Mamdanis working-class costume is falling apart

Even the Gray Lady is raising her eyebrows at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s political two-step.The New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro went so far as to accuse Mamdani of deflecting as she pressed him for a definition of the “working class” he professes to champion during a recent sit-down.At first pass, Mamdani’s working class included all who “work to pay” their bills.When Garcia-Navarro asked if that included “someone making $250,000 a year,” the mayor affirmed that it did, before ultimately drawing his line “at about a million dollars a year.”These are the prevarications of a man who knows where his bread is buttered.Mamdani is a self-described socialist whose political success depends on his ability to present as a champion of the working man — the kind who clocks in early, stays late and coarsens his callouses in the interim.After the triumph three far-left candidates he backed in high-profile Big Apple congressional primaries last month, he heralded a supposed “shift in the balance of power between working people and their special interests.”“Finally,” he declared, “working people are going to have more of a voice in the halls of power.”Except they don’t.Because Mamdani and his disciples’ potent political base is composed not of overlooked everymen, but an at-once privileged and aggrieved white-collar class.The proof is in the pudding.According to the Times’ post-primary analysis of Mamdani’s decisive defeat of Andrew Cuomo last summer, the former beat the latter in higher income (42%-30%), whiter (39%-34%) and more college-educated (45%-28%) precincts.But the more moderate ex-governor came out ahead in lower income (49%-38%) and black (51%-34%) neighborhoods.The Bronx backed Cuomo; Mamdani ran up the numbers in wealthy Manhattan and crunchy Brooklyn.A nearly identical story played out this summer in the congressional races Mamdani successfully upended.Police, prison and border abolitionist Darializa Avila C...