Zohram! should be dressed in brightly colored super-tights. He has flown in to upend the established order and work MAGIC!

Of course, only a fool would fall for all that Mamdani stuff, but as Mamdani has just discovered, there are always enough fools around when you need them.

Equally big as the fools who fell for Mamdani are the people who promoted Andrew Cuomo. It was a tough choice: the sleazebag vs. Zohram!, and Zohram! won. Could he be worse than Cuomo?

If ever there was a time to reprise H. L. Mencken’s observation that democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want—and deserve to get it good and hard—it’s now.

Zohram! has promised a cornucopia of socialist-communist goals: free this, free that, free everything else. Really, the best thing to do is probably not to object, or even to attempt to instruct, but just to sit back—way back, way, way back—and enjoy the show.

The fall of Rome was a gradual process that took more than two and a half centuries: it followed the sacks of Rome by the Visigoths (AD 410) and then by the Vandals (AD 455), and culminated (in the traditional date of AD 476), when the last emperor was deposed. Key events contributing to Rome’s decline included military defeats, internal strife, and economic troubles. It might have been faster if they’d had television.

That was then. History seems to move faster now—modern New Yorkers have television and the New York Times. What took the Visigoths and Vandals two and a half centuries could be done by Zohram! in two and a half years.

Time to sell out? Oops. It’s probably already too late. Sorry.

And yet … there might be a silver lining. Zohram! is big on rent control—and probably for free sex too—but that may, or may not, be a digression.

The first rent control in the United States was imposed during World War I. Temporary emergency controls were enacted in a few cities (notably New York City) to address “wartime housing shortages and inflation,” as the experts described it. The controls were short-lived, and most of them expired after the war ended.

The first nationwide rent control was implemented under the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942 during World War II. The Office of Price Administration was created to regulate rents and prices of goods during wartime. Rent ceilings were imposed in hundreds of communities across the country, pegged to March 1942 rent levels.

After the war, many federal controls were lifted, but some cities and states—notably, ahem, New York City—retained rent control laws and later expanded them. New York City’s Rent Control Law of 1947 formalized long-term rent regulation at the local level. Regulating economic matters was just too tempting to pass up.

But are rent control laws constitutional? That depends. And what it depends on primarily is the makeup of the Supreme Court.

In Block v. Hirsh (1921), the Supreme Court upheld a temporary rent control law in Washington, D.C., passed in response to a housing shortage after World War I. Justice Holmes wrote that property rights are not absolute and may be subject to regulation during emergencies. The law was upheld as a valid exercise of Congress’s police powers. Okay? Maybe—but probably not.

Then again, in 1921, in Marcus Brown Holding Co. v. Feldman, the Court upheld New York’s rent control laws based on reasoning similar to that in Block, citing the emergency situation and the temporary nature of the regulations.

In FCC v. Florida Power Corp. (1987), the Supreme Court clarified that price regulation is not a taking unless it is “confiscatory,” meaning it denies the owner a fair return.

Ah! But who decides what is “fair?” Obvious answer: people like Zohram!.

This principle has guided numerous courts to uphold rent control laws that allow a reasonable rate of return to landlords.

Ah! (Again.) But who decides what’s “reasonable?” Obvious answer: people like Zohram!.

So, in summary, we, or they, might say the Supreme Court has found rent control laws consistent with the Fifth Amendment (the Takings Clause) and the Fourteenth Amendment (Due Process and Equal Protection), so long as the laws serve a legitimate public purpose, are not arbitrary or discriminatory, and allow landlords to earn a reasonable return.

Ah, (last time): But who decides—especially, who decides what’s “reasonable?” The people who have, in the past, so decided are people like Zohram!.

But it doesn’t have to remain that way. We might even say there’s a new sheriff in town—though actually, of course, it’s not a new sheriff; it’s a new Supreme Court. And even Justice Holmes admitted (in 1921!) that rent control would probably be invalid if permanent. As he put it, “A limit in time, to tide over a passing trouble, well may justify a law that could not be upheld as a permanent change.”

If the Supreme Court could get around to overturning rent control imposed by Zohram!, we might almost conclude that it was worth having him as mayor after all. Go, Zohram! Go!

But you gotta start wearin’ the brightly colored super-tights.

Daniel Oliver is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of the Education and Research Institute and a Director of the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was Executive Editor and subsequently Chairman of the Board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.

Email Daniel Oliver at Daniel.Oliver@TheCandidAmerican.com.