Last year, when Zohran Mamdani became the mayor of New York City, I think a lot of people were excited for the opportunity to use him as a cudgel against the progressive left. He was surely going to fail miserably, probably institute Sharia law and be the scary, evil socialist Republicans (and perhaps some Democratic consultants whose jobs consist largely of just telling politicians to pivot right) had long warned and dreamed of. Surely there would be bread lines! Terrifying bread lines! People lining up to get bread for free, unlike at the grocery store where they … stand in line to pay for bread. Or the matcha place down the street from me where there are still block-long lines every day after like a year (I blame TikTok).
That has not happened. Rather, he keeps racking up wins, working on the big projects while finding ways to improve the lives of New Yorkers in small but meaningful ways — community events, tickets to the opera, tickets to other events that regular people have been priced out of, childcare and dinner for a Parents’ Night Out, etc.
And last week, he took on the manosphere.
On Friday, Mamdani appeared on Theo Von’s This Past Weekend for an hourlong interview that was, I have to tell you, fucking brilliant. The parts that have been clipped and put on social media are good, but if you have the time and the inclination, definitely watch the whole thing.
Von is a relatively manosphere/MAGA-coded comedian whom you probably mainly recognize from the time he played an ex-Satanist on The Righteous Gemstones and whom you probably heard of when Donald Trump went on his podcast and Kamala Harris did not (although he says she was invited), and everyone was all “Did Harris lose because she didn’t go on enough manosphere podcasts? WHERE IS THE JOE ROGAN OF THE LEFT!” right up until they started freaking out about Hasan Piker. Anyway, I don’t love the guy, but he really did an excellent job with this interview. He also seemed pretty amenable to changing his mind on things (and has recently become critical of the Trump administration) and able to admit what he doesn’t know.
“I want to talk a little bit about socialism, right? Because it’s it’s a buzzword, right?” Von asked. “Because socialism, will you define socialism for us? Because people say it a lot and don’t know what it is. And sometimes those people are me.”
“I'm so happy to be with those people right now,” Mamdani responded, laughing. “Socialism to me it means that you will have whatever you need to live a dignified life and that it is the government's job to deliver on that.”
This is the only part that detractors were really able to pounce on, and they didn’t do a very good job of it. Mostly they flailed around helplessly, yelling about breadlines (obvs) and crying that it’s not the government’s job to give you dignity, you have to work for dignity, etc.
Naturally, they did not mention the second part of what he said.
“So when people say dignity, I want to be very clear. We’re talking about the things that allow you to take a breath, housing, child care, right? Public transit. No one should be priced out of these things. These are non-negotiables. You need these to live.” Those are just facts. And it’s just a fact that people are very much getting priced out of things we consider necessities. Mamdani noted that, in order to afford childcare, a couple in New York City would have to make $330,000. That is ridiculous. If people who are working hard and making a basic middle class income (about $56,600 to $169,800, nationally, for a family of three) can’t afford the very bare necessities, then that is a problem. And if capitalism isn’t making it possible, we need to try something else.
The best part of the interview, other than Mamdani’s excessively long tie, was when they discussed nurses, and the many problems caused by nurses not being paid enough, being overworked, not having the health benefits they provide to others, etc. Not only does it just suck to not care for the people who care for us in that way, but it affects the quality of care we get and our basic safety.
“I remember meeting a nurse. I asked her — you know she let out a big sigh, We were in the elevator together she let out a big sigh — I was like how’s your day going? She’s like, ‘Ah, it’s going okay. Um, I got to go home after this.’ I was like, ‘Oh, where’s that?’ She said, ‘I have to drive for two hours.’ Because she couldn’t afford to live in this city that she’s working in. Yeah,” Mamdani said. “And, like, beyond what that does for her quality of life, beyond what that means about this city, but also in terms of safety. You have nurses pouring everything they have into their shift and then you want that person to get on the road for two hours at night? It’s unreal.”
It was especially poignant because Von’s sister is a nurse, which allowed Mamdani to just meet him where he was at, with something he already understood to be a deeply fucked-up situation.
The thing Mamdani is just very good at is drilling down and showing how our system doesn’t just hurt people in a vacuum, on an individual level. Because let’s say there’s someone who capitalism really worked well for. Let’s say that person is Jesse Watters, who was particularly outraged by Mamdani’s suggestion that everyone deserves a dignified life.
Jesse Watters could get in a car accident and end up in a hospital with a nurse who is exhausted and overworked, who has to drive two hours every day, and that nurse is a lot more likely to make a mistake than a nurse who is being paid fairly, working a reasonable number of hours in a well-staffed hospital, and who lives not far from where they work.
This isn’t that hard to understand.
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Outside of pundits and the assholes of X the Everything App, however, Mamdani made a pretty damned good impression on the viewing audience, including a lot of people in the comments who said they didn’t agree with him on everything but appreciated that he was an actual public servant who actually wanted to improve people’s lives. Also many who noted that he wasn’t nearly as terrifying as the “news” had led them to believe.
I know he has a lot of work to do as mayor, but I’m telling you, he is, without question, the person we want going out and doing these interviews and helping people understand why it’s not a bad and terrifying thing for the government to do things to improve people’s lives. It’s good that he’s going out there into these spaces filled with people we may find pretty objectionable in many ways, who disagree with him, or, in many cases, don’t realize that they actually do agree with him, and that he’s doing such a damned fine job in New York that people will see that and want some of it for themselves.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
It is the ‘Hyatt’ of irresponsibility to suggest Mamdani will impose ‘Sheraton’ law on New York and America, and contribute to the decline of ‘Westin’ civilization. But we can take ‘Comfort Inn’ knowing there is no ‘Marriott’ to these ‘spacious’ allegations.
I just got the notification that my ballot has been mailed to me.