Last Tuesdaay, Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York, and the usual subjects immediately went into high gear, once again demonstrating that American politics has become all about labeling rather than policy analysis. The mere fact that Mamdami identifies as a Democratic Socialist (along with Bernie Sanders) was enough to set the Right raving about a communist takeover of the Big Apple.
Over the past decades, the political Overton Window has shifted so far to the right that policy proposals that once appealed to liberal Republicans (back when the GOP was a political party rather than a semi-fascist cult) are now labeled “far Left.”
Take Mamdani’s support for free bus service. My husband and I met when we both served in the very Republican Hudnut Administration–I was Corporation Counsel, he was Director of Metropolitan Development. Reporters who covered City Hall (we had those back then) considered both of us “right of center.” He has long been a proponent of free bus service, for a number of reason related to the environment and urban development.
I tend to disagree with Mamdani’s support of rent controls, which have been in place in New York since 1920, and have been supported by New York Mayors for years. I think those controls ultimately disincentivize new construction. I agree with his other proposals for increasing the housing supply–and find his concerns for housing affordability laudable–and in any sane world, centrist.
What about grocery stores for food deserts? Here in Indianapolis, in the middle of Red Indiana, lawmakers have suggested a variety of government supports for our own underserved areas–not actual municipal grocery stores, but not government “benign neglect” either.
Let’s face it–the American Left is far, far to the Right of the European Left, and bears absolutely no resemblance to communism. Right-wingers conflating them rely on Americans’ (admittedly widespread) political ignorance.
Of course, a good deal of the hysteria over Mamdani’s win is really anti-Muslim sentiment promoted by our own Taliban-like Christian Nationalists. (And I won’t even dignify the efforts to paint his entirely defensible opinions on Gaza as anti-Semitic.)
Mamdani’s victory ought to trigger a reconsideration of a foundational political issue: What is the nature of the social and physical infrastructure that government should provide? And in a federated system, which level of government should be responsible for which pieces of that infrastructure?
What sorts of “socialism” should cities provide?
Over the years, Americans–especially in our more densely-populated cities–have learned that we need to provide police and fire safety communally, that public health requires, among other things, communal provision of garbage collection. Sewers are built and maintained by public and/or semi-public entities; until the GOP’s “privatization” efforts, public schools were understood to be a public necessity.
I haven’t seen people advocate for private provision of streets, sidewalks and traffic controls–and although a few libertarians have complained that libraries should be replaced by bookstores and public parks by private clubs, very few citizens agree.
We don’t call those and numerous other public amenities “socialism,” but of course, they are. They are socialized services, paid for with our tax dollars.
Back when people running for public office cared about policy rather than power, political disputes were essentially about the nature and extent of the physical and social infrastructure that governments should provide, and how that provision should be structured, managed and paid for. What level of government should handle air traffic, food safety, disaster relief? What functions are more properly handled at the state or local level? Have demographic or social changes altered the considerations that led to prior decisions?
We have almost entirely abandoned those very important, very foundational questions in the midst of our existential battle to forestall a rolling coup, but ultimately, those are the questions that lawmakers must confront. They are the questions–and his answers to them– that Mamdani elevated in the recent New York primary. Political discourse in this country has become so divorced from actual policy that rather than engaging with his issues, rather than debating the merits of his proposals, the reaction to his campaign was name-calling.
I don’t know whether Mamdani–whose experience in government is thin–will be an effective Mayor of the country’s most immense city. That issue, it seems to me, is legitimate. Mounting objections to his proposals based upon facts and evidence is also legitimate. But the critics who are engaging in labeling and name-calling have adopted Trump’s approach to politics–an approach mimicking the tactics of schoolyard bullies and five-year-olds and entirely divorced from the real issues of governance.
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