Two mayoral elections in major cities with two candidates.
Both Omar Fateh and Zohran Mamdani followed the familiar AOC playbook of seizing their party’s nomination in low turnout primaries or in Fateh’s case, DFL conventions, against an established candidate.
Both were Islamists running on ‘free stuff’ and socialism.
Mamdani beat Cuomo in New York City while in Minneapolis, Jacob Frey appears to have defeated Fateh (with not enough of a margin, leading to the election-rigging plague that is ‘ranked choice voting’ which Mamdani also benefited from.)
The difference didn’t come down to policies, it came down to social media hype.
Mamdani kept that fake smile up the entire time and painstakingly followed the ‘people’s struggle’ handbook of pretending he was representing some electorate other than fellow Muslims and leftists. Omar Fateh tried the same routine, but it doesn’t help that he looks like a fairy tale goblin.
Smilingly only gets you so far when you look like you’re about to demand that a fairy tale queen guess your name or you’ll make off with her daughter.
But Mamdani mostly benefited from massive amounts of astroturfed social media hype. And, I hate to say this, but the Republican focus on Mamdani probably only backfired.
We’ve seen the waves of fake hype for Obama before, not to mention other radical candidates like Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul, in which a small social media campaign by radicals pumps up a candidate that otherwise no one would care about. It only works when the candidate, like Obama, has enough charisma to front it. No amount of hype could make anyone make Bernie Sanders or Ron Paul president. And the hype wasn’t enough for the Minneapolis goblin.
Had Frey been successfully ousted, who knows, but there’s a reason that Rep. Ilhan Omar is the nation’s highest ranking Somali and not this guy.
Socialism is only a part of it. The radical candidates don’t really run on socialism. They run on hype aimed at low-information voters. Especially young ones. That worked for Mamdani, but you have to have the media training, the looks, the polish and the personality to make it happen.
Those can be manufactured.
Consider the difference between the pre-politics and post-politics Mamdani.
Would this guy, who looks like the neighborhood sex-offender, have won? Less likely.
And compare 2000 era Obama with the guy who eventually took over the party.
There’s lessons here about politics and presentation.
Consider Nixon and JFK and consider the candidates that Republicans pinned their hopes on in Virginia and New Jersey.
Mamdani didn’t win a policy debate. He won a personality contest.
