Really? 

Tomorrow, you will have a chance – not a great chance, but a chance – to defeat Zohran Mamdani. But some of you – maybe many of you – don’t want to do that. You want to elect him.
 
I get it. Mamdani is a fresh face in NYC politics. He’s energetic, likeable, and boyishly good-looking. 
 
When I first looked him up him six or eight weeks ago, my impression was positive. He seemed pleasant and approachable. Even charismatic. Thus, my initial impulse was that – notwithstanding what I’d heard about his politics – I wanted to like him. Perhaps the way I like Bernie Sanders.
 
The Conservative Media was very much alarmed by his growing popularity among NYC voters – particularly wealthy Liberals, whose votes generally decide the outcome of the mayoral elections. They said he was a Socialist. They said he refused to condemn 9/11. They said that he was the coddled child of a wealthy family and had never worked an honest day in his life, except for a few temporary jobs as a waiter and barista. Oh, and then there was that failed attempt to be a rapper.
 
Those are not the sort of ad hominem accusations to which I give a moment’s notice. Were they, how could I have come around, however gradually and begrudgingly, to liking and supporting Donald Trump?
 
Mamdani’s elevator pitch was a bit more concerning. Free buses. Free education. And free housing for the homeless and “undocumented migrants,” as he called them. 
 
Did he really believe he could fund all of his campaign giveaway promises by taxing the Super Rich? Hadn’t anyone in his election campaign group done the math? Had no one told him that those insanely hardcore New York City lovers were already giving up 51% of their income to taxes? Or that since Bill de Blasio’s disastrous tenure, the city was losing its multimillionaires – its most precious financial resource – by the jumbo jet-ful?
 
When I brought up the subject to the liberal NYC denizens I count as friends, they seemed saddened and distraught by such questions. “I’m voting for a Muslim and a Socialist,” one of them – a high-income, high-net-worth Jew – gleefully retorted. As if to say, “Take that and shove it down your conservative gullet!”
 
I remembered reading that on the verge of the Bolshevik Revolution, the luxurious banquet rooms and upscale cafes stirred with happy admiration for the latest trend of the intellectual elite – a movement called Communism.
 
What were my college-educated one-percenters so excited about? It was free bus transportation and city-owned grocery stores! 
 
Writing in The Free Press (I think it was), James Freeman said, “Grocery stores have been consistently among the most obvious, visible demonstrations of the failures of Socialism.” And that today they look like Russian supermarkets before they reintroduced private Capitalism – warehouses of mostly empty shelves except for periodic shipments of identical boxes and cans of bland and low-nutrition grains and vegetables. 
 
In 2000, “60 Minutes” was doing a story on Boris Yeltsin and the fall of the Soviet Union. Leon Aron, who had written a biography of Yeltsin, described the Russian’s visit to a supermarket in Houston: “If there was an epiphany in Yeltsin’s life it was seeing a US supermarket overflowing with ‘lemons of this color and the shining red peppers of that color… and everything is glistening….’ He was literally shaken by the quality of goods. On his flight back to Russia he sat with his head in his hands, repeating, ‘Look what they’ve done to our poor people.’” 
 
As for his position on the Mideast crisis, Mamdani’s been an outspoken critic of Israel in the manner of most Liberals and Leftists, including my giddily optimistic Jewish friend. As if, other than his contention that Israel’s execution of the war against Hamas has been “disproportional” to the barbaric slaughter of 1,200+ peaceful civilians, he would pose no threat to Jewish Americans living under his mayorship. This, despite the fact that he has refused to condemn the slaughter. In fact, in an interview on Fox News just last week, host Martha MacCallum asked Mamdani whether he believed Hamas should disarm and be barred from future leadership in Gaza. “I believe that any future here in New York City is one that we have to make sure that’s affordable for all, and as it pertains to Israel and Palestine, that we have to ensure that there is peace. And that is the future that we have to fight for,” he said in response.
 
In fairness to the lack of concern among so many NYC one-percenters and its large Jewish population, there is the argument that the city is just too big and disorganized to be destroyed by one man in a single term. De Blasio couldn’t do it (although he made a good effort), and it’s possible that Mamdani won’t permanently damage New York. But since he might, you have to ask yourself: Why take a chance? 

Bernie Sanders Goes to West Virginia 

A high school acquaintance who despises Trump sent me this video. I was hoping it wouldn’t trigger my I-Hate-Trump-Haters switch, and it didn’t. It does two things that I liked: It reinforces Bernie’s image as a regular guy. A likeable regular guy. And it shows the power of selling an idea by ignoring subtleties and complexities and having a simple story to tell that is compelling.

Here is how I responded to my friend: Thanks for the video! I enjoyed it. It made me like Bernie again! (Not enough to vote for him, but enough to recognize his modesty, sense of humor, and tenacity.)