In a stunning display of electoral hygiene, the New York primary has been swept cleaner than a Westminster tea lady’s apron, with Mahmood Mamdani’s endorsed candidates winning every single contest. Yes, dear reader, the same Mahmood Mamdani who famously described the War on Terror as a ‘giant vacuum cleaner for civil liberties’ has now hoovered up the entire New York Democratic primary ballot.
Now, before you reach for the smelling salts and start drafting letters to the editor about foreign influence, let us examine this ‘clean sweep’ with the kind of gin-sodden clarity it deserves. The phrase itself is a masterpiece of political doublespeak. It conjures images of a janitorial service, perhaps ‘Socialist Brooms Ltd,’ dispatched from Kampala to mop up the municipal mess of American democracy.
But here’s the rub: when a Ugandan-born academic exercises influence in New York, the suits in Washington cry ‘foreign interference!’ Yet when a Russian oligarch buys a penthouse on Fifth Avenue and donates to both parties, that is simply called ‘business development.’ The hypocrisy is so thick you could spread it on a scone.
Mamdani, the esteemed Columbia University professor, has apparently built a political machine so efficient it makes Tammany Hall look like a village fete run by incontinent badgers. His candidates, a motley crew of democratic socialists and anti-imperialists, have swept aside the moderate ‘defund the police? No, just defund the decorators’ crowd with the ease of a gentleman flicking a crumb from his waistcoat.
The panic in certain circles is palpable. Fox News has already run a segment titled ‘Mamdani’s Mopping Up: The End of American Democracy,’ featuring a guest who solemnly argued that the election was a ‘hostile takeover by the chai-drinking classes.’ Meanwhile, CNN’s commentators stroked their chins and wondered aloud whether this was ‘a good thing for Israel.’
Let us be clear: this is not a coup. This is democracy, the messy, chaotic, often absurd process by which people choose their representatives. If the people of New York have decided that they want representatives who think the Iraq War was a bad idea and that perhaps, just perhaps, the US should not be the world’s policeman, then that is their perogative.
The real scandal here is not foreign influence, but the sheer, breathtaking incompetence of the opposition. They ran on a platform of ‘not being Mamdani’ and lost to a man who wasn’t even on the ballot. They spent millions on attack ads featuring stock footage of Ugandan jungles, only to discover that most New Yorkers think ‘Kampala’ is a brand of energy drink.
So what does this clean sweep mean? It means that for the first time in decades, the New York primary has produced a slate of candidates who are genuinely, uncomprisingly, and with a touch of academic smugness, on the left. It means that the Overton window has been shoved open by a Marxist professor who clearly didn’t get the memo that academia is supposed to stay in its ivory tower.
And for the rest of us, it is simply another chapter in the greatest show on Earth: the never-ending soap opera of American politics, where the plot twists are preposterous, the characters are cartoonish, and the gin is always, always running low.
