New York City just elected a mayor who promises free child care, free buses, city-run grocery stores and a rent freeze on rent-controlled apartments, all paid for by taxing rich people who are beating a hasty retreat from the city.

What could go wrong?

Plenty, of course, but the election of Zohran Mamdani wasn’t about sound strategy, it was about change. That’s the theme that played out across the mini-midterms on Tuesday: Democrats took the governor’s seats in New Jersey and Virginia, and California voters gave the green light to Prop 50, a redistricting ballot measure.

It was, as many pundits have said, a referendum on President Trump and his policies. Mamdani made his stance clear with his victory speech, which included a Trump slap: “Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.”

Winning Dems were fueled by anti-Trump sentiment, as evidenced by the president’s dismal 37% approval rating in a CNN poll, with 63% disapproving.

Is this all a harbinger of next year’s midterms? Possibly. It’s also fairly typical of the political pickleball played out in election years. The midterms are a reliable reflection of pushback against the president, whoever that happens to be.

President George Bush called the blue wave of the 2006 midterms a “thumping.” President Barack Obama referred to the major losses the Democratic Party experienced in the 2010 midterms as a “shellacking.” That tends to be the midterm pattern, with the thumpers and thumpees changing sides accordingly.

Where does this get voters? If elections are more about wresting power from the other side, how does our country move forward? The current shutdown only underscores the folly of Capitol Hill lawmakers, so focused on “victory” that they dismiss the suffering the shutdown is causing Americans nationwide. It’s not leverage, it’s abominable.

As Dems hail the mandate for change that carried them to election wins, they can’t lose sight that change has got to be for the better. Otherwise, the power football will just keep being passed from party to party.

Mamdani’s win is a seismic change as the socialist mayor-elect didn’t hold back on election promises. Expensive ones. But as the New York Post reported, the foundation for those promises may not be on solid ground.

Mamdani admitted he might need another plan to fund his $10 billion, freebie-filled agenda if he can’t score tax hikes on the ultra-wealthy and corporations.

Mamdani, during a campaign event last month on affordability in Queens, said that taxing the rich is the “most straightforward and productive way” to pay for his pricey proposals, but added that paying for the programs is more important than how the money is raised.

“If this money is funded by the additional taxes or it’s funded by a better-than-expected (tax) assessment, or it’s funded by a pot of money that wasn’t previously spoken about, or savings that have come in, then the most important thing is that it’s funded,” he said.

Odds are better than even that the “pot of money” is a new term for middle-class New York taxpayers. Good luck, Gotham.

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