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Unlike Zohran Mamdani, most Dems want prosperity — not class warfare

Unlike Zohran Mamdani, most Dems want prosperity — not class warfare

New York Post06-07-2025
Liberals and progressives are celebrating Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani's primary victory as proof that New York City is ready for a 'democratic socialist' revolution.
They're badly in need of a history lesson: Every socialist revolution has failed and set back the goals it meant to accomplish.
Everywhere it has been tried, socialism has meant economic decay at best and mass death at worst.
The global death toll from socialism and communism is roughly 100 million souls.
Whether the victims died in Stalinist gulags, Mao's Great Leap famine or Pol Pot's 'killing fields,' the underlying logic was the same: When the state owns everything, the individual owns nothing — not even his life.
Mamdani's own platform may seem more anodyne, but it is a distilled sampler of socialism's greatest failures: nationalized businesses (public utilities), price controls (rent freezes, 'affordable' everything) and government-run retail.
Meanwhile, capitalism's ledger shows no mass graves — only the lifted living standards of billions.
Even China's rise from Mao-made famine to middle-class affluence began the day Deng Xiaoping opened markets and let peasants keep what they grew.
Mamdani promises city-run groceries to 'bring down prices,' as if 8 million New Yorkers will flock to a public-owned store without remembering Venezuela's empty-shelf socialism.
He proposes a rent freeze, forcing down the price of housing. Berlin's leftist government tried the same stunt with its 2020 Mietendeckel: Apartment listings collapsed 41.5% in a single year.
He proposes fare-free buses. Tallinn, Estonia, made transit free in 2013; a Royal Institute of Technology audit found ridership rose barely 3% and car traffic scarcely fell, even as taxpayers picked up the heavy bill.
He proposes no-cost child care. Quebec's celebrated '$5-a-day' day care ballooned in cost and delivered a 'sizeable negative shock to non-cognitive skills' that lingered into adolescence, per the National Bureau of Economic Research — along with higher crime and lower life satisfaction.
All this is funded, naturally, by punishing 'the rich' — until they decamp to Florida, just as over a million wealth-holders fled Fidel Castro's Cuba, 6 million Venezuelans (most college educated) abandoned Nicolás Maduro's 'Bolivarian miracle' and 15% of Russia's millionaires bolted in a single year once Vladimir Putin's neo-Soviet expansion started.
The socialist mayoral hopeful's web site also touts 'public ownership of utilities,' a polite phrase for state takeover of the power grid.
Another of Mamdani's proposals is boosting the city's minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030 — an 82% jump.
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That would saddle small employers with entry-level labor costs near $65,000 a year, forcing many to lay off staff, automate or close — and leave fewer rungs on the ladder for new workers.
Then there's policing. This may be the part of Mamdani's platform that is most acutely not what it seems.
In 2020, Mamdani embraced 'defund the police' during the city's summer of riots. Now he says he merely wants to shift funds to a new Department of Community Safety.
Here's the irony socialists rarely acknowledge: Every successful socialist leader, from Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Maduro Venezuela to Colombia's Gustavo Petro and Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum's Mexico, has depended on a stronger, more intrusive police force to enforce rationing, suppress dissent and make those neat five-year plans look 'orderly.'
Finally, his 'Trump-proofing' proposal — getting ICE out of NYC and ending any cooperation with the feds — sounds like an open invitation for gangs like the Tren de Aragua and MS-13.
Do New York City socialists expect everyone to hold hands and sing Kumbaya?
Mamdani's agenda is doomed to fail because it doesn't understand that NYC's problem is not capitalism but its own government.
High costs in New York stem from layers of policy that strangle them: restrictive zoning locks 75% of residential land into one- and two-family lots, prevailing-wage and union rules push subway construction to an eye-watering $2 billion to $3 billion per mile, and the New York City Housing Authority's $80 billion repair backlog shows what happens when government runs housing.
Add the nation's heaviest big-city tax burden and miles of red tape, and you've got an economy in which prices climb and paychecks stall.
Why are Democrats doing this to themselves? Part of the answer is Donald Trump.
An unconventional Republican back in the White House has driven many liberals to think the best response is a hard-left hook.
But backing Mamdani's agenda clashes with that of the majority of Democratic voters who value prosperity over class warfare — among them the millions of Latinos who've escaped socialism, support Democrats and now face a party willing to impose on them the very ideas that prompted them to flee.
Santiago Vidal Calvo is a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute. The views are his own and not those of the Manhattan Institute.
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Cuomo stays in NYC mayor's race despite losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani
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Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched an independent run for New York City mayor on Monday, restarting his campaign after a bruising loss to progressive Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary. In a video, Cuomo announced he would remain in the race to combat Mamdani, a democratic socialist state lawmaker, who the former governor said 'offers slick slogans but no real solutions.' 'The fight to save our city isn't over,' Cuomo said. 'Only 13 percent of New Yorkers voted in the June primary. The general election is in November and I am in it to win it.' Critics of Mamdani's progressive agenda, which includes higher taxes on the wealthy, have called on donors and voters to unite behind a single candidate for the November election. The current mayor, Eric Adams, is also running as an independent in the general election, as is former prosecutor Jim Walden. Curtis Sliwa, founder of the 1970s-era Guardian Angels anti-crime patrol, is on the Republican line. Cuomo's decision to press on in the race is the latest chapter in his comeback attempt, launched almost four years after he resigned as governor in 2021 following a barrage of sexual harassment allegations. He denied wrongdoing during the campaign, maintaining that the scandal was driven by politics. Despite his scandal-scarred past, the former governor was the presumed frontrunner for much of the primary. His juggernaut campaign drew heavily on his deep political experience, universal name recognition and a powerful fundraising operation, but at the same time limited media interviews, held few unscripted events and avoided mingling with voters. The guarded strategy was in heavy contrast with Mamdani's energetic run, which was centered around making the city a more affordable place to live and amassed a legion of volunteers, all while the candidate's savvy social media persona won him national acclaim. Mamdani's massive upset sent a lightning bolt through the Democratic party, energizing young progressives but also unnerving moderates who worried that the candidate's criticisms of Israel and socialist label could alienate centrist voters. Cuomo, in his video Monday, appeared to acknowledge his campaign's shortcomings, splicing his latest pitch to return to the political stage with clips of him shaking hands with people and a vow to run a more grounded campaign. 'Every day I'm going to be hitting the streets meeting you where you are, to hear the good and the bad, problems and solutions,' he said, 'because for the next few months it's my responsibility to earn your vote.' In a statement, Jeffrey Lerner, a spokesperson for Mamdani, said 'While Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams are tripping over themselves to cut backroom deals with billionaires and Republicans, Zohran Mamdani is focused on making this city more affordable for New Yorkers. That's the choice this November.' Mamdani had been relatively unknown when he launched his mayoral candidacy but picked up heavy momentum before landing a massive upset of Cuomo in the city's primary. Cuomo conceded the race on the night of the election, with a later vote tally showing Mamdani trouncing the former governor by more than 12 percentage points. Despite the loss, Cuomo had qualified to run on an independent ballot line in November under a party he created called 'Fight and Deliver.' Cuomo began losing support from traditional allies as he weighed whether to remain in the race, with key labor unions and political leaders starting to line up behind Mamdani. Rev. Al Sharpton, an influential Black leader, has urged Cuomo to step aside. Some deep-pocketed contributors have meanwhile aligned behind Adams. Although he's still a Democrat, Adams pulled out of the primary shortly after a federal judge dismissed a corruption case against him at the request of President Donald Trump's Justice Department, arguing that the case had sidelined him from campaigning. Adams, in a statement released by his campaign, said 'Cuomo is wasting time and dividing voters.' 'The people spoke loudly — he lost. Yet he continues to put himself over the number one goal — beating Mamdani and securing our city future,' said Adams. Cuomo, 67, served as governor for over a decade and modeled himself as a socially progressive Democrat who got things done. He pushed through legislation that legalized gay marriage and tackled massive infrastructure projects, like a three-mile bridge over the Hudson River that he named after his father. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .

Sen. Schumer Channels Marx
Sen. Schumer Channels Marx

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Sen. Schumer Channels Marx

In 'Chuck Schumer's Mamdani Test' (Review & Outlook, July 10), you ask whether the Senate minority leader will endorse Zohran Mamdani, the socialist who has given the OK to globalize the intifada. By doing so, Mr. Schumer would being turning his back 'on a good portion of his life's work.' Maybe. It seems to me that the senator's main achievement is simply getting re-elected. If bending the knee to Mr. Mamdani is what it takes to secure another term, count on it. Dana R. Hermanson

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