The winner in New York City's Democratic primary

Hint: It's not any normal person living in New York City.

The New York Sun asks:

In the aftermath of Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s shellacking of Governor Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary, the first question that springs to mind is: Where are the Republicans?

I have my doubts about whether that’s the first question, which is more likely to be: Can I get a bus ticket outta here before inauguration day?

In short, where is the party, and candidate, pushing an agenda of lower taxes, stronger growth, limited government, educational excellence, and rule of law? That is to say, a program like that of Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg.

It’s hard to remember now, but Giuliani and Bloomberg served 20 consecutive years ending on January 1, 2014. Over that time, the number of murders in the City annually dropped from 2420 to 616, as documented here. Having been a prosecutor for most of my career, that’s the biggest reduction in murder over a large population that I have ever seen.

Anyone want to take a guess as to what’s going to happen to the murder rate when the anti-police Mamdani takes office?

Into the void [left by the retreat of conservative ideas] has leapt Mr. Mamdani, with his socialist siren song of rent freezes, tax hikes on the rich, and government giveaways.

Mamdani centers his program around a crisis of affordability, but the irony is that his plans rely on expanding government’s role — when the heavy hand of City Hall is one of the principal drivers of New York’s exorbitant cost of living. Mr. Mamdani’s scheme to freeze rents on many price-regulated apartments would stifle private investment and distort a market already damaged by government meddling.

That’s a standard conservative line, sure. But it’s true. Ignoring it in favor of socialist fantasy is going to be a disaster, again, and not just for the murder rate, although that too.

Where’s David Dinkins now that we need him?

Consider, too, [Mamdani’s] plan to fund a vast expansion of city spending by taxing the rich. This overlooks how easy it is for the city’s wealthiest residents to decamp for lower-tax pastures. In the past few years, some 125,000 New Yorkers have moved to Florida, the Citizens Budget Commission reports, removing some $14 billion in income off the state’s tax rolls. With city schools, public safety, and services deteriorating, residents are voting with their feet.

Again, this is standard stuff, not right wing advocacy. It’s just history. What’s Mamdani planning to do about it? Build Donald Trump’s wall, except to keep people in?

And here we thought East Germany bit the dust 36 years ago.

The proposal by Mr. Mamdani to make public buses free is another head-scratcher, costing some $750 million a year when the city is already suffering a plague of fare evasion on its transit network, undermining the rule of law and depriving the system of fare revenue. Plus, too, how will Mr. Mamdani get the money for his plans, when the state legislature would need to approve any income tax hikes…

In other words, turnstile jumping will go from a misdemeanor to city policy. It turns out the Democrats actually do believe that no one is above the law; they render moot any problems this might otherwise create by making cheating legal. If there are costs to this, financial in addition to prudential and moral, well…………………………….someone else will pay them. Or we can just blame King Trump.

This is how they think. And lest there be second thoughts, the Democrats’ congressional leaders, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, both — not coincidentally — NYC residents, have already backed Mamdani (though without formally endorsing him, yet).

Curtis Sliwa [the Republican candidate] earned less than 28 percent of votes in the 2021 race, and it’s not clear that he is poised for a stronger showing this year. That said, the role of independent candidates in this year’s general election could provide an opening for the Republican.

Or Sliwa could drop out, creating an opening for the incumbent Mayor, Eric Adams, elected as a Democrat but now running as an independent. Adams has lots of problems, probable corruption and less than optimal competence among them, but if you have people you value living in New York City, as I do, this is what you’re left hoping for.

If the GOP is missing in action in this year’s race, though, one could just as well ask: Where are the Democrats? How did the luminaries of the left fail to find a better opponent to Mr. Mamdani than, say, the…baggage-carrying Mr. Cuomo?

The baggage being, specifically, that Cuomo had to resign the Governorship as a result of a sexual harassment scandal, and forced nursing homes to take back residents who had been hospitalized with Covid-19, causing a spike in avoidable deaths.

And this was the Democrats’ better candidate, mind you.

Astute political observer Michael Barone saw what happened last night in NYC coming in last year’s mayoral contest in Chicago. Barone…

…described th[e] shift by noting the rise of what he calls the “barista proletariat.” By that he means “academics and public employees, plus affluent professionals and indigent grad school dropouts,” a demographic characterized by an affinity for “college town ambiance” and “unpopular leftist policies” — not to mention a strong dose of class resentment.

In Chicago, Mr. Barone reports, doctrinaire liberal mayors induced “high crime, departure of corporate headquarters…

…which is why I noted above that Dallas is one of the winners last night. How likely is it that corporations will stay headquartered where they’re hated when they can go to where they’re wanted?

…Black as well as white flight from the city and state, and vandalism of once-vibrant shopping districts.” He reckons that “Chicago is one of the great artifacts of Western civilization, and the barista proletariat is on the way to destroying it.”

They took another, even bigger step last night in New York.

But that’s not the only step they took. By handing the intellectual and emotive leadership of the Democratic Party to the far Left, one forlorn city at a time, they also took a step toward electing a Republican — any Republican — as Donald Trump’s successor.