Democrats’ premature victory lap, old Leninism in a new suit and other commentary

Liberal: Democrats’ Premature Victory Lap

Yes, “Democrats had a very good night on Tuesday,” argues Ruy Teixeira at The Free Press, but they shouldn’t use “a few good results in a few states as permission to memory-hole last year’s disastrous performance” and “why they lost so badly.”

Tuesday’s wins are “no more than a down payment on fixing that problem.”

In Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats benefited from “educated, engaged voters” and their over-presentation in “low turnout elections.”

Dems continued to “do far better among college-educated voters than among working-class (non-college) voters.”

Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York “showed the same kind of class gap,” as he “carried college-educated voters by 19 points while losing working-class voters to Cuomo by 5 points.”

Democrats haven’t cracked the code to “rebuild their working-class support in a populist age.”

From the left: Old Leninism in a New Suit

“Mamdani’s win spoke to the deep failures of 21st-century American politics,” notes Racket News’ Matt Taibbi.

Democratic Socialism’s rise portends “nothing good,” because “this version [of leftism] is even dumber” than its predecessors, having “remade itself” based on “a new intersectional theory of oppression that’s ridiculous, fantastical, grossly racist, and allows the old bourgeoisie to play leading roles.”

Refugees from socialism see Zohran Mamdani as “an immediately recognizable type,” a representative of an “educated vanguard” who “teaches effortless insincerity as a necessary means to reaching power.”

And “his apparently total disdain for American history seems to be a selling point for his fans,” who think “the Soviet Union is just misunderstood.”

Urbanist: Mamdani’s Work Cut Out for Him

Zohran Mamdani may be “best understood as an accidental mayor,” suggests City Journal’s Reihan Salam, offering “half-baked pseudo-solutions to the city’s very real affordability crisis.”

But his victory still “represents the culmination of New York’s larger leftward turn.”

His election was led by “downwardly mobile elites,” who are “entranced by the promises of frozen rent and fare-free buses.”

But New York City’s embrace of “socialism lite” has already eroded “its economic base,” with most net job growth “traced to the hiring of home health aides.”

There’s “no gainsaying Mamdani’s stunning political achievement”; his “obsessive focus” on affordability was a “master stroke.”

Yet more than “1 million New Yorkers voted against Mamdani,” and “we can expect to hear from them,” too.

Eye on NY: New Bid To Milk Anti-Israel Fervor

“Michael Blake, a Democrat who likes to run for office (any office) has declared his intention to challenge Rep. Ritchie Torres,” fumes Commentary’s Seth Mandel.

In a “bonkers announcement video,” Blake makes clear he “intends to make his candidacy against Torres entirely about Torres’s support for the Jewish state.”

Its “two full minutes of cartoonish innuendo and dog whistles” includes “a progressive influencer who defended the man who murdered two people at the Capitol Jewish Museum.” 

That Torres is “pro-Israel” and “fights anti-Semitism within his own party” makes him a target. Torres “is fighting for his Jewish constituents in the Bronx,” yet Blake pretends that “his support for Jewish civil rights is solely about Israel.”

And Blake’s launch only hints at “how ugly his tactics are going to get.”

From the right: Why Latinos Are Souring on the GOP

“It’s less than surprising that” Latino citizens “would sour on the Trump administration and the Republican Party” if they now “feel like they’re being unfairly targeted” by ICE and aren’t feeling economic relief, warns National Review’s Jim Geragthy.

ICE is allowed to stop “people simply based upon their race or their language or accent,” and it’s “not exactly shocking if a lot of” Latino voters feel they “run a much higher risk of needing to prove their American citizenship.”

Plus: Latinos voted for Trump in 2024 to get “a more affordable cost of living,” but are “not seeing” results.

“If Republicans can’t point to serious progress on this issue a year from now, the 2026 midterms will be even worse for the GOP than Tuesday night.” 

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board