In New York, it’s progressives versus the party machine – and the city’s queen of tabloids offers some unexpected insightIf, like me, you’re a faithful reader of the New York Post, the election of Zohran Mamdani as the new mayor of Gotham was the best thing to happen to my native city – and to journalism – in a very long time. All through the run up to “Zoh’s” remarkable victory, the queen of tabloids outdid itself in hysterical brilliance – to such an extent that I and apparently tens of thousands of other New Yorkers were left excitedly panting for more, unable to share in the mourning that overtook rightwing commentators and pro-Trump operatives all across the land. Moreover, whether or not you voted for the Ugandan-born Muslim progressive/socialist, his improbable triumph furnished a great political education for anyone who bothered to pay attention, even if you weren’t a Post reader. Now, with Mamdani inaugurated and the unofficial municipal host of Nicolás Maduro, the deposed Venezuelan president, and his wife – jailed in Brooklyn and arraigned in federal court just a stone’s throw from city hall in Manhattan – Donald Trump’s newspaper mouthpiece is also an excellent way to make sense of the growing fissure inside the Democratic party about everything Mamdani represents.I didn’t say that the Post’s political reporting during the final month of the campaign was worth reading because it was accurate. Beginning with Miranda Devine’s 8 October column, whose headline proclaimed “The Dems are letting Antifa take over their cities”, the paper’s leading lights made analytical hash of what was really going on inside the Democratic party. “Portland and Chicago are emerging as the epicenter of anti-Trump resistance,” she warned. “[Governor JB Pritzker] and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson are endangering the lives of ICE and Border Patrol personnel,” apparently taking their cue from the “antifa militants” of the first Trump term who “terrorized” the country during the riots that followed the killing of George Floyd. “It will be a relief,” wrote Devine, “to find out who has been funding these violent groups that appear for all the world to be Dem street militia. How else to explain years of Democrats gaslighting us and Democrat governors and mayors covering for Antifa.” Continue reading… More
