Most of the public attention paid to Vance’s speech at Claremont revolved around the legacy American issue. I will probably have more to say about that in the future. The biggest single segment of the speech, however, was an attack on Mamdani, who, according to Vance, is a communist.
Vance was speaking to a group of relatively sophisticated right-wingers, so they probably understand that mildly increasing taxes on the wealthy, running a few grocery stores, and making buses free does not exactly amount to taking control of the means of production. Let’s take this critique a step further, however. Donald Trump is governing as the CEO of corporate America. He is demanding personal control over large segments of our economy through golden shares, new investment funds supposedly to be run at his discretion, tariff policy, and social media attacks on disfavored companies. Does this not make him more of a “communist” than Mamdani?