In this episode of the Red Apple Podcast Network's The Stone Zone, my friend Dr. Hank Sheinkoff joins me to talk about the Democratic primary victory for mayor of New York City, Zoran Mandani, and why he should be the next president.
00:01:20.640I mean, surprising in the amount of organizing ability that Zoran Mandani and the Working Families Party and the left wing brought to the event.
00:01:29.060New York is now a case example of what happens when the left organizes, as it's known how to do very well.
00:02:34.240It means that the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party now owns New York, at least in that Democratic primary.
00:02:41.760And those folks are highly motivated to turn out again, which they will.
00:02:45.140They are much more progressive, much more liberal, much less likely to be religiously engaged.
00:02:51.760The very things that made American culture what it is are things that don't matter to them.
00:02:56.040There are people who have never borne a burden or paid a price, you know, and have no idea about history that got us to this point.
00:03:03.600But they do know that they don't want to pay a burden, pay a price rather, bear a burden, and will never serve this nation in any capacity.
00:03:13.360They're the new class of the Democrat Party.
00:03:17.480And they will be in constant conflict with the Republicans for some time, who have become much more blue collar, much less engaged in, more engaged in the things that this group has rejected, which is religion, community, and traditional American kinds of values.
00:03:33.140We also see something important here as well, Roger, that people tend to forget.
00:03:37.000This was a European derivative country where European institutions mattered.
00:03:42.920The Magna Carta, you know, people don't say, well, I think about the Magna Carta, but European institutions that created democracy were part of American culture.
00:03:51.160We now have a society that is more than 50% non-European derivative.
00:03:55.700And that tells you where we're going to be going.
00:03:58.980We've got to create some democracy someplace and put it into people's brains or we're going to lose this country.
00:04:04.480I, for one, do not see how the policies of defunding the police, essentially nationalizing or taking control of grocery stores and having the taxpayers pay for food for everyone.
00:04:24.500And how the failure to denounce anti-Semitism and terrorism, I just don't see how this can work in New York City, a city that already has very substantial problems.
00:04:39.240Many of the Republicans that I know nationally who believe that in the end, and Mamdani will be elected because of the lopsided voter registration in New York City, think this is a good thing because his policies will, by the next presidential election, turn New York into chaos and be an example for the American people of what happens under these policies.
00:05:38.280What they need is something else isn't working.
00:05:41.140You know, even under David Dinkins, who didn't get enough credit for reducing crime.
00:05:46.860Crime went up under Mayor Koch and went down on David Dinkins.
00:05:50.320He knew that we needed more cops, and he went and got them.
00:05:52.260So we're going to live in a society in New York, likely, where police are less important, where the belief is that somehow, if we reduce enforcement of societal norms, that everything will work out fine.
00:08:03.840The mail was a combination of Instagram, TikTok, and the overblown graphics, which are very much a part of some of the movie comic books that are kind of appearing.
00:08:17.600You know, and hip-hop culture, the overblown graphics, the overblown everything.
00:08:27.660And that goes back to the polling question you raised.
00:08:30.120You know, we're living with pollsters who, I cautioned some people, I said, stop looking at people who voted in four of the last four elections or three of the last four elections.
00:08:40.580Start looking at people who voted in one of the last four elections or two of the last four elections, because those are the people that Mandami is going to turn up.
00:09:00.420The sexual harassment arguments had tremendous impact here.
00:09:04.140And there's something you can't forget, because they were all in the newspapers, and it was extensively covered for an extended period of time.
00:10:25.560We live in a society that is much less personal, much more, sorry, much less communal, much more driven by individual needs and desires, much less communal, much less voluntary, and much less civic.
00:10:43.680You know, our turnout numbers are kind of lousy when you think about it.
00:10:47.420So why should people want to participate?
00:10:52.620Yeah, we definitely saw this phenomena in 2024 where President Donald Trump exceeded his share of the vote by several points above all of his polling in the swing states.
00:11:08.620And I attribute this to the fact that there were Trump voters who did not want to tell a stranger, either online or on the phone, that they were going to vote for Donald Trump because they feared being targeted and harassed.
00:11:26.320It's a sad commentary on where we are in our politics today.
00:11:30.560Many conservatives, many Republicans, many sane people today calling for the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, to drop out of the race and to endorse current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is now running as an independent.
00:11:49.620Listen, in your view, does Sliwa have a chance in the race under the current circumstances or with those who fear a Mamdani mayoralty be best served if Sliwa and Adams could join forces?
00:12:15.420And the New York patriot thing to do would be to follow the law, leave the state for a while and get off the ballot in order to solidify Eric Adams' possibilities of being reelected.
00:12:26.400Adams is not without flaws, but he is a former New York City police officer who served the city.
00:12:31.220He cleaned up the act of that administration.
00:12:35.400The police commissioner he's appointed, the fire commissioner he's appointed, the deputy mayor he's appointed, are doing brilliant work.
00:12:42.660And he ought to protect New York City from a Mamdani administration run by a guy who managed an office with a budget of $150,000 with three people.
00:12:52.860You know, this is an extraordinary event to manage New York City.
00:12:55.640And it takes, I mean, it's very Herculean by any measure.
00:13:02.640Put Brad Lander, the former controller who supported boycott the rest of the sanctions of Israel, in charge of the city as a deputy mayor?
00:13:10.820What kind of people is he going to bring into government?
00:13:13.140People who want to destroy the police department or change it radically so it doesn't function?
00:13:18.300And people who really don't understand the gravity of the situation.
00:13:21.100Look, maybe, Roger, the argument is that having, you know, it's just, it hits the Trumpian era, right?
00:13:28.140Maybe the cities have lost their function.
00:13:31.020Maybe we don't need them anymore because the melting pot has changed.
00:13:34.640Maybe we don't require cities as places for the exchange of ideas and culture anymore because people are so self-sufficient and so unengaged.
00:13:46.100You know, the suburbanization of America, finally, the amalgamation of former cultural and ethnic groups that, frankly, have made their way in America through the melting pot.
00:13:59.140And that the new immigrants don't need what we've provided in the past.
00:14:05.640And that's something we have to consider.
00:14:07.840It may just be that in the late stage of urbanization that doesn't, that has to change.
00:14:12.300Well, as you pointed out, Ma'am, Domi's victory came by mobilizing a very substantial number of voters who hadn't voted before or had voted sparsely in the past.
00:14:26.040Conversely, however, do you now think it is possible that voters who did not participate in the primary but are alarmed to the prospect that he may become mayor could now vote in the general election in order to vote against him?
00:14:57.520But the liberals and the progressives are prepared to look past that, like Jerry Nadler, who really should have retired a long time ago, and to endorse people like this with the hope that somehow this will go away.
00:15:12.420And they don't understand that the city's changes are not reflected necessarily in the populations that he serves, the very wealthy west side of Manhattan, where people have never really suffered a bad day.
00:15:29.880It is, I think we've entered into a realm where all possibilities occur, even the most irrational.
00:15:36.760And we proved that at Election Day in New York just a couple of days ago.
00:15:41.080If you're just tuning in, folks, we're talking to the premier Democrat strategist in the country, Hank Sheinkoff, one of the few Democrats I know who accurately predicted the election of Donald Trump in 2024.
00:16:10.560We're talking to Hank Sheinkoff, to me, the preeminent and I think most brilliant Democrat strategist in the country today.
00:16:19.160I remember a very specific interview right here on this show where Hank Sheinkoff said that the National Democrat Party did not understand that between open borders and the fentanyl and crime problem that caused,
00:16:34.520the runaway inflation, the runaway inflation, the unbridled spending, that the Democrats did not recognize the toxic myths, his words, that would lead to Trump's probable re-election.
00:16:48.360Most of my other Democrat friends were still talking about the election of Kamala Harris, but not Hank Sheinkoff.
00:16:59.540And I want to ask you, how do you think you're a Democrat, but how do you think Trump is doing so far?
00:17:06.160He's got significant problems because of the issues with his own party.
00:17:12.820And I think that he's been, you know, away from my own political leaders, I'm still, I would still like to be a Clinton Democrat, but I think that ship has sailed.
00:17:20.960I don't think we have a centrist Democrat party anymore.
00:17:23.020But I think the measure of Donald Trump's success, if they're in an early one, will be whether this budget bill gets passed and what shape it's in.
00:17:32.000If he can be the guy like Clinton was, who has cured the debt, he will be a great man.
00:17:39.920But I don't know that that's going to happen.
00:17:42.120Internationally, the crisis, the international crisis, where America's strength is being challenged by our enemies throughout the world, is maybe unmanageable by anyone.
00:17:54.700And I think Trump is doing the best he can to manage that crisis.
00:17:59.220But it's the Ukraine issue alone makes it appear that he is weak.
00:18:03.960How he cures those two problems, the financial, the internal financial one, the debt issue, and the foreign policy questions will determine how he is remembered in history.
00:18:13.980And these are very difficult things that he's walking into.
00:18:36.000The decision he made to strike the nuclear weapons development sites in Iran last Sunday.
00:18:43.520Do you think he made the right decision?
00:18:45.920The world depends on the United States to save it, to save the world from insanity.
00:18:51.580The United States should have done this or taken out of Iran or gone after Tehran in 1983 after the attack,
00:18:59.040after the murder of 200, close to 300 Marines and French troops who were there in a Beirut peacekeeping mission.
00:19:07.040What Donald Trump did was to let the world know.
00:19:09.320And this was not just for the Iranians.
00:19:11.340This was for the Russians and for our European allies to let them know that we will do what we must do and that the Russians should behave better and the Chinese should be very careful.
00:19:22.620And for those reasons alone, I think that it was the only move he could make.