NYC's New Mayor Will Be Zohran Mamdani

He's not American, he's Muslim, and he portrays himself as a communist, so it is not all that surprising that Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race. He ran on a platform of the "promise of free buses, rent freezes, fewer cops and higher taxes for the wealthy and big business [which] sparked unprecedented support in a mayoral race with the highest turnout in more than 50 years." His victory speech was anti-Trump, of course, but he also bragged of overthrowing the Cuomo political dynasty. "Mamdani called his election 'a mandate for change, a mandate for a new kind of politics, a mandate for a city we can afford and a mandate for a government that does exactly that'." Jewish groups are blustering over his election, promising to hold Mamdani accountable; and the New York Post also reports that "New York City’s Jewish fire commissioner Robert Tucker handed in his resignation first thing Wednesday[.]"

    Since the race was really between two Democrats, the normal Right versus Left analysis is not extremely useful unless you only want to point out that the radicals in the Democrats are ascendant. 

    But I think there is a little more to work with if we look at this from the perspective of applying Peter Turchin's ideas of civil wars and revolution. In his book End Times, Turchin identified "four structural drivers of instability: popular immiseration leading to mass mobilization potential; elite overproduction resulting in intraelite conflict; failing fiscal health and weakened legitimacy of the state; and geopolitical factors."

      As to the first factor--popular immiseration leading to mass mobilization potential--Mamdani's platform appears to have been crafted to address the concerns of many voters in an economy that increasingly has left them behind; particularly among younger voters for whom the American dream is largely an illusion. That Mamdani's communist leanings means that he is incapable of addressing those issues in a rational manner does not matter--he spoke to the voters' concerns. This is the revolutionary aspect of Turchin's ideas where the economic misery grows so strong that the general public is willing to rebel against the elites that take advantage of them. I think that if Mamdani believes that voters elected him because he was a Muslim, or a person of color, or leftist, he is deluding himself. Behind his victory are many of the same concerns that drove Trump's victory on the national stage.

    Second, as to elite overproduction, I would point out that Mamdani is part of a group of counter-elites that are challenging and gradually taking power from the elites that have held power in New York for generations. That this is a shift from politicians that have traditionally catered to the Jewish vote to politicians that are catering to a new generation of immigrants is what really underlies the cries of antisemitism. 

    Third, New York City is in precarious fiscal health, stretched too thin by offering generous benefits to hordes of illegals. That Mamdani will probably make things worse didn't penetrate to the voters--they want change and Mamdani offered it.

    Fourth, geopolitical factors probably don't generally play a role in mayoral races, but in this case I suspect that the influx of immigrants over past decades gave Mamdani a voter base that is comfortable with socialism.  

    For those of us old enough to remember, New York City in the 1970s was a hive of scum, villainy, urban decay, crime, and one fiscal crises after another. It will be interesting watching New York return to being the liberal paradise it was in the 1970s.