Several weeks ago in this space, we raised the ironic possibility that President Trump’s over-the-top efforts to tamp down exploding antisemitism were actually contributing to it. As we said, Trump Derangement Syndrome had reached the point that whatever Trump supports, half of the country automatically opposes. So the more he does in the fight against antisemitism and becomes publicly identified with it, the more likely are more and more people to delegitimize the overall effort.
As it now appears, this conundrum may have even greater relevancy to understanding Zohran Mamdani’s extraordinary leap to the head of the pack in the current mayoral race in New York City despite a huge Jewish population and a tradition of support for Israel. Notwithstanding what many have said are his antisemitic and, even more so, anti-Israel positions – and this is to say nothing about his “break the bank” socialist agenda – New York City Democrats chose him as their candidate in the recent primary election for mayor in the upcoming November elections. Since Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by a 5-1 margin, unless there are some major surprise developments, chances are that Mamdani will become the next mayor. How to explain this?
One answer, of course, is that New York City is a hotbed of leftist, anti-Trump politics that has unfortunately been overtaken by a core of activists who favor socialism and whose innate disdain for anything Jewish, particularly Israel, has radiated out to others of similar political bent. And they, in turn, are highly motivated to come out to vote in the primaries and general elections when turnout is ordinarily low and thereby determine the Democratic candidate and the election respectively.
Yet, just as Donald Trump’s leadership in the fight against antisemitism drove them wild and in the opposite direction, so too has President Trump’s astonishing support for Israel, beginning in his first term and continuing in his second, likely reinforced their anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian obsessions to insane levels. Again, think Trump Derangement Syndrome.
The other day, the New York Times reported that according to a Gallup poll, Democrats once sympathized with Israel over the Palestinians by a margin of 36 percentage points but that those numbers have now flipped. Now Democrats sympathized with Palestinians over Israel by a margin of 38 percentage points.
The Times also cited a survey by the Economist that 46 percent of Democrats want the United States to reduce military aid to the Jewish state. Only 6 percent want to increase it and 24 percent want it to remain at the level it is.
So it seems to us that those who do not want to see Mamdani become mayor should rethink the strategy of incessantly battering him over the antisemitism and pro-Palestinian issues. They might not resonate in their favor as much as they think.
