New York City is poised to elect a Jew-hating, jihadi-loving, police-defunding socialist for mayor. But New York Times contributor E.J. Dionne thinks that this is fine, because Zohran Mamdani wants to be a “sewer socialist.” Which is to say that “he is far more interested in the practical task of being a successful mayor than in the impossible dream of turning a single city into a socialist paradise.“
Dionne is the sort of self-described Catholic Democrat who prefers the party platform to the catechism of his church, and so he is a willing mark for Mamdani’s efforts to reassure voters that he isn’t a dangerous radical. Per Dionne, Mamdani understands that the best advertisement for socialism is success, and he therefore seeks to revive a tradition of socialist mayors who eagerly worked on “the grubbiest of urban amenities because doing so underscored their aim of running corruption-free governments that did whatever they could to improve the lives of working-class people.”
That sounds nice. It would be good for the Big Apple if Mamdani delivered on this ideal. Indeed, if the Democrats who run our nation’s cities focused on good government, it would be good for their constituents, their party’s political fortunes, and the nation as a whole, which is harmed when Leftists such as Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson run our cities into the ground. But an outbreak of good government via urban socialism is not going to happen, no matter how much credulous liberals such as Dionne want to believe.
The first barrier is ideological. Socialism has changed since the early 20th century days that Dionne pines for. It is not about taking from the haves to give to the have-nots anymore (if it ever was). Rather, today’s socialism is an amalgamation of woke ideology, from intersectionality to anti-colonialism. Its advocates don’t care about sewers in working-class neighborhoods nearly as much as they do about climate change and letting sex offenders into the girls’ locker room. Today’s Left will enthusiastically take food from poor kids to pressure schools into implementing the rainbow agenda.
The result is an incoherent agenda that will hurt those whom Mamdani claims to want to help. For example, because socialism views excellence with suspicion, he wants to eliminate gifted programs for young public-school students. This will do nothing to advance the interests of the working class; it will only sabotage the chances of bright kids whose parents cannot afford private school tuition. Likewise, his antipathy toward law enforcement will undermine his signature initiatives, such as free busses. It is not just that “free” busses will, by his own estimate, cost taxpayers billions, but that people will avoid them because the Left refuses to enforce the laws that keep public spaces safe.
A revival of “sewer socialism” would require Leftists to change their entire worldview — embracing things they perceive as right-wing (e.g., public safety) and focusing on mundane matters such as efficient garbage collection. This seems unlikely.
And there is another obstacle impeding any socialist effort at good government, which is that it would take money and power away from their allies and infrastructure. The Left treats social and educational efforts as jobs programs, opportunities for activism, and slush funds. There is no reason to think that Mamdani and his DSA ilk will keep a close eye on the books, or audit the left-wing activists that run government programs and government-funded NGOs in deep blue cities such as New York.
It is naïve to think that Mamdani would pass up the opportunity to expand the Left’s patronage and activist network, let alone pare it back in the name of good government. In both New York City and the nation, huge sums of money have gone missing from various government welfare programs, much of which we are (unsurprisingly) learning was outright stolen. The best that can be realistically expected is massive waste, the worst is massive fraud.
Actual good government initiatives would require the Left not only to investigate and prosecute its grifters, but also to break down its bastions of institutional power, fire its foot soldiers, and drain its own slush funds.
A good-faith effort at “sewer socialism” would require the Left to dismantle its own infrastructure as well as repudiate its current ideology. Neither will happen, and the intertwined nature of these problems is evident in the makeup of Mamdani’s coalition. The demographic most enthusiastic about Mamdani is not working-class “people of color” but white, college-educated professionals. This replicates a dynamic seen around the nation, which is that those with the most influence in the Democratic Party are substantially to the left not only of the median voter, but even of the median Democratic voter.
The staffers, activists, donors, volunteers, and primary voters are very Left, and not very blue-collar. They have barely a nodding acquaintance with the working masses they purport to champion. Indeed, they tend to disdain actual blue-collar workers as benighted bigots.
New York City is not going to get good government socialism from woke ideologues who despise the actual working class. “Sewer Socialism” is just a pipe dream.
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