When Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral Democratic primary, a friend whose political judgment I respect told me that this is the greatest gift to the Republicans imaginable. As New York Times columnist Brett Stephens observed of Mamdani’s youthful and enthusiastic supporters, “They’re making Donald Trump’s case about the radical direction of too much of the Democratic Party better than he ever could.”

Mamdani, an avowed socialist and a Muslim immigrant from Uganda of Indian heritage, captured the imagination of new voters, who bought into his theme of making the city affordable.

The notion of a political gift is that the Republicans will tar the Democrats with the far-left progressive views of Mamdani: free bus rides, food at lower prices, frozen rents — all items the cash-strapped city can ill afford to deliver.

And then there is the charge of antisemitism. Running in the city with the largest Jewish community in the world, Mamdani has — even after winning the primary — refused to repudiate the anti-Zionist shibboleth “globalize the intifada.” Intifada is Arabic for “shaking off” and is a term associated with the murder of innocent Jews in Israel and around the world. We will have to wait for the general election in November to see if Mamdani has committed political suicide by refusing to condemn the global intifada.

Meanwhile, after the Senate narrowly passed President Trump’s “big beautiful” tax bill and sent it back to the House for ratification, another friend told me this was making Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) case about the reactionary direction of too much of the GOP “better than he ever could.”

Can it be that the two political programs are........

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