ArcaMax

It has been painfully obvious, ever since the presidential election last November, that the Democratic Party's brand is in tatters.

This week, a Quinnipiac University poll revealed that congressional Democrats have a minuscule 19% approval rating -- an all-time low in the history of that particular poll. Earlier in the week, a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll similarly found that the party as a whole has an approval rating of 40% -- considerably lower than the Republican Party's 48% approval rating found by the same poll. Nor can Democrats necessarily rely on any GOP infighting to redound, in seesaw-like fashion, to their own benefit; for all the Sturm und Drang generated by the "Epstein files" affair, President Donald Trump's approval ratings have actually increased among Republicans this month.

The issue for Democrats is that their current unpopularity is not a byproduct of the political scandals of the day or the vicissitudes of Trump's polarizing social media feeds. Rather, the problem for Democrats is structural -- and it requires a rethink and a reboot from soup to nuts. As this column argued last November, it is clear that Barack Obama's winning 2008 political coalition -- comprising racial and ethnic minorities, young people and highly educated whites -- has completely withered. "Obamaism" is dead -- and Democrats have to reconcile themselves to that demise. At minimum, they should stop taking advice from Obama himself; the 44th president was Kamala Harris' top 2024 campaign trail surrogate, and we saw how that worked out.

In order for the party to rise up anew, as has often happened throughout American history following a period of dominance from a partisan rival, Democrats are going to have to move beyond their intersectional obsessions and woke grievances that have so greatly alienated large swaths of the American people on issues pertaining to race, gender, immigration, and crime and public safety. And the good news, for conservative Americans who candidly wish the Democratic Party nothing but the worst, is that Democrats seem completely incapable of doing this.

Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old recent winner of New York City's much-discussed Democratic mayoral primary, is a case in point.

The Ugandan-born Shiite Muslim Mamdani is a democratic socialist, but he is better understood as a full-fledged communist. That isn't hyperbole: One merely needs to consider his proposed policies for New York City and review his broader history of extreme far-left political rhetoric. Mamdani won the primary, and is now seeking the mayor's office, on a genuinely radical platform: support for citywide "free" bus rides, city-owned grocery stores, a full rent freeze on certain low-income units, outright seizure of private property from arbitrarily "bad" landlords, race-based taxation (an assuredly unconstitutional proposal), a $30 minimum wage and more. A true Marxist, Mamdani has called for the "abolition of private property." And he has something of a penchant for quoting Marx's "Communist Manifesto" too.

But Mamdani's communism is only part of his overall political persona. He also emphasizes, and trades in, exactly the sort of woke culture warring and intersectional identity politics that have defined the post-Obama Democratic Party. Mamdani is a longstanding harsh critic of Israel who has long trafficked in, and had long refused to distance himself from, antisemitic rhetoric such as calls to "globalize the intifada." Most recently, he also opposed Trump's decision to have the U.S. intervene in last month's Israel-Iran war, condemning it as a "new, dark chapter" that could "plunge the world deeper into chaos." (In the real world, there were zero American casualties, and the bombing run was followed promptly by a ceasefire.) In many ways, Mamdani singlehandedly encapsulates the unholy "red-green" alliance of Marxism and Islamism.

There is, to be sure, nothing good down this road for denizens of New York City. If Mamdani wins this fall, expect a massive exodus of people, businesses and capital from the Big Apple -- probably to the Sun Belt. But even more relevant: There is nothing good down that road for the national Democratic Party as a whole. In order to demonstrate that the party has learned anything from its 2024 shellacking and its current abysmal standing, it will have to sound and act less crazy on the tangible issues that affect Americans' day-to-day lives.

That isn't happening. If Mamdani's rise is representative -- and it may well be, especially as other far-left firebrands like Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) continue to make outsize noise -- then Democrats seems to be moving in the exact opposite direction: full-on Marxism and woke craziness. If the party continues down this path, it will experience nothing but mid- to long-term political pain. But as one of the aforementioned conservatives who wishes the Democratic Party nothing but the worst, I'm not too upset about that.

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To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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