It appears that lots and lots of people who voted for Li’l Duce for president in last November’s election turned around and voted for Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor last week.
Zohran Kwame Mamdani.
A kid, really, at 33 years old.
Born in Uganda.
The son of an academic and an artist.
His middle name was given him in honor of Ghanaian president Kwame Nkumah.
In college, he co-founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
Holder of a bachelor’s degree in Africana from Bowdoin College.
A composer and producer of hip-hop music.
He has fought to prevent foreclosures and evictions of non-white homeowners.
An avowed Democratic Socialist.
The most imaginative novelist — not Ursula K. Le Guin, not Stephen King, not Lewis Carroll or Franz Kafka — could have conceived of a character more in contrast to the Mad King.
Let’s break it all down. Everything about him is the devil to 45/47 and Company. He’s a foreigner. Dark skinned. Cares about Palestinians. Is interested in Africa. His dad teaches postcolonial studies at Columbia University. His mother makes movies about immigrants to America. He enjoys music. And he’s a socialist!
He’s everything — so we think — that Li’l Duce and his MAGA followers loathe: the shit-hole countries, the darker skin, intellectual, and a socialist, which, to them, is lower than child molester.
What are we to conclude about all this? How can the same people vote for two such wholly opposite figures within seven months of each other?
Simple. People today do not base their vote on foreign affairs, on who’ll put up the better fight for rights, or on which candidate is smarter, more caring, or more thoughtful. They vote for the person who makes the most believable promise that he’ll get them lower prices.
That’s what Mamdani did.
And one more thing. Perhaps even more important today is this: they vote for somebody else.
Li’l Duce was somebody else in 2016 and 2024. In 2020, he was president. So people voted for somebody else. Then in November, he was somebody else again.
You couldn’t get a candidate more somebody else-y than Zohran Mamdani.
If he wins the general election, he’ll be a one-term mayor. In 2029, New Yorkers’ll vote for somebody else.
People don’t think about their vote. They feel it. It’s a hell of a way to run a country.