Recently, the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion section has run a few articles about local mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
June 18: Cuomo vs. Mamdani: A Fight for the Democrats’ Future
“There is ample reason to believe that Mr. Mamdani would steer the nation’s largest city in a disastrous direction.”
June 20: Zohran Mamdani Wants New York City to Try Real Socialism
“Despite his appeal, Mr. Mamdani’s policy agenda would make New York more expensive and less safe.”
June 22: Does Mamdani Know What ‘Intifada’ Is?
“Globalizing it would bring suicide bombs and Oct. 7-style attacks to New York.”
June 22: New York’s Choice: Cuomo or Socialism?
“Manhattanites are warning that Mr. Mamdani’s ruinous utopianism could prompt a flight of talent and capital, since many won’t stick around to be punished. Has Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis considered donations to the Mamdani campaign?”
June 25: The People’s Republic of New York City
“The irony is that this ‘affordability crisis’ is the result of failed Democratic governance. Rent control and eviction limits have caused landlords to take tens of thousands of apartments off the market. A higher minimum wage raised the cost of food and other basics, while rich union contracts keep transportation inefficient and costly. Climate bans and mandates have raised energy costs. Mr. Mamdani’s solution is more socialism.”
June 26: How Democratic Failure Made Mamdani
“The failure of Democratic urban governance is one of the tragedies of 21st-century America. Mr. Mamdani’s ideas are bound to fail, but it’s not surprising that Democratic voters didn’t trust Mr. Cuomo and the rest of the party establishment to do any better.”
June 26: Mamdani Is as Extreme as Trump
“Democrats rightly deplore the Republican Party for capitulating to Donald Trump and an agenda that threatens democracy and decency. But we’d better pause and note how our own party is creeping dangerously close to an agenda that’s equally outlandish and radical. The clearest sign is the victory by Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York.”
June 26: Rahm Emanuel: My Party’s Future Isn’t Mamdani’s New York
“Affordable healthcare, lifetime retirement security and affordable community college are as American as apple pie, but they won’t be realized by consulting the Democratic Socialists of America’s playbook.”
June 27: Zohran Mamdani and the Jews
“None of this is surprising once one learns the candidate’s father is a Columbia University professor who has for years compared Israel to the Nazis. Both Mamdanis side with the Columbia protest encampment, whose leadership cheered Oct. 7. The candidate says he wouldn’t send police to respond to new encampments.”
June 30: Want Soviet Bread Lines? Vote for Zohran Mamdani
“Now comes Zohran Mamdani with a delusional notion in the name of radical socialism that would destroy everything we’ve built. His ‘public grocery’ proposal—a government-run alternative to private supermarkets—would collapse our food supply, kill private industry, and drag us down a path toward the bread lines of the old Soviet Union.”
June 30: Capitalism Needs Champions
“Believers in free markets and free people need to strap in. The adversary is formidable—young, good-looking, social-media savvy. It’s going to be a long, exhausting fight.”
July 2: For Democrats, Mamdani Is a Wake-Up Call—and a Bad Example
“Mr. Mamdani’s campaign made lofty, utopian promises: free public transit, free college tuition, more public housing, sweeping debt cancellation and massive overhauls of systems far beyond his authority, all paid for by huge tax increases. The last thing New York and other blue jurisdictions need is higher taxes.”
July 2: Mamdani Brings Third World Prejudices to New York
“Why would someone who emigrated to the U.S. from a poor country champion ideas that keep poor countries poor? The rise of 33-year-old Ugandan-born Indian-American socialist Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral race raises the question.”
July 3: Can Anyone Stop Zohran Mamdani?
“Mr. Mamdani won the nomination with strong support from voters under 30. ‘The kids are going to be the death of New York,’ Mr. Sheinkopf says. ‘New York’s a Democratic city, and the kids are also going to be the death of the Democrats. Not just in New York, but nationwide.’”
July 3: Escape From Mamdani’s New York? That Isn’t the Jewish Way
“Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary has scared many people… In recent days many Jews have asked themselves: Where to now? My sister sent me house listings in Maryland, and a friend made the case for Florida. ‘We won in Tehran and lost in New York,’ I heard someone say. Jews in particular are nervous because they know. Whether from Europe or North Africa, they know what it means to have to flee.”
July 6: The Progressive Paucity Agenda—From Mamdani in New York to California
“Not that long ago, the ‘abundance’ agenda was all the rage among liberal elites… Then along came democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, who won the New York City Democratic mayoral primary on a paucity platform that calls for higher taxes on the rich, greater income redistribution, and expanding government control over private business—or, as he put it in 2021, ‘seizing the means of production.’”
July 6: The Lure of Comrade Mamdani
“He says he respects differences. His radical utterances indicate otherwise.”
July 7: Trump, Mamdani and the Temptation of Radical Ideas
“But while we may mock the radicalism of Mr. Mamdani and his fellow socialists seemingly on the rise in the Democratic Party, I see in the man’s appeal, his evident popularity among a certain type of young voter especially, more signs of the continuing crack-up of American politics.”
July 7: Some Modest Proposals for Mamdani
“There’s plenty of land that could be turned into affordable housing: He could start with the Met.”
July 8: Walmart Beats a Government Grocery Store
“Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York mayor, has a plan to address food access and grocery prices: Spend about $300 million to open a government-owned and -operated grocery store in each of the city’s five boroughs…Here is a far better idea: Let Walmart into New York.”
July 9: We’ll All Pay for New York’s Mamdani Folly
“Every dollar spent to bail the Big Apple out of a socialist experiment is a dollar that could be spent fruitfully elsewhere. Let’s hope New Yorkers come to their senses and avert a disaster before it happens.”
July 9: Chuck Schumer’s Mamdani Test
“Mamdani has made clear his socialism and his views about Israel and Jews who support it. The question is whether Mr. Schumer is going to turn his back on a good portion of his life’s work.”
July 14: Upton Sinclair Was 1934’s Mamdani
“Will Wall Street and other interests coalesce around a strategy and devote the resources to defeat Mr. Mamdani?… More than just the occupant of Gracie Mansion is at stake. The future of the Democratic Party is on the ballot.”
July 16: Mamdani and the Left’s Alliance With Radical Islam
“Mr. Mamdani also has a long record of anti-Israel activity. As a co-founder of Bowdoin College’s Students for Justice in Palestine, he backed boycotting Israeli institutions. One of his songs during his short-lived rap career praised the Holy Land Five—men convicted by a U.S. court of providing material support for terrorism by funding Hamas… Why is Mr. Mamdani unwilling to reassure voters by adopting a more moderate stance?”
July 27: Antisemitism Moves Into the Political Mainstream
“Equally mind-boggling are those who call themselves ‘Jews for Zohran.’ For Jews to support Mr. Mamdani or anyone like him is self-destructive.”
July 30: The Specter of Chaos in New York
“Could a Mayor Mamdani keep the city safe during Luigi Mangione’s trial?”
August 1: Ground Zero, Mamdani and ‘Jewish Memory’
“If Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor of New York, Daniel Libeskind would like to bring him to Ground Zero and tell him a thing or two about tolerance. ‘He’s clearly not someone to trust when it comes to his relation to Jewish issues,’ Mr. Libeskind says.”
August 5: The Scholar Who Saw Zohran Mamdani Coming in 2003
“Since American children and college students weren’t being taught what happened under actual socialist regimes, it was only a matter of time before simplistic slogans attacking private property, billionaires and “profits before people,” would be successfully revived by a smooth-talking demagogue.”
August 8: Living in Zohran Mamdani’s America
“How did socialism rise from the dead, and what can freedom-loving Americans do about it?”
August 11: Mamdani May Herald a New Kind of Class Struggle
“Today, socialism doesn’t immediately conjure gulags, though it should. Capitalism doesn’t immediately conjure economic and social nirvana either. When I was in my 20s the faces of socialism were those of semi-embalmed members of the Politburo and crusty old trade-union leaders with bad breath. In America today the leading advocates for socialism, Mr. Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are 30-somethings from New York whom you might not mind matching with on a dating site.”
August 19: Zohran Mamdani Is Like a Bad Therapist
“Voters, like patients, often seek comfort rather than insight.”
August 21: New York’s Three-Ring Political Circus
“Each bad headline about Mr. Mamdani’s opponents eases the pressure on him to moderate his far-out proposals. If New York is going to elect a socialist as mayor, the city should at least have a debate about it.”
August 24: The People’s Republic of Hollywood
“One reason Mamdani appeals to young people: The movies glorify socialism.”
August 29: Mamdani’s Rent Freeze Would Sink New York Landlords
“Caught in the crossfire is Sharon Cohen, just one property owner in the Bronx, trying to hang on. ‘I see people in the neighborhood handing out flyers to freeze rents for senior citizens. I ask them what will you do to help me, I’m a landlord—and they keep on walking.’”
September 8: Mamdani to ‘Discourage’ Intifada Call
“Why not condemn it, if he really listened to memories of bus bombs?”
September 16: The Only Man Mamdani Wants to Arrest Is Netanyahu
“Should a Mayor Mamdani attempt such a stunt, I would happily represent the prime minister in a federal lawsuit, which would be the easiest win of my career.”
September 22: Zohran Mamdani Threatens Charter Schools
“Voters who see the tragedy of low standards in education might question if Mr. Mamdani is the right pick for mayor.”
September 30: Eric Adams Drops Out, but That Won’t Stop Mayor Mamdani
“Many on the political left will cheer that outcome, but it may not bode well in flyover country, where the Democratic Party has been bleeding working-class voters. Smarter Democrats understand that making a 30-something socialist the face of the party could undermine its national ambitions.”
October 12: Can Cuomo Beat Mamdani?
“What accounts for young people’s enthusiasm for Mr. Mamdani? ‘TikTok, affordability, Gaza, Gaza, Gaza and Gaza,’ Mr. Cuomo says.”
October 17: Has Mamdani Really Left His ‘Political Home’?
“If Mr. Mamdani sometimes blurs the line between socialism and communism, as he did when praising a Communist Party mayor in India, it’s to signal that his sympathies lie squarely with those who believe that the adjective in ‘democratic socialism’ is an irrelevant modifier. Mr. Mamdani may not be a ‘communist,’ as President Trump has called him, but he is at least a fellow traveler.”
October 19: Zohran Mamdani and the Tax-Hike Death Spiral
“Burden the wealthy too much and they flee. That’s how socialists run out of other people’s money.”
October 21: Zohran Mamdani and the Democrats
“Democrats have a problem, and we don’t mean Donald Trump. The arguably bigger danger is the socialist insurgency building in their own party.”
October 22: Trump and Mamdani Look Like Caudillos
“Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani wants New York City to open five municipally owned grocery stores to lower food prices. The plan may sound modern and progressive, but to anyone from Latin America, it sounds eerily familiar… Latin America’s political pathologies are one import that we shouldn’t let across the border.”
October 22: Zohran Mamdani Pushes to Defund the Gifted
“As with boys in girls’ sports and antipolice activism, identity politics trump common sense.”
October 27: Democrats Fall Into the Mamdani Line
“The big question now is whether Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, will endorse Mr. Mamdani. Doing so would betray his long career as a supporter of Israel and opponent of antisemitism.”
October 28: A Mamdani Mayoralty Threatens New York’s Jews
“Mr. Mamdani’s messaging has made class war and hatred of Jews great again. Smiling, polished, articulate, Mr. Mamdani lies… I’m voting for Andrew Cuomo. We need a uniter, not a divider.”
October 29: I Want Your Vote, You Bigot
“In an emotional speech in the Bronx, he accused his opponents of ‘Islamophobia.’ Even less wise, he posted on YouTube a nearly seven-minute speech ‘to speak to the Muslims’ of New York. While eloquent and flawlessly delivered, it was also angry, bitter, divisive and dumb.”
October 29: Europeans Watch New York’s Mayor’s Race With Fear
“It would be a black day for the Jews of New York. An insult to the memory of Saul Bellow, Elie Wiesel and Leonard Bernstein. A spit in the face of Emma Lazarus, the poet whose words of welcome to the humiliated, afflicted, nameless and stateless who arrived at Ellis Island are engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty… If New York falls, the entire free world may again totter on its foundations.”
Well I guess the voters will decide.
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Related reading: New York Socialist City; Up With Zohran; The Subway Is Not Scary; How Things Work’s interview with Zohran Mamdani.
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I would expect exactly that from the wsj
Unhinged, frothing-at-the-mouth coverage. He's not even mayor yet.