In reality, Democrats are never going to lift a finger to stop an antisemitic communist from becoming the face of their party.
S o, where are the Never Mamdani Democrats?
It’s been nearly three months since Zohran Mamdani won his party’s primary for mayor of New York. There have been plenty of opportunities for Democrats to show the voters of the city, the state, and the nation that this man’s views are intolerable to their party. It will surprise nobody who has watched Democrats over the decades that so few have stepped forward to do so.
For the past decade, Democrats and their pundit and intellectual class have told themselves a story of superior political courage. Republicans, they tell us, are cowards who knuckle under to Donald Trump. Democrats not only want credit for the bravery to oppose Trump (which happens to be in their partisan and ideological interest) but for the implicit idea that they would revolt against a bad leader in their own party.
It was always nonsense. Crooks, wife-beaters, gropers and sex abusers, antisemites, race-baiters, fabulists, plagiarists, fake war heroes, druggies, senile old folks — you name it, and Democrats have run them and supported them. Ask anybody in their pundit class what was the last contested general election for a major office in which they refused to prefer the Democrat to the Republican. Even when they finally and very belatedly turned on Joe Biden in July 2024, it was on the theory that a new candidate with better odds of beating Trump was needed — not out of concern that the existing candidate was incapable of doing the job of president.
Now, the wolf is at the door. Mamdani represents both ideological extremism and the embrace of an anti-Zionist movement that is inseparable from bigotry and political violence. As our editorial in June summed up:
He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, with a list of campaign promises that revisits nearly every discredited left-wing fantasy of the past decade: universal health care, rent freezes, the use of “social workers” as opposed to policing to control urban violence, etc. His most prominent campaign initiative is a promise to eliminate city bus fares, a fantasy which would, if implemented, blow a hole in the MTA’s budget and inevitably lead to service reductions. He has also advocated the eventual implementation of a $30 minimum wage. . . .
He is worse than a democratic socialist; he is — as evidenced by an adult life’s worth of political actions — a deeply committed pro-Hamas activist and advocate for the abolition of Israel. Mamdani has stated repeatedly — including during a recent mayoral debate, when pressed directly on the issue by both Cuomo and the moderator — that he does not believe Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. . . . A week ago, in an interview, Mamdani refused to condemn use of the phrase “globalize the intifada” — universally understood as a call to bring Hamas’s particular tactics of “resistance” to the Western world — and doubled down by favorably comparing the term to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
These are not fashionable or late-adopted positions for Mamdani. While in college at Bowdoin, he co-founded his school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. . . . In 2017, he recorded a rap song sending his “love” to the “Holy Land Five” — leaders of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development convicted in 2008 of providing “material support for terrorism” to Hamas. Perhaps most tellingly of all, when news of the October 7 massacre first arrived, Mamdani issued a statement saying nothing about Hamas; he instead called for “ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”
More here, and that’s before we learned about him gaming the college application system’s race preferences or living in a rent-stabilized apartment he doesn’t financially need. He’s continuing to argue that the NYPD should be deployed to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, a stance that would send them into combat not only against Israeli security but, in all likelihood, the Secret Service and (depending upon the location) United Nations security.
And yet, it’s been difficult to unify the opposition. Trump has made some efforts in that direction, but more than a few Republicans are willing to play the same cynical game that Democrats played in 2022-24 of elevating the worst people in the other party to have them around as a foil.
So, where are the Democrats? In theory, it shouldn’t be that hard to stand against Mamdani. He’s not a presidential nominee; as important as the New York mayorship is, it’s still a local office. And the odds of Republican Curtis Sliwa beating Mamdani even if Democrats came out against their nominee are not high; the second-place candidate in the polls is Andrew Cuomo, who has been a Democrat in very good standing for decades, once served in Bill Clinton’s cabinet, and was widely discussed by the party’s partisans as presidential timber as recently as five years ago.
True, backing either Cuomo or the incumbent Democrat mayor Eric Adams would entail its own moral compromises. But none that would be unfamiliar to partisan Democrats.
Instead, at the state level, Governor Kathy Hochul has gone and endorsed Mamdani. So have Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins. Congressional Black Caucus chair Yvette Clarke, from Brooklyn, has endorsed Mamdani. So has upstate Democratic Representative Pat Ryan. Democrats outside New York have turned up the pressure in favor of Mamdani, with Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen bellowing that it was “spineless politics” to “stay[] on the sidelines. . . . They need to get behind him and get behind him now.”
At the national level, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jefferies — both New Yorkers, both heads of their caucuses — have thus far withheld their endorsements, but neither of them is taking a stand against Mamdani so much as just trying to lay low until people tire of asking them. Schumer’s interview with Dana Bash of CNN on Sunday was a profile in evasion:
“You’ve been asked numerous times if you will endorse Zohran Mamdani for New York City mayor. You always say you’re going to continue to talk. There are two key questions here that you haven’t answered. One is, will you ever endorse him? And two, what do you need from him to get your endorsement? What’s the holdup?” Bash asked.
“I’ve got to continue talking to him. And that’s what I’m going to do,” Schumer responded.
Bash asked if he was worried that endorsing a Democratic socialist would damage the Democratic Party’s brand, and potentially his chances in the Senate. Schumer repeated himself again and said, “I’m going to continue talking to him, Dana.”
Only a few voices have mustered the bravery to speak up, and even those have pulled their punches. State party chair Jay Jacobs, who is based in red-trending Nassau County, said that “I strongly disagree with his views on the State of Israel, along with certain key policy positions,” and that ““I reject the platform of the so-called ‘Democratic Socialists of America’ and do not believe that it represents the principles, values or policies of the Democratic Party.” But even Jacobs, who cleared his statement in advance with Hochul, characterized a lot of the criticism of Mamdani as “fear-mongering” that was “wrong and a gross over-reaction.”
Nassau’s two Democratic representatives, former county executive Tom Suozzi and former Hempstead town supervisor Laura Gillen, represent districts that went Republican in 2022. They, at least, recognize the mortal threat that Mamdani presents to their own electoral prospects. Gillen: “I’ve made my position clear from the start: I completely disagree with the Governor’s endorsement of Mr. Mamdani. Long Islanders are already facing a cost-of-living crisis and the last thing they can afford is Zohran Mamdani’s reckless agenda. We need to bring down costs, cut taxes and keep our communities safe. Zohran Mamdani cannot deliver on any of those goals.” She added, in a recent interview: “We are not socialists. . . . [Mamdani] ran a campaign based on a bunch of promises — free everything — without any real economic plan to pay for it., other than raising taxes. . . . Zohran Mamdani’s socialist, defund the police platform is wrong for New York City.” Suozzi, who ran an unsuccessful primary challenge to Hochul three years ago and backed Cuomo in the mayoral primary, was more restrained, tweeting in June, “I had serious concerns about Assemblyman Mamdani before yesterday, and that is one of the reasons I endorsed his opponent. Those concerns remain.” He added more recently, in explaining his concerns about raising taxes locally rather than nationally (which he prefers), “Zohran Mamdani may be a smart and talented candidate who correctly diagnosed the problem of affordability, but his proposed solutions are wrong. Socialism does not work and his proposed plans would make New York a less competitive city and state.”
The pundit class hasn’t been any braver in actually opposing Mamdani. Jonathan Last, a onetime Republican, offered his justification for embracing Mamdani entirely on the “enemy of my enemy” grounds that he affects to disdain when Republicans adopt such tribal thinking:
You may not like Zohran Mamdani. But if he’s elected mayor of New York City he will be put on the front line against Trump. He will need support.
“Supporting” Mamdani doesn’t mean realigning your policy preferences with his, or lying for him. We should always live in truth. But it would mean recognizing that, in confrontations with Trump, Mamdani represents liberal democracy and Trump represents authoritarianism. And then taking Mamdani’s side accordingly.
Every one of us will be confronted with allies we do not agree with, or even like. Solidarity requires making peace with that discomfort. If you decline, then you fall prey to the anti-anti delusion: That it is more important to maintain relative positioning in the old order than to stand against the new threat.
If there’s a line Last won’t cross to back his new party, we haven’t found it and probably never will.
When will we see a real Never Mamdani movement? My guess is . . . never.