New Yorkers overwhelmingly stand with Mamdani. Many of those younger New Yorkers are students, in the process of being educated. Some of those students attend CUNY. This past weekend, Mamdani went to Brooklyn College, where he said that students and staff and faculty at CUNY should not be punished for their activism on behalf of Palestine. Brooklyn College has fired four instructors for their activism on Palestine and is hauling […]
- Categories Education, Jews, Palestine and Israel, Repression
Dispatches from a Desert
News from the world that Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, are making for us.
- Categories Economies, Education, Jews, Labor/Workplace, Palestine and Israel, Repression, The Left, The Right
I love you more today than yesterday
I love magazines like The Atlantic. Ever since its editors first heard murmurings of a possible victory by Zohran Mamdani, the magazine has been running one anti-Mamdani article after another, with titles and claims like these: But now, having lapped this one field of propaganda, the magazine has decided to launch itself on a different course. On today’s website, I read a lengthy attack on the Democratic Socialists of America, the organization from which Mamdani hails. Pining for the days of Michael Harrington—when the organization had 7% of the membership it has today—the magazine declares that the problem with DSA is that it is not more like Mamdani, who knows how to build bridges, turn windy ideology into plain talk, […]
Zohran’s Father and Me
I’ve mentioned before that part of what initially put Zohran Mamdani on my radar is that I’m a big reader and long-time fan of the work of his father Mahmood Mamdani. As if I couldn’t love the father anymore, I just read the following story in Chalkbeat. It turns out that Zohran Mamdani’s favorite teacher in high school was Mark Kagan, brother of Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. Chalkbeat reports: When Mamdani was a student in Kagan’s 10th grade global history course, his father, Mahmood Mamdani, arrived at a parent conference frustrated with his son’s performance. “He was grousing [that] Zohran was getting just a 95,” Kagan recalled. “Like, ‘Why isn’t he working harder? He could be doing better than this.’” […]
- Categories The Left
Zohran Mamdani, the last liberal
Contemporary scholars, pundits, and politicians often describe Social Security as a social insurance program, which each of us pays into during our working years, that, one day, will protect us and other older people against the ravages of poverty. That description ticks all the boxes of contemporary piety: virtue (you worked for it); prudence (social insurance, setting money aside for a rainy day); fairness (reducing poverty); compassion (for the elderly). But just take a look for a minute at how Social Security was pushed in 1939 by the Roosevelt administration. “A monthly check to you—for the rest of your life.” The phrasing and imagery spill out and over with promises of the good life. That once was the program of […]
Ezra Klein and Shaul Magid on Israel, Palestine, and the Jews
Ezra Klein is out this morning with a surprisingly strong piece on how Zionism is dividing older and younger Jews. In the course of his article, Klein takes some surprisingly strong positions. The piece also shows that, whatever else it has done, the Zohran Mamdani campaign has helped push an important conversation about Israel and Palestine among a wider part of the population. The bottom line of Klein’s piece is that until recently, American Jews, most of whom were Democrats, created a mix of liberalism and Jewishness that found its expression in their support for the State of Israel. That experiment has come to an end: Jews can no longer be liberal and support the State of Israel. The two […]
- Categories Jews, Middle East, Palestine and Israel, The Left, The State, Violence
A Tale of Two Controversies: Mamdani’s college application and “globalize the intifada”
Two weeks ago, the New York Times ginned up a controversy over Zohran Mamdani’s college application. In his senior year of high school, Mamdani applied to Columbia University. Asked to identify his race, he checked off the boxes for Asian American and African American. He made a point of specifying that by African American he meant that he was from Uganda. Mamdani’s opponents, most notably Eric Adams, and other commentators immediately used the story against him, claiming that Mamdani was trying to game the affirmative action system of higher ed for his personal advantage by falsely claiming he was Black and Asian American. Peter Beinart has an excellent video out this morning, which puts the story in Mamdani’s family context—and […]
- Categories Education, Jews, Middle East, Palestine and Israel, The Left, The Right, Violence
Moving Mountains in New York City
The two best analyses of Zohran Mamdani’s recent victory are this one, by Michael Thomas Carter, and this conversation that Daniel Denvir, the Terry Gross of the left, hosted with two organizers in New York City. Both analyses focus on the elephant in the room. Virtually all of the commentariat have emphasized Mamdani’s videos, his undeniable charisma and political fluency, and Cuomo’s weaknesses. The latter were oddly invisible to most commentators up until the very night that Cuomo conceded; then it became obvious that he was a weak candidate and was always going to lose; there’s a lesson there about power, which people always treat as static, when it’s not). But easily the most important factor in Zohran’s victory is […]
- Categories The Left
What do we talk about when we talk about “globalize the intifada?”
I wasn’t going to address the controversy over what Zohran Mamdani did or didn’t say about the phrase “globalize the intifada.” But now that Hakeem Jeffries, the Minority Leader of the Democrats in the House, has decided to weigh in on it, on the Sunday morning talk shows no less—specifically, by invoking the fear that Jewish New Yorkers like me are supposed to be feeling when we hear the phrase being used—I think it’s worth a comment or two. Jeffries claims that Mamdani needs to “clarify his position” on the phrase, which is silly, because the only reason Jeffries is even talking about Mamdani’s position is that he has clarified it. On June 17, Tim Miller, an interviewer for The […]
- Categories Jews, Middle East, Palestine and Israel, The Left, The Right, The State
To Make Life Easier: Socialism and the Mamdani Campaign
One of the principles of the Zohran Mamdani campaign that is not getting sufficient attention is the second sentence of his platform: The goal is to “make life easier” for New Yorkers. I come at this from two angles. Let me start with the personal. I don’t know if it’s because I’m older—I’m now 57—and became a parent at 40, when I had less energy than I had when I was in my 20s, which wasn’t a lot to begin with. But I’ve become increasingly cognizant over the lifetime of my child and my time as a parent, just how difficult everyday life is, what a struggle it is to deal with daily needs and demands, and how much of […]
- Categories Economies, Labor/Workplace, The Left