JD Vance vs. Zohran Mamdani
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At a recent Claremont Institute gathering, Vice President JD Vance delivered a sharp critique of New York Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, framing him as a vivid reflection of the American Left’s internal contradictions.
Describing Mamdani as a “33-year-old communist running an insurgent campaign,” Vance argued that his win in the Democratic mayoral primary reveals “interesting threads” that mirror the current state of the American Left.
He contrasted Mamdani’s support base with the coalition behind President Donald Trump, which Vance characterized as a “broad working-and-middle-class coalition.” Mamdani’s supporters, he noted, form “almost the inverse of that.”
Vance highlighted Mamdani’s appeal among “high-income and college-educated New Yorkers, and especially both young, highly educated New Yorkers,” while pointing out his weaker performance among Black voters and those without college degrees. He also noted Mamdani’s strong support in “the Bangladeshi areas of New York” but lackluster results with “non-Bangladeshi Asian immigrants, particularly Chinese-Americans.”
The heart of Mamdani’s coalition, Vance argued, lies in “young people who live reasonably comfortable lives, but see that their elite degrees aren’t really delivering what they expected, and so their own prospects with all the college debt may not in fact be greater than those of their parents.” This group, he suggested, is driven not by economic hardship but by a sense of disillusionment with their elite status.
“We have to be honest about where his coalition is,” Vance said. “It is not the downtrodden. It is not poor Americans. It is not about dispossession. It’s about elite disaffection and elite anger.”
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Mamdani is described as embracing communism in some reports I have seen. Why anyone would still embrace that failed ideology is curious. It hasn't worked in Russia or China, but it has led to authoritarianism in both. Command economies or the opposite of free markets.
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