Thoughts on a Victory

From Gaza to New York

It is my duty as a political writer to fire off a take in the wake of an election, so here goes: Were it not for his positions on Israel and Palestine, I don’t think Zohran Mamdani would be mayor. There was a world, and it existed a few years ago, where the opposite would’ve been the case. I know the conventional wisdom is that American voters care about foreign relations, and it’s especially not supposed to matter in local elections, but Mamdani was the only candidate who represented a clear “No” to the genocide in Gaza. It helped assemble his coalition. It mattered especially to the Brooklyn left who would not have campaigned so hard for him otherwise; it mattered to Arab Americans and Muslim South Asian immigrant voters, and most crucially perhaps, it reflected a changed common sense on Israel. David Dinkins had to make sure to travel to Israel to avoid the label “antisemite,” and he still got it. Yes, New York’s demographics are changing, but there is no way Mamdani could’ve won his majority without appealing to traditional New York liberals, many of whom are Jewish.

The terrible images of death and destruction from Gaza made Mamdani’s stance on Israel-Palestine go from fringe to reasonable. Israel’s place in American politics was more the unquestioned status quo than ideological, even for many Jews. It was a given, it was the accepted wisdom, that Israel was more or less okay and a friend. Sure, people had heard all the horrible things activists said about occupation and apartheid, and maybe the Israelis seemed a little too harsh sometimes, but on the whole, it was what was familiar and safe. Then there was Gaza. Suddenly, all those activists didn’t seem so crazy after all. Maybe they had a point—or two. And so Mamdani’s views rapidly go from being an eccentric force in American politics to a central one. It wasn’t so much that the election was a referendum on Palestine, Israel, or, even less, the Jews, as some race baiters want us to believe, but that Mamdani now sounded reasonable and attached to reality, while the people who were defending Israel tooth and nail and calling everyone else antisemites and terrorists now sounded like the wild-eyed ideologues.

Although I’m much closer to Mamdani than Cuomo on Palestine, I remain a little nervous about the introduction of a foreign ethnic conflict into our city. To be clear, that was not Mamdani’s fault. He wanted to focus on affordability, and he “stayed on message,” as they say. He was not the person to introduce the specter of ethnic strife into our city politics. At the very end, his opponents played to hate and bigotry in a shameful way. Humanity has achieved something truly incredible and almost utopian in New York: millions of very different types of people living peaceably—and sometimes even amicably—side by side. That’s every bit as real as the death and destruction halfway around the world. For me, New York is the living counterpoint to all that suffering and hate. It’s worth protecting and building upon. In fact, it’s the most important thing: New York City is, in my humble opinion, the greatest accomplishment in the history of human civilization. We’ve long set the standard for art, culture, industry, literature—you name it. Every good and great thing is available here. As Pericles said of Athens in the funeral oration, “Because of the greatness of our city, the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as our own.” But in politics, we resigned ourselves, with a weary smile, to a certain cynicism. Now we are attempting a politics that lives up to our humane and cosmopolitan aspirations. Wedded to some hard-nosed pragmatism, it just might work.

I think Mamdani agrees with all this, or I wouldn’t have voted for him. The only thing that prevents this city from being a true utopia is that it’s just way too expensive. It’s hard to build a decent life here. I know some people think that gives rise to a competitive spirit that leads to excellence, but the golden age of New York was when the city was accessible to the middle and working classes, and, in fact, the city was a kind of island of social democracy. For it to be great, New York has to attract the world’s most talented and brilliant, and its most industrious and hardworking, not just its richest, and they are not the same thing. Think of it: All of our fond stereotypes of New York are of working-class people: the accents, the slang, the traditions, the food, etc. They made and still make the city vibrant. I’m not sure Mamdani will be able to narrow the gap between the haves and the have-nots successfully, but I do know he’s right that it’s the problem.