Mr. Mamdani is now the Democratic Candidate for Mayor of New York City. With NYC's "ranked voting," Mamdani ended up with 56% of the vote compared to Andrew Cuomo's 44%. The lesser candidates who received votes, end up being dropped under the ranked voting system. So what do we do know about Mamdani? He attended a private school and then the Bronx High School of Science. Then he went to Bowdoin College in Maine. Bowdoin is a small liberal arts college. Also private. He was unsuccessful in his efforts to become a rapper. Mamdani was elected to the New York State Assembly in 2020, and continues to hold that office.
He was born in Uganda, and became a naturalized citizen in 2018. He is a Shia Muslim, and is married. Mamdani's father is a professor at Columbia University. His father has a "decolonial"/"post-colonial" view of the world. At Bowdoin, Zohran Mamdani co-founded the school's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization that many believe has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. What about Mamdani's politics?
He is an avowed member of the Democratic Socialists of America, although his stated policies would arguably support communism. He has called for seizing the means of production, defunding the police, abolishing the prison system, banning all guns, free childcare for all, free buses for all and city run grocery stores. I love "free" stuff. It just means nobody has to pay for it, right? No, it means somebody else pays for it.
When Rudy Guiliani was Mayor of NYC, his policies made the city safe again after Mayor Dinkins. Not by defunding the police, but by having the police show no tolerance even for so-called minor offenses. It was the "broken windows" theory of policing, and it worked. But Mamdani has a different take on the police, as reflected in this 2020 Tweet: "We don't need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety."
I wonder how city run grocery stores would operate. I remember seeing pictures of government run grocery stores in the Soviet Union. Many shelves were empty. Is Mamdani perhaps thinking of expanded food banks, run not by private charities but by the government? I don't know. But, it appears that the food would be "free."
What about this organization, the Democratic Socialists of America. As their name suggests, they are not particularly fond of capitalism. Capitalism - a system that has created more wealth for more people than any other system. Is capitalism perfect? Of course not. But, the problem with many on the Left is this - if something is not perfect we need to get rid of it. Of course, government run organizations work better. What government run system would that be? Don't tell me the military. Because the military is more akin to an authoritarian system, which it has to be in order to function. But who wants that for the civil society?
Some other Democrats consider themselves to be democratic socialists, although I do not know if they are official members. Nevertheless, the DSA has endorsed them - Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Representative Rashida Tlaib. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez went on a nationwide campaign against Trump, drawing sizeable crowds. So, is this the direction of the Democratic party? Continue to move far left even after the country showed it was more center oriented in the last election. The Democrtic National Committee did make David Hogg the vice-chair. He is not exactly a centrist Democrat.
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