Is Zohran Mamdani our next American leader?

Trump: “No other President could do some of the shit i’m doing”
It’s Voting Day in the country. All voters are in formal dress. A uniformed soldier gives each voter a ballot which has only one name. Each voter checks it and places the ballot in the “Yes” box with both hands. Each voter bows deeply to the picture of the president, his father, and grandfather. No one dares to approach the “No” box. The voters leave the voting precinct and join the election celebration in the city center.

This is how Kim Jong Un is  elected in North Korea, but this is how Donald Trump wants voters in Trumpistan to vote when his son Eric is elected after the Divided States of America becomes a constitutional dictatorship in the Trump Empire.

An article in This Week “Fleeing the Hermit Kingdom” tells of a North Korean family who had planned for a decade to escape to South Korea. When COVID19 hit North Korea, Kim Jong UN imposed the world’s harshest lockdowns.

Access to the sea was closed by barbed wire and thousands of military guards. Crimes increased as people suffered from lack of food and medical supplies. Thousands, including this family, were forced to watch as hundreds of “criminals” were executed by firing squads. The crowds left in silence and fear of the government.

The family of nine narrowly escaped in a 30-ft wood boat to South Korea at night by pretending to be a police boat. They began to enjoy the difference in living conditions between the two Koreas.

The South has endless TV channels. The North has only one government channel. A motorbike was a prized vehicle in the North while the South had highways crowded with vehicles.

In the South, faucets produced both hot and cold water while only cold water came out of North faucets.
The South offered napkins with meals while North diners had never heard of them.

The refugee mother from the North was absolutely shocked when a woman slapped a man’s face in a South TV drama. The North family enjoyed eating fried chicken and pizza in the South for the first time.
When adult members of the North family voted in the South, they wore shorts, had radio plugs in their ears and took time to check many names on a long ballot.

No wonder Donald John Trump fell in love with Kim Jong Un, the man who has statues all over the country and his picture on all the North Korean walls. He wants to be just like the Supreme and Dear Leader.

How do we control the abuses of government?
In “Federalist 51, James Madison probably wrote the most important passage in American political writing: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. (Think of the “Incredible Shrinking Man” Doug Burgum!)

The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection of the human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external or internal controls would be necessary.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the greatest difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Because of executive orders and political decisions of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during and after the Great Depression, the United States had the largest middle class in the history of the nation and of the world.

Democrats wanted stronger social nets, a federal minimum, more public investment in schools, and scientific and medical research.

Republicans claimed the “free market” would solve all problems because it would restrain private greed. But they moved power and wealth to the top of government, and now the middle class has become a small shadow of what it once was.

More than half of the households live paycheck to paycheck and have little money for emergencies that “happen.” The richest 10% account for a growing portion of all consumption. The top one-tenth of 1% continue to increase their portion of all wealth.

Research by the Brookings Institution shows slightly more than 75% of the middle class in the Twin Cities were able to afford housing, food, transportation, childcare and healthcare in 2023. Economists define the middle class as the middle 60% of wage earners which required an annual household income of $31,000 and $158,102 in 2023, the year the report covers. The bottom end was just above the poverty line then.

That study meant that about 25% of the Twin Cities middle class could not afford essentials then. It would be much worse now!

No doubt a small upper class is at the top, accumulating wealth and driving spending. Everyone else is at the bottom and facing a widening gap every year. The cost of living (defined now as “affordability!”) has overwhelmed middle class life in the DSA.

Big question: Why did 80M and 90M eligible voters not vote?
I have always thought it was because Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was not the Democratic Party’s candidate in 2020 and 2024.

Wherever and whenever Bernie shows up to talk and campaign for policy and politics, he turns out to be the Pied Piper for the Common Good. He thinks the wealthy can get by “on only $999,000,000” instead of owning the biggest yacht, 11 mansions, a survival bunker in Kansas, the most expensive penthouse-apartment in New York, and a Hawaiian island.

He doesn’t think much of billionaires who never know when “enough” is “enough.”

He believes in and promotes universal healthcare such as Medicare-for-All, parent and family leave, a productive minimum wage, public and private unions, fair housing, anti-trust and monopoly laws, and free undergraduate college like the happiest countries and the happiest people in the Scandinavian countries of Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark — and Greenland -- possess in their legislative platforms.

Bernie supported the new “Muslim Mayor” Zohran Mamdani of New York City who brought the young people of the city to the voting booths because he promised to work for “free buses, lower rents, public childcare, higher minimum wage, social workers for homeless people instead of cops, better grocery stores – and other programs that the vast majority of residents supported. The Trumplicans keep yelling “Democratic Socialists and those bloody Communists would “defund the police.”

Mamdani promoted having social workers and specialists attend possible domestic abuse calls to help police establish peace in the home. Such a program might keep police from pulling firearms and killing people they were supposed to help. He also expressed his opposition to how Israel was killing thousands of children in Gaza to punish the Palestinian forces of October 7.

Is Zohran Mamdani our next American leader?
One could argue New York City is a lot like the Divided States of America.

Mamdani the “Muslim” mayor is one of nearly 3.1 million immigrants now living in New York City. That’s close to one-third of its total population. The families are 30.9% White, 28.7% Hispanic or Latino, 20.2% Black or African American, and 15% Asian. In New York City alone 800 languages are spoken. Four million speak a language other than English.

Although New York City is a city of billionaires and may be still the financial capital of the world, the richest city in the world in the richest country in the world has double the national average of people living in poverty.

One quarter of New Yorkers don’t have enough money for housing, food or medical care. There are 420,000 children (26%) living in poverty. There are 900,000 elementary, middle and high school students in the public school system---and 154,000 are homeless.

There are many reasons why Mamdani is calling foe a freeze on rents in rent-stabilized apartment buildings, making buses free, and programs that would make childcare free for those under the age of five.

New York City has a population of 8.5 million at night and 15 million during the day because of commuters and visitors. It has a budget of $116 billion. Could all of these statistics help to elect Democratic Socialist Mamdani mayor of our largest city?

Writer Douglas White was raised and has lived in New York City all of his life and worked for the city government for 36 years in a number of capacities, He has become a believer in Mayor Mamdani after watching him for years: “Mamdani has what it takes to be a great mayor because he has a vision that speaks to so many sectors of New York’s population, emphasizing as he does the dignity of working people and hope as an active force to put in place meaningful programs for a better future. He articulates a future for this city that is more equitable and will make it so much more livable for so many. As a politician, he’s both an optimist and unafraid to propose big solutions. I’ve lived in this city for 60 years and raised my family here. We managed to build a middle-class life, but right now such a future is anything but a given for so many un a city that has become all too difficult for working people to remain and create a life worth living.”

It seems we have a new Pied Piper joining an old one who still has a young mind. The politics of the country are changing.

A new Gallup Poll reveals that nationally the percentage of Democrats who view socialism positively—66%--exceeds the percentage who view capitalism positively—42%. A Times/Siena poll of New Yorkers indicated that having a Democratic Socialist for their mayor would be good for the city against 32% who said it would be bad and 26% said it would be neither good or bad. Mamdani had led former governor Andrew Cuomo by a 46% to 24% margin in the mayor’s race. Cuomo was considered moderate by many Democrats.

The Third Way, a group of billionaires calling themselves a “centrist Democratic group,” is putting $15 million into a war chest to “discredit democratic socialism.” Their Board of Trustees is a political war party composed of wealthy Fortune 500 CEOs, corporation CEOs, Wall Street bankers, and private equity managers who have a buck or two. They are matching Trump’s record for lies.

A New York Times article about Third Way claimed Bernie Sander’s Medicare-for-All plan would add $13 trillion to the deficit. The famous international Mercator Research Institute, partially funded by the Koch brothers, reported it would actually save trillions of medical dollars while providing health care to many millions of uninsured Americans.

On Aug. 11, a Yale University study reported that Medical-for-All would save over 114,000 lives and $1 trillion a year.