Hello and welcome back to the Americano Show, where we talk about power, politics and prejudices in American life.

Every week we will talk to at least one or two or possibly three or four American experts, international

experts about American affairs. And you can also catch us on Spectator TV on YouTube as often

as you like. Please keep listening and watching. Today we are going to be talking about New York because as the world has now seen, the

Democrats have voted by quite a comfortable margin in the end for Zoran Mamdami, who is a former

democratic socialist in New York, to be their candidate for mayor,

which is thought to be a shoe-in for any democratic candidate.

And so New York is looking at the possibility of a mayor who is far to the left,

I think it's fair to say, of mainstream American politics.

To discuss this, I'm delighted to be joined by Aidan McLaughlin,

who is editor-in-chief of Mediite and a much-appreciated Spectator contributor. He wrote an

article about it on Spectator Well's website, which you can read if you go there.

Aidan, it wasn't a surprise in the end, was it?

But nonetheless, American politics has been slightly convulsed by this story.

Yeah, you know, it wasn't a surprise just because in the final weeks of the campaign,

Zoran Mandemi, who, you know, I can't express enough how much his candidacy came out of nowhere.

He was, when he first got into the race in October, as a state assemblyman with only four

years experience in government, and he is a self-proclaimed, proud Muslim Democratic socialist.

When he got into the race in October, he was polling around 0%.

Fast forward to January, and he's polling around 1%.

And he managed to turn this race where he's facing off the political dynasty of Andrew Cuomo and almost the entire Democratic establishment.

I think it's telling that plenty of political figures who have for their entire careers loathed Andrew Cuomo, like Mike Bloomberg, ended up endorsing him and trying to get him over the line.

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