The Democrats’ Phony Freakout About Mamdani
https://issuesinsights.com/2025/07/01/the-democrats-phony-freakout-about-mamdani/
Democrats are worried about Mamdani not because of what he stands for, but because they know that saying these things out loud will turn off too many independent voters that they need to win elections.
It has been amusing to watch Democrats struggle to cope with the success of 33-year-old socialist Zohran Mamdani’s decisive win in the New York mayoral primaries. Why all the handwringing? Mamdani is now the mainstream of the once great Democratic Party.
The only difference is that Mamdani isn’t afraid to say what other Democratic politicians try to hide.
Think about what Mamdani has proposed or supported:
- A yearlong freeze on rent
- A $30 minimum wage
- Free bus service
- City-owned grocery stores
- Defunding the police
- Calling Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide.
Every one of these positions is now supported in one way or another by “mainstream” Democrats.
Consider, first, the label “socialist.” While Democratic politicians try to pretend that they aren’t that, 57% of self-identified Democrats have a positive view of socialism, according to a 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center. Just 46% had a positive view of capitalism.
A 2021 Fox News poll found that 59% of registered Democrats had a positive view of socialism, compared to just 49% who felt that way about capitalism.
Democrats voted for a Castro-loving leftist, Karen Bass, to run the nation’s second-largest city, Illinois Democrats elected far-left leftist Brandon Johnson to run Chicago, and a “trust fund billionaire extremist” to run the state. Minnesota Democrats did the same when they tapped Tim Walz as governor.
In other words, socialism is the beating heart of today’s Democratic Party.
Mamdani’s proposal of a rent freeze is also right in line with the Democratic Party’s endless push for rent control. It was Biden, after all, who ran for reelection promising to impose a nationwide 5% cap on rent increases for the next two years, an idea Kamala Harris later endorsed.
On the minimum wage, Mamdani is in synch with many other Democrats. In Los Angeles, for example, Democrats approved a plan to raise the minimum wage for workers in hotels with more than 60 rooms to $30 by 2028. California already has a $20 minimum wage for fast food workers. Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee has proposed a $50 minimum wage.
How about free bus service? That’s hardly radical for today’s Democrat. In fact, there were 40 cities – mostly in blue states such as Colorado, Massachusetts, California, and Oregon – that offered free bus service in 2022. Liberal Montgomery County – which is just outside Washington, D.C. – joined the list last week. All they are doing is creating a network of rolling homeless shelters.
And how is the idea of city-owned grocery stores any more radical than other long-held Democratic ideas, such as government-run health care? Harris ran on the promise of nationwide price controls for grocery stores, an idea far more radical than Hamdani’s. (Never mind that government-run grocery stores, like virtually every other government-run enterprise, have a terrible track record. See “There’s No Such Thing As A Free Grocery Store.”)
Defunding the police was a mainstream Democratic position in the wake of the George Floyd riots – which Democrats also supported. Party officials reluctantly stepped away from this only after crime rates skyrocketed in “defund” cities.
Likewise, calling Israel’s attempt to neutralize Hamas terrorists “genocide” is hardly out of step with today’s Democrats.
Fellow socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, now considered a legitimate presidential candidate, called Israel’s war against Hamas “genocide,” a view that the last Democratic presidential candidate, Harris, essentially endorsed when she responded to a heckler screaming “genocide” by saying “Listen, what he’s talking about, it’s real. It’s real.”
Most Democrats (56%) agree with Mamdani that Israel is committing genocide. (Only 36% of independents felt that way.) Plus, Mamdani is a Muslim, the only religion Democrats are willing to defend, probably because of the shared hatred of the West.
Democrats are worried about Mamdani not because of what he stands for, but because they know that saying these things out loud will turn off too many independent voters that they need to win elections.
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