At the end of the 2002 film “Gangs of New York,” there is a cheesy yet affecting montage of the city’s ever-changing skyline. The message: Battles are waged, won and lost, but change is the only constant. Today’s immigrants are tomorrow’s natives. Thus, ideational nativism, however potent, never trumps the material self-interest and individual ambition that still drives people to these shores.
The Republicans would do well to offer free pizza and host a nationwide screening of that Scorsese feature before their delusional and self-pitying nativism helps to sink more moderate candidates, both Democrat and Republican.
Maybe they should even host a double feature with Stephen Spielberg’s 2021 remake of “West Side Story,” which is explicit about the perennial reality that newcomers become Americans quite quickly.
Indeed, if Andrew Cuomo had simply not entered the Democratic primary in New York’s mayoral race, embattled mayor Eric Adams (D) would likely have sailed to an easy victory despite his string of scandals. And we would all remain in blissful ignorance about the existence of 34-year-old democratic socialist and now Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
Instead, Cuomo indulged his own ambition and in the process fumbled New York to a guy who literally would not be qualified to run a Walmart.
But let’s not exempt Republicans from their fair share of the blame. They apparently thought that the way to beat Mamdani was to deride him as a foreigner — and even now they are pointing out that many of his votes came from immigrant enclaves in the city.
It is easy to overinterpret the mayoral race. Of course many newcomers voted for a well-spoken millennial with a “D” next to his name rather than for a scandal-ridden boomer without one. It is New York City, after all and the party line on the ballot is valuable. And Cuomo drove a lot of independents out of the city when he was busy enjoying national popularity as the country’s foremost mismanager of coronavirus, so of course his support was thin.
Finally, Mamdani thrilled the college-educated, downwardly mobile children of privilege because he is one of them — his mom is a college professor, and “mayor” is almost his first real job, if you don’t count his rap career.
Most importantly, though, Mamdani actually seems pretty normal in person to those who don’t spend all their time in right-coded internet spaces where white male self-victimization reigns. And his inane, childish ideas are modal among the privileged, college-educated midwits who helped put him into office.
Our siloed media landscape ensures that many who cast votes for him either do not know about some of his craziest pronouncements or believe his milquetoast assurances that he didn’t really mean what he said. Yet at the same time, to most voters, his optimism and cheer are more attractive than the dark predilections of the “blood and soil” nativism deployed against him by conservatives who dramatically overplayed this hand. They will take everyone sane down with them if that does not stop.
The fact that Cuomo lost the race is surprising to no one except Cuomo himself. That he insisted on running, and thereby essentially delivered New York City into the hands of an overgrown child with a strong dislike for the U.S., simultaneously wrecks what was left of his family’s mixed legacy. More importantly, it imperils America’s greatest city.
There is now nothing to be done about that until three or four years from now. God help New York. But what can still be fixed nationwide is the Republicans’ blunder that sealed Cuomo’s loss when they went negative on his opponent in the one way sure to backfire, instead of the myriad ways that might have succeeded.
Americans, it seems, aren’t that racist after all. Republicans need to remember that if they do not want what happened with Mamdani to keep happening elsewhere. And, of course, so do Democrats, if they actually want to parlay these blue state wins into purple state ones — and govern afterward.
Elizabeth Grace Matthew writes about education, politics, religion, and culture at her Substack, “What Are Grown-Ups For?“
