It’s obvious that Zohran Mamdani has never taken the legendary words of Margaret Thatcher regarding socialism seriously. If he had, perhaps he would have had more than canned answers and his used car salesman smile to offer up at yesterday’s mayoral debate.

The debate was a stark window into just how badly New York City is screwed at the moment. The Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, actually acquitted himself well, but he can’t get more than 15% of the vote. A rational voting pool would carefully consider Sliwa’s words. The deep blue New York City of 2025 won’t even give him a second glace, sadly. This race continues to be between Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo. And between those two, Cuomo carries enough baggage to drown in the Hudson River, and Mamdani is a lightweight fueled on self-righteous socialist rage and unicorn farts. And Mamdani was the target of both Cuomo and Sliwa.

The problem is, the hard left is baked into voting for Mamdani. The question then becomes whether or not Cuomo has done enough to appeal to what’s left of the voting pool of New York City. And he did not convince anyone last night. As John Podhoretz said in his op-ed, Mamdani was terrible, but Cuomo was a dud.

Mamdani flopped. His answers were defensive. He seemed angry at being questioned at all. It seemed offensive to him that he would have to offer an explanation for having called for defunding the police and refusing to accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.

He claimed he never said things he said or that he shouldn’t be accountable for words he wrote only five years ago. He did not seem like a young and happy warrior, more like a petulant graduate student.

But if Mamdani did badly, Andrew Cuomo did worse. And an enjoyable Curtis Sliwa buried Cuomo even deeper.

On May 15, 2022, the Pittsburgh Pirates were no-hit by the Cincinnati Reds and still won the game because of three straight walks and a fielder’s choice. That’s kind of what happened in the debate. Mamdani got no hits. But Cuomo gave up three walks, Sliwa made a fielder’s choice, and Mamdani’s march to the mayoralty was not halted.

He (Cuomo) wanted us to understand the legal claims against him for sexual harassment — the very cause of his resignation from his job as governor in 2022 — have gone away, but even to get that point, you needed to get past innumerable “ums” and “ahs” that didn’t exactly inspire confidence in the merit of his narrative.

Mamdani was exposed as having no way to pay for all of his socialist pipe dreams – “tax the rich” is not a complete answer. Eventually, you run out of other people’s money, remember?

Zohran Mamdani had little to say when asked during Thursday night’s mayoral debate how he would cover the cost of his $10 billion in freebies for his socialist agenda — as Gov. Kathy Hochul has insisted she will not raise taxes.

“Look, a lot of people have called even my campaign a non-starter when we first again and now I stand before you proud to be the Democratic nominee who got the most votes in city primary history,” Mamdani said, dodging the question.

Pressed again, the far-left candidate provided scant details on how he’d scrounge up what amounts nearly 10% of the current city budget to pay for his campaign proposals.

“We have also put forward a plan to save money here in New York City,” he said.

Mamdani’s pillar of his campaign promises has been to raise taxes on people making more than $1 million and corporate taxes.

His top policy proposal for free universal childcare would come a staggering price tag of $5 to $6 billion alone.

The snake oil is selling well in the polls, though. The far left has loved all of Mamdani’s answers about taxing only rich people and demanding a litmus test for anyone who supports Israel, and his responses about the peace deal and Hamas disarmament have been atrocious. It’s been so bad that Mamdani himself now insists that he has no opinion about Hamas disarming, and leftist influencers are insisting that Mamdani shouldn’t be asked about these international questions regarding Israel anymore. Except that it is a key part of the Mamdani platform, and his base demands it.

One, it's central to his political identity. Two, he only just told the NY Times THIS WEEK that it should be a litmus test for his party nationwide. Three, he's pledging to use NYPD resources to arrest a foreign head of state. Four, NYC has the UN & is crammed with foreign… https://t.co/3nLs5inpSB

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) October 17, 2025

Even POLITICO admitted that Mamdani had problems in this debate, even as he’s running away with the election.

With a double-digit lead in every poll, all Mamdani really needed was not to collapse. He succeeded — and avoided any major missteps. Some Republicans seized on his awkward moment declining to endorse Gov. Kathy Hochul’s reelection, even though she took a big political risk by backing his candidacy… but that’s not exactly going to cost Mamdani the race.

At times, he might have been too smooth — he’s practiced lines on topics like affordability and Israel so many times you can almost see him going into autopilot.

The otherwise strong night by Mamdani had the effect of highlighting his weaknesses on public safety and Israel.

He struggled when talking about his plans for making changes to the Civilian Complaint Review Board — almost sounding like a Wikipedia entry when describing the panel’s job of assessing police misconduct. Mamdani was also on his backfoot when being attacked by Cuomo over embracing the phrase “globalize the intifada.”

As strong as Mamdani can be on affordability and cost-of-living concerns that are so important to New Yorkers, he still has vulnerabilities on other issues where Cuomo is strongest.

Will voting for Empty Suit Mamdani be a problem for deep blue New York City? They apparently are all in on buying the socialist snake oil. But here’s a word of warning for Zohran Mamdani – which I am sure he’s not listening to at all. He has been supported by both Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, neither of whom are responsible for actually running anything. Bernie has been in the Senate for decades, where he can sit on his butt and complain from a safe perch. When he did run for president, the Democrat party realized it would be a disaster and coalesced against him to keep him away from the nomination. AOC may run for president, but as of right now, she has done nothing and run nothing of substance, short of selling her own campaign merch and getting slapped with ethics violations after the Met Gala incident. Mamdani is their canary in the coal mine. He can win New York City, but since he can rise no higher (meaning he can’t run for president, not being a natural-born citizen), he will be locked within the universe of New York City. When he fails, and the city turns into a socialist disaster zone, Bernie and AOC get to walk away with their hands clean. It’s never socialism’s fault when it fails – it only means that the “right” socialism didn’t get tried yet. This will be the apex of Zohran Mamdani’s political career – but it also could be the beginning of the end for him as well. Hopefully he won’t end New York City at the same time.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click