"Too Young to Die"
As the seemingly endless NYC mayoral campaign enters its final weeks, the howls of the Democratic establishment in the city are only getting louder.
They've really convinced themselves that the election of a (gasp) Democratic Socialist will mean the absolute destruction of the city. Cops will quit! Billionaires will flee! Dogs and cats, living together!
I've been trying to place where I've heard this same rhetoric before, and it finally hit me this weekend – this is exactly what southern whites said when the first wave of African American mayors took power.
For instance, here's how I detailed the election of the first two black mayors in Atlanta – Maynard Jackson, Jr. (1974-1982, 1990-1994) and Andrew Young (1982-1990) – in my book White Flight:
That initial wave of fear-mongering, summed up so perfectly in the "ATLANTA IS TOO YOUNG TO DIE" ad, really echoes today.
Much as white southerners acted like the election of a black man as mayor would be the death of the city as they had long known it, white New Yorkers are now acting like the election of Mamdani will be the death of NYC. Some of it is religious bigotry, some of it is class panic, but all of it is as unfounded as the reaction to black mayors a half century ago.
I suspect that the next steps in this process might play out the same, too. Business leaders – panicked to the point of paranoia about a candidate whose most radical position seems to be "free bus fares" and not, you know, "seize the means of production" or "wheel out the guillotines" – will surely salt the earth out of spite, but they'll just be hurting themselves.
Even though he's done little to warrant the insane reactions to him, Mamdani can still shape the relationship with the city's rich and powerful. If he's able to convince them that the reality of his mayoralty isn't remotely like the fantasy they've been fighting in their heads, he might still be able to blunt their critique, if not win them over.
