private property

It has been painfully obvious, ever since the presidential election last November, that the Democratic Party’s brand is in tatters.

This week, a Quinnipiac University poll revealed that congressional Democrats have a minuscule 19% approval rating — an all-time low in the history of that particular poll. Earlier in the week, a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll similarly found that the party as a whole has an approval rating of 40% — considerably lower than the Republican Party’s 48% approval rating found by the same poll. Nor can Democrats necessarily rely on any GOP infighting to redound, in seesaw-like fashion, to their own benefit; for all the sturm und drang generated by the “Epstein files” affair, President Trump’s approval ratings have actually increased among Republicans this month.

The issue for Democrats is that their current unpopularity is not a byproduct of the political scandals of the day or the vicissitudes of Trump’s polarizing social media feeds. Rather, the problem for Democrats is structural — and it requires a rethink and a reboot from soup to nuts. As this column argued last November, it is clear that Barack Obama’s winning 2008 political coalition — comprising racial and ethnic minorities, young people and highly educated white voters — has completely withered. “Obamaism” is dead — and Democrats have to reconcile themselves to that demise. At minimum, they should stop taking advice from Obama himself; the 44th president was Kamala Harris’ top 2024 campaign trail surrogate, and we saw how that worked out.

In order for the party to rise up anew, as has often happened throughout American history following a period of dominance from a partisan rival, Democrats are going to have to move beyond their intersectional obsessions and woke grievances that have so greatly alienated large swaths of the American people on issues pertaining to race, gender, immigration, and crime and public safety. And the good news, for conservative Americans who candidly wish the Democratic Party nothing but the worst, is that Democrats seem completely incapable of doing this.

Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old recent winner of New York City’s much-discussed Democratic mayoral primary, is a case in point.

The Ugandan-born Shiite Muslim Mamdani is a democratic socialist, but he is better understood as a full-fledged communist. That isn’t hyperbole: One merely needs to consider his proposed policies for New York City and review his broader history of extreme far-left political rhetoric. Mamdani won the primary, and is now seeking the mayor’s office, on a genuinely radical platform: support for citywide “free” bus rides, city-owned grocery stores, a full rent freeze on certain low-income units, outright seizure of private property from arbitrarily “bad” landlords, race-based taxation (an assuredly unconstitutional proposal), a $30 minimum wage and more. A true Marxist, Mamdani has said “abolition of private property” would be an improvement over existing inequality. And he has something of a penchant for quoting Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” too.

But Mamdani’s communism is only part of his overall political persona. He also emphasizes, and trades in, exactly the sort of woke culture warring and intersectional identity politics that have defined the post-Obama Democratic Party. Mamdani is a long-standing harsh critic of Israel who had declined to distance himself from the antisemitic rallying cry “globalize the intifada.” Most recently, he also opposed Trump’s decision to have the U.S. intervene in last month’s Israel-Iran war, condemning it as a “new, dark chapter” that could “plunge the world deeper into chaos.” (In the real world, there were zero American casualties, and the bombing run was followed promptly by a ceasefire.)

There is, to be sure, nothing good down this road for denizens of New York City. If Mamdani wins this fall, expect a massive exodus of people, businesses and capital from the Big Apple — probably to the Sun Belt. But even more relevant: There is nothing good down that road for the national Democratic Party, as a whole. In order to demonstrate that the party has learned anything from its 2024 shellacking and its current abysmal standing, it will have to sound and act less crazy on the tangible issues that affect Americans’ day-to-day lives.

That isn’t happening. If Mamdani’s rise is representative — and it may well be, especially as other far-left firebrands like Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) continue to make outsize noise — then Democrats seem to be moving in the exact opposite direction: full-on Marxism and woke craziness. If the party continues down this path, it will experience nothing but mid- to long-term political pain. But as one of the aforementioned conservatives who wishes the Democratic Party nothing but the worst, I’m not too upset about that.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer

WASHINGTON — With two conservatives in dissent, the Supreme Court on Monday turned down a property-rights claim from Los Angeles landlords who say they lost millions from unpaid rent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Without comment, the justices said they would not hear an appeal from a coalition of apartment owners who said they rent “over 4,800 units” in “luxury apartment communities” to “predominantly high-income tenants.”

They sued the city seeking $20 million in damages from tenants who did not pay their rent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

They contended the city’s strict limits on evictions during that time had the effect of taking their private property in violation of the Constitution.

In the past, the court has repeatedly turned down claims that rent control laws are unconstitutional, even though they limit how much landlords can collect in rent.

But the L.A. landlords said their claim was different because the city had effectively taken use of their property, at least for a time. They cited the 5th Amendment’s clause that says “private property [shall not] be taken for public use without just compensation.”

“In March 2020, the city of Los Angeles adopted one of the most onerous eviction moratoria in the country, stripping property owners … of their right to exclude nonpaying tenants,” they told the court in GHP Management Corporation vs. Los Angeles. “The city pressed private property into public service, foisting the cost of its coronavirus response onto housing providers.”

“By August 2021, when [they] sued the City seeking just compensation for that physical taking, back rents owed by their unremovable tenants had ballooned to over $20 million,” they wrote.

A federal judge in Los Angeles and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a 3-0 decision dismissed the landlords’ suit. Those judges cited the decades of precedent that allowed regulation of property.

The court had considered the appeal since February, but only Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch voted to hear the case of GHP Management Corp. vs. City of Los Angeles.

“I would grant review of the question whether a policy barring landlords from evicting tenants for the nonpayment of rent effects a physical taking under the Taking Clause,” Thomas said. “This case meets all of our usual criteria. … The Court nevertheless denies certiorari, leaving in place confusion on a significant issue, and leaving petitioners without a chance to obtain the relief to which they are likely entitled.”

The Los Angeles landlords asked the court to decide “whether an eviction moratorium depriving property owners of the fundamental right to exclude nonpaying tenants effects a physical taking.”

In February, the city attorney’s office urged the court to turn down the appeal.

“As a once-in-a-century pandemic shuttered its businesses and schools, the city of Los Angeles employed temporary, emergency measures to protect residential renters against eviction,” they wrote. The measure protected only those who could “prove COVID-19 related economic hardship,” and it “did not excuse any rent debt that an affected tenant accrued.”

The city argued the landlords are seeking a “radical departure from precedent” in the area of property regulation.

“If a government takes property, it must pay for it,” the city attorneys said. “For more than a century, though, this court has recognized that governments do not appropriate property rights solely by virtue of regulating them.”

The city said the COVID emergency and the restriction on evictions ended in January 2023.

In reply, lawyers for the landlords said bans on evictions are becoming the “new normal.” They cited a Los Angeles County measure they said would “preclude evictions for non-paying tenants purportedly affected by the recent wildfires.”