‘Mamdanimaniacs’ are fleecing themselves 

Zohran Mamdani’s victory came as little surprise. On both the left and right comparisons to the 2008 Presidential election abound; Mamdani is said to mean nothing less than the rebirth of American liberalism. Like Obama, he was initially a foe of the Democratic establishment, but then embraced. And like Obama, he gets his intellectual and cultural ballast from politically active, urban, college-educated men.

Mamdani’s victory can, in a narrow sense, be explained by the demographics of New York City. But what differentiates him from Cuomo and other establishment Democrats is his ability to speak to the popular, online leftism that millennial, professional New Yorkers traffic in. This particular subculture has seen little electoral representation until now. Given how much influence it now has over the American left, it’s worth understanding.

The most enthusiastic Mamdani voter lives in a small apartment. His income ranges between the high five-digits to $250,000. If he’s old enough, he cast his first ever vote for Barack Obama in 2008. If not, he listens to podcasts hosted by people who did. A few years ago he became very interested in urban planning. He might have a career in law or marketing. He might even work in tech, though he finds Silicon Valley’s defection to MAGA appalling.

The overriding concern of this person, though, is housing. Most people are familiar with New York’s absurd rents, and the anger that the city’s young feel towards their situation is justifiable. Mamdani’s solution is to build new units and, more controversially, to freeze rent on rent-stabilized apartments. This latter policy is what has generated the most enthusiasm within this subculture, mainly because it annoys the conservatives.

One might ask of the “Mamdanimaniacs”: why not simply increase supply by deporting the huge numbers of illegal immigrants whose room and board is subsidized by the taxpayers of New York? Why rely on socialistic overreach instead of complying with the federal government in its effort to enact its deportation agenda? 

The main effect of the popular leftism that Mamdani represents is to neutralize the revolutionary energy of the youth

Because the Mamdani voter is in hoc to a moral consensus that does nothing for him. The ways in which his adherence shoots him in the foot are manifold and extend far beyond housing. If he uses the city’s public transport, he will, in small ways, deal everyday with the consequences of cashless bail and pro-crime courts by being harangued by the homeless and mentally ill. Leftist media personalities inoculate him against thinking too hard about this – he’s regularly reassured that these inconveniences are what give the city its famous character. The unaffordability and high taxes of his city are owed, in part, to leftism too. Untold millions are transferred away from productive earners like himself to the city’s many social programs, none of which he or any of his hypothetical children will ever benefit from.

What ties this all together is the stultifying social world of New York. For white-collar professionals, socializing in the city requires at least a passive adherence to leftism. Friendships, romantic prospects, and relationships that can be leveraged professionally are dependent on passing all kinds of wearisome purity tests. Ideological probing masquerades as small talk. Acquaintances conspire against each other in a way that’d make a Stasi agent blush. These are hothouse conditions for the opportunist and the sneak.

As such, the main effect of the popular leftism that Mamdani represents is to capture and neutralize the revolutionary energy of the youth, taking advantage of the anti-American and anti-white moral foundation that any young person who endured our education system is given. This demographic, in large part, chooses Mamdani because they would have faced social ostracism for doing anything else. Many can’t even bring themselves to privately consider the effects a fully realized Trumpism would have on their finances, their careers, and their standard of living. None of this is particular to New York either. Nationwide, below a certain threshold of disagreeability and perhaps courage, the only conceivable option for politically minded youth is to trick themselves into consenting to their own fleecing.

Mamdani would have won without these “Mamdanimaniacs,” but his cultural cache and national relevance would not exist without them. The faction that succeeds in reviving today’s moribund Democratic Party will be aesthetically and ideologically informed by the “online” form of leftism that Mamdani embraced. Today, although still more or less confined to the internet, this leftist strain is poised to take over the Democratic establishment in much the same way that the GOP was supplanted by Trumpism, also forged in the crucible of the internet.

Whether Mamdani can effect any substantial changes remains to be seen. The languishing Cuomo wing of the Democratic establishment is deeply rooted in New York City, and as an outsider he may have more difficulty implementing policies than previous Democratic mayors did. Any resistance put up by the Democratic establishment is likely to contribute even more to the dissatisfaction young leftists feel with the party, accelerating its demise. Even if Mamdani ends up changing little, though, his role in stoking alternative leftism will lead to trouble down the line for conservatives – especially in a post-Trump world.