I was at the Knicks game (against Orlando Magic) at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night, which offered a glimpse of iconic New York, with Spike Lee courtside to underline the fact.
Madison Square Garden was probably not the place to look for a reaction to Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral election victory, though across Manhattan I found many people exercised about the event (as well as the recent Epstein release).
Having last been in New York only two months ago, it has certainly not become less expensive, and to channel last week’s note (‘Pear-shaped’) on the K-Shaped economy that described how the holders of capital are doing well and labour is doing poorly, Mamdani is the beneficiary of this Marxian contrast, and he has the rhetoric to go with it.
Mamdani had the right level of charisma, decent organization and the perfect context. He may struggle as mayor, notably in terms of his authority with the police and emergency services, his economic acumen and moreover, in curbing the big picture macro issues that are beyond his control, as well as a hostile federal government.
Yet, for all the attention that his election has garnered, I do not think he is the only story in American politics (Seattle’s mayoral election also deserves attention for example), nor do I think he is the answer to the Democrats’ losing ways, and there are a number of other events to consider.
The first is the death of Dick Cheney, a day before Mamdani was elected. Cheney, or ‘Angler’ to give him his secret service codename (there is a good book on Cheney of that title, by Barton Gellman), is now an important reference point in American public life.
Cheney embodied the idea of someone who served the public and private sectors (almost at the same time), and who spent his life embedded in the industrial-defence-political complex. He had served several Republican presidents as a foreign policy and defence hawk, and when George W Bush asked him to lead the search for a vice-presidential candidate, Cheney could find no-one better than himself, and thus spent eight years as ‘W’ Bush’s vice president, with the suspicion being that it was he who called the shots (literally).
At the time, Cheney was regarded as a right-wing hawk, but as American politics changed, he and his courageous daughter Liz (also generally right wing) were two of very few Republicans who had consistently stood up to, and repeatedly condemned Donald Trump. Amongst other policies, Cheney as a Cold War warrior must have found it very difficult to understand and stomach the approach of the current White House to Russia.
That Cheney ended his life as a critic of Trump is a sign of how far the MAGA crowd have taken the Republican party. In itself, that should not mean that the Democrats fight the next elections from the far-left, as the result in New York hinted.
Indeed, two interesting results, the victories of Mikie Sherrill (now New Jersey’s first female Democratic governor) and Abigail Spanberger (Virginia’s first female governor) suggest that the Democrats can do well in the centre, with credible candidates. Both are role models – Sherrill is a Naval Academy graduate, flew helicopters and is the mother of four children, while Spanberger has three children and worked as a CIA agent.
In the current context, it is encouraging to see these very capable female candidates succeed, and even Marjorie Taylor Greene is displaying a form of reckless courage in veering away from the White House script.
Whilst the Democrat party is in disarray and dispute (following the vote to end the government shutdown), it is in need of a change of guard, notably so given the announcement that Nancy Pelosi will retire from public life. In that respect, serious candidates of the calibre of Sherrill will note three developments that might encourage the sense that a ‘change of guard’ is in the offing.
First, the president’s entanglement with Jeffrey Epstein is sapping his patience and political capital. Secondly, national security will become a more real issue as it is very clear now that China and Russia have only malign intentions towards the West, despite the fantasies of pseudo-Kissingerians in Washington. Third, and most importantly, the direction and timbre of the economy is the key political issue, with affordability at the top of the docket.
Have a great week ahead, Mike
The Levelling 