When my daughter was 10 years old, she suffered her first serious setback in life.
She had fought a solid, honest campaign for class president. She had a slogan and a cause: For the library to be open for students during the lunch hour. She even gave out free Harry Potter stickers.
But she was soundly beaten by an opponent who, frankly, was not as popular.
It was up to me as her father to explain why life isn’t always fair. And how it’s always going to be hard to beat someone campaigning on a promise that will never come true. In this case, it was a free Coca-Cola vending machine in the playground.
Sold on hopes of sugar highs (and, eventually, rotting teeth), the fifth-grade kids voted with their stomachs. By the time the idea fizzled out, nobody cared anymore. She had still lost.
Andrew Cuomo didn’t need his father to tell him this home truth. The late Mario Cuomo knew how to win elections. He won three of them while serving as New York’s governor between 1983 to 1994.
“Hamlet on the Hudson,” as the elder Cuomo was known, understood that New York didn’t fit into then-President Ronald Reagan’s description of America as a “shining city on the hill.” Cuomo said the Big Apple was more “A Tale of Two Cities.”
In his keynote address to the 1984 Democratic Party National Convention, Cuomo said that the “hard truth” was that in New York, there was another city where young people couldn’t afford to buy homes, pay their bills, or educate their children.
“There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don’t see, in the places that you don’t visit in your shining city,” he said.
His son would do well to read the entirety of his father’s famous speech.
For Andrew Cuomo’s campaign for the mayoral Democratic primary, which he assumed he would win with ease, was about as relevant today as promising new libraries to a demographic that considers desktops as old hat.
Maybe a nepo politician gets to be too entitled. He clearly forgot the adage about boots on the ground. He thought he could sit back and rely on expensive ads and a familiar name.
And bringing out aging stalwarts like Bill Clinton and Mike Bloomberg to endorse him at the eleventh hour smacked of the Biden/Harris ticket, which also relied on Clinton and celebrities like George Clooney. Honestly, who would trust the judgment of anybody starring in movies like Wolfs and Ticket to Paradise?
Zohran Mamdani had no name recognition. No pedigree. Few outside New York knew his name before this week. But he has learned from a master.
For a start, he has a name—Zohran—that speaks to his city. “Zohran for New York City” was a familiar sight around the place in the past few months. Like Trump.
On the surface—and certainly in politics—a young Muslim progressive and an old billionaire opportunist have nothing in common.
The Queens assemblyman may not like it, but bear with me.
Mamdani has made promises he may not be able to keep. He has proposed freezing rents for regulated apartments, offering free buses and child care, and launching grocery stores run by the city.
He suggested the $10 billion cost of his ambitious plans would be paid by additional taxes on the wealthy. A surefire crowd pleaser (although less easy to carry out when all those rich people are spending their money trying to prevent it).
Need we point out that Trump’s three presidential campaigns are littered with broken promises? Border walls, not playing golf, repealing Obamacare, not cutting Social Security, eliminating the federal debt, locking up Hillary Clinton, and ending war in Ukraine and inflation on day one of his second term.
Oh yes, and he also said he’d raise taxes for the wealthy (although he did the opposite).
Mamdani focused on affordability for the working and middle classes and went out and talked to anybody who would have him. He agreed to interviews with fans and critics alike, winning friends wherever he went. On Friday, he walked the length of Manhattan. “New Yorkers deserve a Mayor they can see, hear, even yell at. The city is in the streets,” he said.
Trump is no man of the people, not even close. But he campaigned as if he were. He flipped burgers at McDonald’s. He fanboyed WWE. He pretended to like Kid Rock.
Kamala Harris couldn’t be persuaded to sit down with Joe Rogan, the one person with the power to connect her to the massive demographic she was struggling with. She didn’t visit the border. She didn’t connect.
Trump talked about the price of eggs. He still does. Nobody knows if eggs are more or less expensive in his term, but the president knows what the people want to hear.
Mamdani showed another Trump trait by sticking to his guns, even if those views are controversial. He refused to tone down his claims that Israel’s war in Gaza was genocide, even when he was accused of being antisemitic.
At 33, he is half the age of 67-year-old Cuomo. He didn’t ask for Clinton’s endorsement. Or that of any other older party statesman or woman. He wasn’t backed by The New York Times editorial board. His big backer was Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
Of course, Mamdani has been branded a “snake-oil salesman.” Maybe that’s just what the Democratic Party needs. Someone to help young people believe.
“Zohran ran a positive campaign talking about affordability. Cuomo ran a very negative, fear-based campaign. That just made a huge difference,” said former Mayor Bill de Blasio on CNN.
The president sees the danger. He described the primary winner as “the future Communist Mayor of New York City.” There’s a ways to go before then, but Trump can see the threat and moved right on the attack.
“It’s finally happened,” he wrote on Truth Social, “the Democrats have crossed the line. Zohran Mamdani, a 100% Communist Lunatic, has just won the Dem Primary, and is on his way to becoming Mayor. We’ve had Radical Lefties before, but this is getting a little ridiculous. He looks TERRIBLE, his voice is grating, he’s not very smart, he’s got AOC+3, Dummies ALL, backing him, and even our Great Palestinian Senator, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, is groveling over him. Yes, this is a big moment in the History of our Country!”
He is sharpening his insults. If nothing else, Trump enjoys a fight. And this new Democratic Party might finally be ready to give him one.
The big turnouts across the country for the AOC/Bernie Sanders roadshow have signaled for some time now where the heart of the party is heading.
Tuesday’s election may just be the watershed the Democrats need to turn the tide. They have refused to learn the lessons of the 2024 election humiliation.
The great irony is that it has taken a progressive from the extreme left—and their biggest bogeyman—to teach them.
The post Opinion: How ‘Commie’ NYC Dem Trump Hates Learned It All From… Trump appeared first on The Daily Beast.
