The Collision Course Called Mamdani
New York politics has always been brash, something I can't help but watch here in Wisconsin potato and cornfields. The last few years, New York City's leadership has been a binary choice: It's either Giuliani with a baseball bat or De Blasio's megaphone and checkbook. Zohran Mamdani's campaign doesn't just follow this pattern; it doesn't want to.
The Astorian assemblyman with roots in Kampala, using bullhorns to yell revolutionary slogans, isn't just running for mayor; he's campaigning to flip the city's moral compass, economic engine, and the police force all at once. And Mamdani is doing it with a smile that says, "Yes, I really do mean it."
Depending on where you stand, Mamdani is either the second coming of Eugene Debs or the first mayoral-level Trojan horse for policies that make San Francisco seem Amish.
Like American politics as a whole, the problem is that there is no longer a middle ground.
The Progressive Crown Prince of Queens
Mamdani's rise didn't come from nowhere. Brick by brick, he's been built by the same ideological fabrication plant that gave us the Squad. This says everything we need to know: he's backed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. Mamdani isn't carefully tiptoeing around issues like policing, Israel, or economics; he's shoving the Overton window open, like the boy taking his finger out of the dike, inviting democratic socialism into the proceeding flood.
Mamdani is promising to abolish the Strategic Response Group, the crowd control unit the NYPD uses for protests, even after that same unit responded to a mass shooting in Midtown. Not exactly the greatest timing. When pressed, Mamdani reiterated his plan to disband the unit moments after thanking the officers for their bravery.
He's also on record for busting Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, for setting foot in New York. Mamdani would arrest him for war crimes, not just rhetoric; that's his worldview.
And let's not forget about his support for a public grocery store system, the fare-free MTA, rent freezes, and massive tax hikes on corporations and high earners to fund it all.
Sadiq Khan’s America: A Warning from Across the Pond
If you are a critic of Mamdani, you don't have to look for hypotheticals; you just have to look across the pond to London, where its mayor, Sadiq Khan, has seen his city experience surges of violent crime, policing has become politicized, and ideology has made entire neighborhoods feel abandoned.
The British capital, under Khan, has become a cautionary tale where slogans take precedence, instructing law enforcement to stand down in favor of community dialogue.
That's the model of leadership Mamdani wants to use, only louder, sharper, and threads on X.
Listen carefully, and you can almost hear sirens in Manhattan fading away in favor of hashtags and roundtables.
His platforms read like they came directly from campus lecture halls, where budgets don't need to be balanced and people don't need to ride the E train at 2 a.m. Mamdani isn't offering ideals; he's promising implementation that's armed with New York's unique blend of municipal control and media megaphone.
The frightening thing is that it's working. He took down Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, which used ranked-choice voting, the progressive darling that rewards niche coalitions over broad majorities. The same system that Sen. Lisa Murkowski has used to continually survive.
Dissonance in the Aftermath of Tragedy
Mamdani was quick to respond to Midtown's tragedy when bullets flew through Midtown in June, killing several and prompting a citywide lockdown, praising first responders and attending funerals. Then, barely seven days later, he doubled down: Planning to dismantle the same police force that responded to the attack.
The contradiction wasn't lost on anyone.
To many New Yorkers, public safety isn't an abstract conversation; especially in working-class neighborhoods, it's a daily concern. For them, the utopia that Mamdani believes in sounds like slogans duct-taped together with idealism and blind faith in bureaucracy.
Those people, normal, working their tails off, don't want anything disbanded; they don't want to know when the next subway stabbing won't happen.
The Economics of Decline, Rebranded
Reading directly from the DSA's playbook, Mamdani's economic policies soak the rich, squeeze the middle, and subsidize the rest. You know, because money is merely a concept.
That plays well in union halls and coffee shops in Astoria. However, reading the fine print, Wall Street and businesses head for the exits.
Even Jamie Dimon, the man reserving his commentary for earnings calls, phoned in with a diplomatic "We'll see." That means if this guy wins, government-run oat milk kiosks will replace corner delis by 2026.
In the background, we're seeing an eroding New York tax base causing an exodus of people and businesses to Florida, Texas, and nearby Suffolk County, where lower taxes and fewer regulations are available.
Add Mamdani's plans for city-controlled grocery chains and housing mandates, and suddenly Snake Plisken flies in to rescue a high-valued target.
The Realignment Nobody Asked For
The idea of Mamdani represents something far bigger than himself. He's the product of our current moment, where identity trumps ideology, where the loudest voices get the most airtime, not the sanest ones.
Mamdani, along with the AOCs, is reshaping the Democratic Party from the inside, like software updates you didn't authorize. New York moderate Democrats are either going silent, retiring, or being replaced. Meanwhile, watching from the sidelines, Republicans wonder if voters will ever get sick and tired of the chaos.
The irony is that if Mamdani wins, the following exodus won't be just about crime or the cost of living; it will be about competence. New Yorkers are tough and can survive a lot, but they often find themselves stuck with mayors who campaign on fantasy.
Final Thoughts
Zohran Mamdani wants to transform New York City into something it has never been: not just progressive, but ideologically pure. Not affordable, but government-run, without diversity, but rigidly moral.
The city may choose him, and if it does, we'll find out quickly whether Mamdani is building a new kind of metropolis, or simply repackaging every broken promise from every failed utopia of the past 200 years.
From my perspective here in flyover country, the danger of a Mamdani mayorship might be the seed for something our country is primed for: the further destruction of civil discourse in a country built on those ideals.
I know we all talk about how quickly the left blows up at nothing. Movies, jean commercials, and conservatives speaking common sense have become the latest example of the far-right nazi movement.
What talking heads, far left "intellectuals," and the momentum their words create forgot is that governments don't live together; people live together. We're all pawns in life's game of chess, being taken for granted repeatedly for generations.
What they aren't prepared for is when the bill comes due, they'll be left sitting alone at the table because people of New York City will be living somewhere else.
