Zohran Mamdani Muddles A Message

Mayoral Hopeful's Gaza Flub Shines A Light On The Left's Most Serious Problem

Assemblyman and mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, right, on The Bulwark podcast on Tuesday.

New York State Assemblyman and mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has been having a good run. He has nearly erased a 40-point deficit in polls against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in next week’s Democratic mayoral primary to make it more competitive than most people had thought possible.

In the final week, though, as voters are already casting their ballots, his campaign still polls behind Cuomo, and endorsements from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders have been overshadowed by other events, such as Tuesday’s arrest of fellow candidate and City Comptroller Brad Lander by ICE.

Desperately trying to claw his way to an upset, Mamdani sat down for an interview with Tim Miller of The Bulwark on Tuesday. Despite trying to keep the issue of Israel far below his plans for free buses and rent freezes in voters’ minds, he was asked about the phrase “globalize the Intifada.”

He bombed the question.

Mamdani told Miller he embraced the phrase as a call for Palestinian rights and self-determination, even strangely invoking the Holocaust:

“The word [intifada] has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic, because it’s a word that means struggle.”