By Jack Stern
The best way to win a heckling match against a highly flawed, unpopular, opponent is to attack them directly, as making irrelevant snarky remarks provides ammunition that can backfire. The mainstream media’s baseless ethnically slanderous attacks on New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, have enabled him to establish derogatory oppositionists as villainous bad guys while distracting from the fact that he is a highly flawed political candidate for other reasons.
Instead of describing Mamdani as a “jihadist” or “terrorist,” the focus in combating his meteoric rise should revolve around attacking a poor legislative track record in Albany, questionable campaign contributions – including $20,000 from TikTok, and an inability to deliver on a series of overly ambitious campaign promises. Yet resorting to blasphemous rhetoric has become the default cop out.
“That’s another problem,” fellow candidate and opponent Andrew Cuomo joked half sarcastically in response to WABC host Sid Rosenberg’s comments about Mamdani “cheering” about another 9/11. At no point during the discussion did either party mention anything about Mamdani’s policy making shortcomings or offer a tangible reason about why any of the other candidates were viable alternatives.
Mamdani punched back by denouncing Cuomo’s recent behavior, which included the leaking of a particularly egregious A.I. ad warning voters that the city would become a haven of deviance under Mamdani’s watch.
“These are Andrew Cuomo’s final moments in public life and he’s choosing to spend them making racist attacks on the person who would be the first Muslim to lead the city,” Mamdani said in a PIX 11 interview. Hours after leaving the debate stage following another poor performance, it was almost as if Mamdani hadn’t failed the final exam with a F.
Gone was the lasting vision of Mamdani sweating through a beatdown by Cuomo, republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, and moderator Errol Louis, which saw him struggle to come up with answers about how he’d fund $10 billion worth of promised freebies. With the fast pace of today’s news cycle, Cuomo’s off character comments swept that under the rug. In a nutshell, this sequence of events was indicative of the flawed slanderous approach – crying about crumbs on the floor while there’s a five course meal on the table.
In reality, Mamdani provided the noose for his own hanging. But in the same way you can’t force a horse to drink after leading it to water, media members and his opponents put the wrong material on the bulletin board. Had anyone taken the time to do a deep dive on the specifics of his campaign or career serving as an Assemblyman, they would’ve unearthed Pandora’s box. But that proved to be too difficult in a world where flashy catchphrases and headlines are deemed more likely to generate ratings than factual information.
Which is why in finality, the collective character and personal attacks did more harm than good. As a matter of fact, they ultimately made him stronger. Diverting attention away from the important stuff while establishing himself as the hero and those that staged attacks against him as immoral villains, only won him brownie points amongst constituents with a strong moral compass. The more they tried to hurl stones at him, the better he became at using a shield to deflect them right back in their faces. While it might be dumb to form evaluations and make voting decisions based on discourse, that’s the world we live in.
While Mamdani may not be an expert in designing policies and bills, or running a district, he understands how to emotionally connect with an audience. His ability to win on the TV screens and on social media enabled him to beat the media at their own game.