Waking Up in a Socialist(ist) City

By 7:30 this morning, I had to get out of the house and walk it off, “it” being the Democratic primary wins last night of three Mamdani-backed candidates: Brad Lander, Darializa Avila Chevalier (whose full name I did not know in the audio) and Claire Valdez.

Chevalier and Valdez are backed by the DSA. Lander is not directly but was Mamdani’s man over Dan Goldman so, same-same-ish.

Speaking of Goldman:

Mamdani’s opinion on the matter:

My response to Mamdani:

Nancy Rommelmann@NancyRomm

To be clear, the mayor of New York believes that barring a person from a place of business deserves no more condemnation than saying doing so is "beyond" his own disagreements with said person. What gets banned next next, schools? Jobs? Property? This is a very dangerous game.

New York Post @nypost

Mayor Mamdani addresses Dan Goldman cafe incident while backing DSA-linked candidates

7:16 PM · Jun 23, 2026 · 36.2K Views

17 Replies · 54 Reposts · 409 Likes

Do you see why I needed to walk things off? I will remind readers that I have seen Portlanders smash the windows of a Jewish-owned restaurant and spray-paint another with swastikas. That I have seen young people cheer murder in the streets.

You can see why I needed to walk things off this morning, and sure, maybe I extrapolate, play out the string, wonder if the city—so hot on the heels of the beautiful collective effervescence bequeathed by the Knicks—is in for some very bad times.

But seriously, why are people chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” to their chosen candidate winning a local NYC primary? Could it be, as I tweeted, that theur “chosen candidates' stump speeches slipped in anti-Israel rhetoric with the subtlety of your gross uncle trying to slip his tongue into your mouth?”

I am not the only one with concerns. My Fifth boys were, per usual, on the tip, yesterday hosting Manhattan Institute president Reihan Salam.

At one point, Salam speaks about downwardly mobile elites being part of the push behind DSA-backed candidates (a feature the New York Times wrote about last fall). Part of this is that the Democratic party as we once knew is unable to find its ass with both hands (as my late father used to say); does not know how to appeal to its usual or any base. Meanwhile, DSA et al shout about being for the working people, who, well, are just not that into them.

Can you finds plenty of what some might see as indicting tweets from, say, Chevalier? Sure. My friend Liz Wolfe cites a few in today’s Reason Round-Up:

Chevalier is sort of standard fare in the category of extremely online, unhinged DSA 32-year-olds. She has, in the recent past, referred to former President Joe Biden as a "rapist" and "war criminal" during the 2020 election, referred to the U.S. as a "fucking disgrace," and described interracial relationships involving white ladies as "fetishizing ugly colonizer women." Now she'll be in Congress, because we apparently have no standards….

The whole Mamdani/DSA playbook has been about finding solidly blue areas and outflanking from the left, painting the existing guys as parts of the establishment (frequently using “AIPAC”—the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—as a slur). It’s an open question as to whether these new radicals in Congress will even support Jeffries in his bid for speaker at all.

And that brings us to the deeper dynamic I’m worried about, once I get past the frustration that these DSA clowns candidates won at all:

This is not a stable coalition. This is a city getting swept up in the Mamdani fever dream; downwardly mobile upper-middle-class elites believing that the DSA pitch is far more persuasive to the average Democrat than it actually is.

I take comfort in what I see to be two immutable facts. First, Mamdani appeals to people’s feelings, which almost always fizzle out before they become useful building blocks. DSA is good at forming coalitions, but as for grokking what is actually behind the shortage of available housing in New York City? Not so much. From “Zohran Mamdani, Slumlord” (WSJ Opinion):

“New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani last month issued a housing plan that calls for building more—what else?—public housing. So it’s startling to hear even some progressive elected officials complain about the appalling conditions at the city’s existing housing projects….

“Perhaps the Democratic leaders could file a complaint with the city about this slumlord. Oh wait—the city is the slumlord. And a months-long gas outage isn’t unusual in Nycha building. Tenants regularly endure leaky pipes, mold, rodent infestations and furnace breakdowns. Perhaps Mr. Mamdani considers this “the warmth of collectivism…”

See also “Why New York City Has 50,000 ‘Ghost Apartments” (Free Press).

Second, we’ve all seen the “Downfall” bunker scene. Any coalition that promises peace and plenty while insinuating you will only be helping the cause by scapegoating certain people will, whether to further amass power or to look for other scapegoats when things don’t work out, turn the knives on each other.

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