This week, it looks like socialism is on the march. Suddenly, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are "rocking" the Democratic Party. The Manchin moderates are missing. To the headlines:
From Fox News:
Winners and losers emerge after socialist earthquake rocks NYC primaries
All three Mamdani-endorsed candidates defeated establishment opponents and are expected to win in November
First NYC. Now DC. Can Mamdani’s win keep powering progressives?
Socialists Won City Elections Across the Country This Week
From NewsNation:
Democratic socialists’ primary wins are a ‘real test’ for the progressive left, says Chuck Todd
From the Los Angeles Times:
In L.A., as in other U.S. cities, democratic socialists are poised to expand power at City Hall
And on and on…and on and on….go similar headlines from the media. All touting the socialist sweeps in New York, the District of Columbia and elsewhere around the country. Now comes the hard part. Soon enough all these socialist winners will be sworn into the offices they have so furiously sought. And results will have to be produced.
Already there have been some anti-Mamdani rumbles. In recent days was this sample headline, starting with a slam on the Mayor’s “Office of Mass Engagement.” From the New York Post:
Mamdani’s $54M mass engagement office did little to get out the vote with questionable campaign
But in fact, the Mamdani coverage thus far has been on the positive side. Here’s, of course, the lefty New York Times proclaiming through science writer David Wallace-Wells:
For Zohran Mamdani, it has been a pretty sunny start.
A Siena poll in late January found that the mayor had the approval of 68 percent of New York City — almost 18 percentage points more than he got in the November election and good enough for a net approval of plus 48. This put him in rarefied air alongside San Francisco’s Daniel Lurie, who more than a year into his mayoralty has been given credit for a profound turnaround in the city and who looks perhaps like the country’s most popular elected official. In February, after some frustrating snow, Mamdani’s approval dipped slightly, to 63 percent. His net approval was still higher than anything Eric Adams notched during the giddy period when he was being celebrated as a future face of the national Democratic Party. It’s better than Michael Bloomberg ever managed, according to Marist, and in a political era widely seen to be drowning in negativity.
….But whatever the future holds, the mayoralty has begun with a very high base line of support. Mamdani’s thumping win in November has given way to what looks less like a liberal crackup and more like the city coming together behind an incredibly popular new mayor.”
In fact, results will be produced. They will be good, bad or indifferent. The question now is will the media follow those results? Not just follow them if they’re seen to be good. But follow them if, in fact, as conservatives expect, they turn out to be not so good. Or worse.
Example?
Back there in the ancient long ago of 1965, the media of the day was agog, filled with excitement at the news a handsome, young liberal Republican Congressman from New York - John Lindsay by name - was running for Mayor of New York. Two years earlier, the young, dashing President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in what was, in fact, a horrific tragedy.
The media (and in fact much of the country) was yearning for, as it were, a new JFK. And young, handsome, liberal Congressman Lindsay was seen as making that media dream come true. Lindsay won. And then?
And then the new, dashing young Mayor was learning that being the Mayor of New York was no day at the beach. He had to deal with municipal strikes, ruthless union bosses, a soaring crime rate and more. Slowly, ever so agonizingly, the supposed heir of a new Camelot was watching his once promising career go up in political flames. He barely won re-election and felt compelled to switch parties. Eventually he sought the Democratic nomination for president, getting nowhere. And that, as the saying goes, was that.
If nothing else, what happened to Lindsay was a lesson in politics that one does indeed have to be careful of what one wishes for. Which brings us back to all these headlines about triumphant socialists winning elections in one blue city after another. The hard fact is that once in office, the socialist -inclined Mamdanis of the political world will have to start producing results.
And the question then? Will a once-adoring left-leaning media buckle-up and do their job of truthfully reporting the results they are producing? Or, as conservatives suspect, not producing?
The hard fact is that being the Mayor of any American city is a tough job. That is doubly so if the job in question is being Mayor of New York - as the late Mayor Lindsay quickly found out.
So. The question for the media. Will the media in both New York City and around the country take on the inescapable task of covering all the ups and downs of the socialist Mamdani mayoralty? Will Mayor Mamdani prove to be such a decided success that the move among Democrats will be to elect him as the socialist Governor of New York? And, down the road, the socialist President of the United States?
Or will the media coverage of the socialist Mamdani mayoralty be so blistering that the New York mayor’s job will turn out to be his first -- and last -- time in public office?
Only time will tell, of course. But the hard fact is that the next four years of the Mamdani mayoralty will be a serious testing of not just the new Mayor himself and the results his socialist mayoralty produces but of the media - both in New York and nationally - as it covers his out-front socialist mayoralty.
Decades ago, the media of the day lavished favorable coverage on the then-new Soviet Union. And it stuck with that kind of coverage as time moved on, even as the reality of life in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics proved to be considerably less than good.
Will the media history of covering socialists and socialism in power change? Stay tuned.
