New York City

Mamdani Really Didn’t Do That Great

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

If you listen to the Branch BERNidians, BROhan Zohan Mamdani taught Democrats the way forward. We need more charismatic candidates like him, candidates who promise to defund Israel and give away a lot of free stuff. As I’ve said before, Mamdani isn’t a good candidate and being like him would lead to 2026 losses for Democrats, under the kindest of conditions, outside of dark blue enclaves. But do we even need to look beyond New York City to illustrate that?

It turns out there were other races on the ballot citywide in New York City. Both Democratic candidates essentially did what Sherrill and Spanberger did in other states, bringing all anti-Trump voters together under their umbrella. Mamdani supporters will be quick to point out they had a three way with Andrew Cuomo in it. These races had independent candidates too. These guys ran against a field that didn’t include a vigilante and the former Governor who once had to say “I’m not a pervert, I’m Italian” on live TV to defend himself as he was getting ready to resign. One could argue they beat actual candidates and not cartoon characters.

Then there’s these races- Borough wide races within New York City. Staten Island is a red place, so ignore that one for a moment. The dude that won there literally got caught having two families when he was in Congress and they still made him President of Staten Island. The rest of the city is the rest of the city. None of the Democrats, even somewhat controversial ones like say Alvin Bragg, got less than 70%. All of them did at least 20% better than Mamdani. None of them ran against a disgraced ex-Governor or a vigilante.

Let’s look beyond New York City again though. It’s too fun.

This is what Allegheny County looked like in the Pennsylvania Judicial retention elections. Two years ago they ran a strong leftist candidate for County Executive and she barely won. Without that argument this time, Allegheny looked like old Allegheny.

This is my favorite map, because it was put out by Republicans as some sort of evidence that Mikie Sherrill stole the election. I shit you not. I also love this because the terminally online leftists spent months saying Sherrill was a terrible candidate. You know what, I didn’t think she was great as a candidate either (she’ll be a very good governor), but for totally different reasons than they had. Sherrill moved the entire state and never had to answer a question about “globalizing the intifada” one time. People seem to like it when you’re not an obnoxious child.

Basically, Mamdani was a good enough candidate for New York City. He was not a blueprint for the nation, he was not some force of nature. He was just a guy. He beat two strange birds in a very Democratic place. About 30% of people who should have been his voters said “no thanks.” That’s the lesson you should be taking from him.

9/11/2001- Never Forget

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

If you walk into a convenience store right now, there are kids buying cigarettes, or college kids in bars buying booze, who were not alive on 9/11/2001. There are kids serving in the United States military in foreign countries right now who were not alive on 9/11. I can state this kind of unequivocally now- 9/11 is a long time ago, it is now just a moment in history. There’s a fairly good argument that those moments on that Tuesday morning 24 years ago changed the course of history more than any other point in this century, and yet, it’s not really a part of the political conversation now. We are no longer in Afghanistan, the war that was a direct response to the attacks on America that day. The moment of national unity that 9/11 ignited is most certainly dead and in the ground.

Imagine having a President with 90% approval today, albeit only because society rallied around him. George W. Bush basically exhausted all of that good will and probably is not a President we should emulate today. With that said, imagine any figure in American life taking a bullhorn and telling the assembled first responders at Ground Zero “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” The unity in that moment in time was remarkable. It’s something we have never felt since. It’s something we probably will never hear again. Not long after this, it was all gone amidst fights over Iraq, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, and all the other political wars of that moment. But at least for a moment, we had it.

I remember everything about that day. I remember driving to school and remarking that gas was under a dollar. I remember that the sky was a perfect blue, almost completely cloudless here, roughly 75 miles from Manhattan. I remember that we were supposed to have a cross-country meet that day at home. I remember being in Latin I (I had spots to kill as a senior) and saying to a friend named Tarin that this was “definitely al-Qaeda,” (I read a lot of news back then) when we honestly really didn’t know yet. I remember being sent back to homeroom after that period. I remember sitting in senior lunch (privileges to go out to lunch hadn’t started yet) with my friends and talking to our principal about what was happening. I can almost recite the whole day from memory. I remember the weeks after too. I remember going to New York City, to Shanksville, and to Washington, D.C., all somewhat by chance, and seeing the destruction. I remember the terror of the unknown that followed. I was in the Anthrax scare in the U.S. Senate office buildings (I went to meet Rick Santorum. Yes, really.) and remember being quarantined for a night after a girl with me got sick. I remember the military members with machine guns at the Eagles-Giants game in October, the first Monday Night game in New York after the attacks. I think the enduring image though, for me and for everyone else, was still watching the first responders run into the Trade Centers, and not come out until we saw them dug out by their own colleagues in the weeks that came after. It was sick. It was disgusting. They were the best of humanity. The terrorists truly did represent all that encompasses the worst of humanity.

I’m going to be honest- before 9/11, I really didn’t like New York City. I grew up going there, even as a kid. It was big. There really wasn’t that much for me to do as a kid. There was traffic. My family liked going there for stuff that I really didn’t love at the time. I hate all of their sports teams. If I’m even more honest, I found a distaste for Washington, D.C. as a young adult that took me until years later to get over. Today they are two of my favorite places to go. One of the things that 9/11 made me realize though is that to billions of people around the globe, New York and Washington are quite literally the most recognizable symbols of the United States, and possibly the Western World. I am incredibly lucky to live within a driving distance of either. Part of the reason that cowardly bastards who join petty terrorist organizations wanted to harm them is because they represent the best of us in many, many ways.

That’s the other point that I think needs to be made here. Literally only people from these places could have endured these attacks and dusted themselves off and moved forward. They are resilient people. They’re fighters. For all of the mud that gets thrown at some of our biggest cities, I think it’s important that we remember, these people are tough. Real tough. And proud. And after 9/11, they the victims were the example for the rest of us on how to move forward. If you grew up or lived in the area that I lived in, you remarked for years how every town along I-78 from the city out here to Eastern Pennsylvania had flags on the overpasses and memorials to remember their residents who died in the attacks. It was literally every single one.

I think it’s important to also give Shanksville their props too. The tiny Somerset County town and it’s surrounding areas were not ready for Flight 93 to crash there that day. No one was. They rebuilt though, and built a beautiful memorial to the victims. Their Western Pennsylvania grit got put on full display.

As I said, this is all just history now. George W. Bush is a private citizen living in the Dallas area, and the “Bush dynasty” in politics is over. Osama Bin Laden is dead, and I have to say that celebrating his death outside of the White House was enjoyable and well deserved. There are millions of voting aged Americans who have no recollection of 9/11 or were not alive. It is simply a part of the history books now.

It’s up to us to tell that story now. For the sake of history, we all should. We are all the primary sources of how we experienced that day, and the days that followed. I hope we never forget that.

Remembering 9/11/2001

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

From the UVA Miller Center, the chronology of the events of 9/11.

September 11, 2001

5:45 AM – Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al-Omari, two of the intended hijackers, pass through security at the Portland International Jetport in Maine. They board a commuter flight to Boston Logan International Airport, they then board American Airlines Flight 11.

7:59 AM – Flight 11 takes off from Boston, headed for Los Angeles, California. There are 76 passengers, 11 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.

8:15 AM – United Airlines Flight 175 takes off from Boston, also headed for Los Angeles. There are 51 passengers, 9 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.

8:19 AM – A flight attendant on Flight 11, Betty Ann Ong, alerts ground personnel that a hijacking is underway and that the cockpit is unreachable.

8:20 AM – American Airlines Flight 77 takes off from Dulles, outside of Washington, DC, headed for Los Angeles. There are 53 passengers, 6 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.

8:24 AM – Mohamed Atta, a hijacker on Flight 11, unintentionally alerts air controllers in Boston to the attack. He meant to press the button that allowed him to talk to the passengers on his flight.

8:37 AM – After hearing the broadcast from Atta on Flight 11, Boston air traffic control alerts the US Air Force’s Northeast Defense Sector, who then mobilize the Air National Guard to follow the plane.

8:42 AM – United Flight 93 takes off from Newark, New Jersey, after a delay due to routine traffic. It was headed for San Francisco, California. There are 33 passengers, 7 crew members, and 4 hijackers are on board.

8:46 AM – Flight 11 crashes into the World Trade Center’s North Tower. All passengers aboard are instantly killed, and employees of the WTC are trapped above the 91st floor.

9:03 AM – Flight 175 crashes into the WTC’s South Tower. All passengers aboard are killed instantly and so are an unknown number of people in the tower.

9:05 AM – President George W. Bush, in an elementary school classroom in Florida, is informed about the hit on the second tower. His chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispers the chilling news into the president’s ear. Bush later wrote about his response: “I made the decision not to jump up immediately and leave the classroom. I didn’t want to rattle the kids. I wanted to project a sense of calm… I had been in enough crises to know that the first thing the leader has to do is to project calm.” (Miller Center)

9:28 AM – Hijackers attack on Flight 93.

9:37 AM – Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon. All passengers aboard are instantly killed and so are 125 civilian and military personnel in the building.

9:45 AM – US airspace is shut down under Operation Yellow Ribbon. All civilian aircraft are ordered to land at the nearest airport.

9:55 AM – Air Force One with President George W. Bush aboard takes off from Florida.

9:57 AM – Passengers aboard Flight 93 begin to run up toward the cockpit. Jarrah, the pilot, begins to roll the plane back and forth in an attempt to destabilize the revolt.

9:59 AM – The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.

10:02 AM – Flight 93 plows into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Although its ultimate target is unknown, it was likely heading for either the White House or the US Capitol.

10:18 AM – President Bush authorizes any non-grounded planes to be shot down. At that time, all four hijacked planes had already crashed but the president’s team was operating under the impression that Flight 93 was still in the air.

10:28 AM – The North Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.

10:53 AM – Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld orders the US military to move to a higher state of alert, going to DEFCON 3.

11:45 AM – Air Force 1 lands at Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, Louisiana.

12:15 PM – Airspace in the United States is completely free of all commercial and private flights.

1:30 PM – Air Force 1 leaves Barksdale.

2:30 PM – Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City, visits the fallen Twin Towers of the World Trade Center at what becomes known as Ground Zero.

3:00 PM – Air Force 1 lands at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, and President Bush is immediately taken to a secure bunker that is capable of withstanding a nuclear attack.

4:30 PM – Air Force 1 leaves Offutt and heads back toward Andrews Air Force base near Washington, DC.

5:30 PM – Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapses.

8:30 PM – President Bush addresses the nation.

Please Don’t Mess Up, New York.

/ Rich Wilkins / 2 Comments

Today’s the New York City Mayoral Primary Election, and I’m not extremely excited. On the one hand, Andrew Cuomo winning is the *good outcome*, which in light of recent years tells you a lot. Cuomo’s fall, from a nearly unbeatable and popular governor that was maligned by the far-left is well documented. I would probably prefer to be telling you today that City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has a chance, but she doesn’t. Either Cuomo wins today, or a complete lunatic nutbag wins.

That’s probably why we’re in this place- a lot of people really can’t stomach voting for Cuomo, even on the second ballot. Is that fair? Probably not. While one could certainly make him shoulder some blame for his handling of nursing homes during COVID, the sexual misconduct accusations that actually drove him from office turned out to be a dud- not a single prosecutor in the entire state took the Attorney General’s report and turned it into anything near a successful prosecution. I don’t think it matters though. Cuomo is just kind of viewed as a mean, loathsome politician. I think a lot of people have figured out that he’s just not that progressive, and he doesn’t do the necessary virtue signaling to make them feel good.

Here is where the alternative should matter, but doesn’t really seem to. New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has all but caught Cuomo, thanks to New York’s stupid “rank choice system,” where being someone’s second, third, fourth, or even fifth choice matters. Most voters who don’t back Cuomo at first, just don’t. They’re seemingly not bothered by Mamdani though. Mamdani calls himself a Democratic Socialist, much like AOC, but he’s honestly mostly just a big government liberal. Mamdani has built up a viral support through his proposals and gained thirty points over the past few months. He has the normal support of progressives like AOC and Bernie that the electorate nationally and statewide in New York has repeatedly rejected, and says the normal nonsense about being a socialist. He’s going to freeze rents. He’s going to make buses free in the city. He’s going to force landlords to keep their buildings at 78 degrees, year round. He’s going to make all the city public schools buildings climate friendly. He’s going to crack down on landlords. Basically everything but a unicorn, free of charge. He’s just going to tax the rich to pay for it all. As long as Albany allows him to, which is probably a long shot since the city can’t do a lot of the things he’s proposing currently. But he’ll do it. Trust him.

Look, the difference between being AOC and winning one of these ridiculous, sleepy summer primaries and being Alessandra Biaggi and losing them is often just how many people give a shit and bother to come. If Mamdani was just the garden variety of leftist and running a race to beat Cuomo, honestly who really cares, right? That would normally be my attitude too. If New York wants to elect a 33 year old that’s promising them lots of things he can’t deliver, have at it. The problem is that these optics aren’t staying in the cities. Whether it’s crime in Chicago, homeless people in Los Angeles, or whatever the hell is happening here, Republicans are running against this. Mamdani takes it to the next level though. That next level, the elephant in the room if you will, is his views on Israel. A race for local office is at least partially being energized by a candidate’s views on a foreign country. Any decent politician would avoid that. It’s basically become the backbone of this race. That may not hurt him in this primary. Bloodlust is a political motivator in the era of Trump. This is a New York Primary, a city which did elect us AOC. And it’s hot outside today. Only the most motivated will vote. Maybe this works in this race. That doesn’t mean much good will come of it.

Look, I don’t know this guy personally. Is he an antisemite? I have no idea, but he certainly says a lot of things I would not say about Israel. If you think the Netanyahu government is an atrocious, steaming, stinking turd, I really don’t have a problem with that position, but I find the discussion of whether Israel should exist or not to be fully offensive. I actually doubt this guy would be “welcoming the Muslim Brotherhood to Gracie Mansion,” and other over-the-top nonsense some people are saying. My guess is he’s another really awful big-city Mayor, like a Brandon Johnson type, who does such a dogshit job that basically everyone agrees he’s bad. He’s going to fail to deliver on almost everything he promises, and two years from now he’ll still be ranting and raving about a foreign policy issue he’s both ignorant on and powerless on. Is there a chance he’ll be better? Sure. It’s highly unlikely though, because he’s promising things he can’t delivering on, and talking about issues he holds no authority on. Electing this guy is placing a big bet on what’s likely a small payout.

New Yorkers, I get it, you’re tired of Andrew Cuomo. He’s not nice. He doesn’t try to make you feel good. If he loses tonight though, you will have created the next right-wing boogie man for Donald Trump to point out to suburban swing voters everywhere. You’re loading another gun for J.D. Vance 2028. Do the right thing. Don’t rank Mamdani.