“It’s Official Hola, Nueva York. Zohran Mamdani. Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani has been elected mayor of New York City, the far left over Gotham. Zohran Mamdani is the winner. Zohran Mamdani is the winner. And if you believe the hype or the fears of his critics, then the 34-year-old Ugandan born Muslim Democratic socialist is poised to remake the Democratic Party, thrilling young voters, mainstreaming socialism. There has to be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country. And anti-zionism. What’s happening in Gaza as a genocide and offering himself as the starkest possible contrast to that other New Yorker in the White House. We’re sending in our National Guard. We do not need the National Guard, but I’m skeptical. Does it say anything about our national politics. This would be a message. Actually, I think the Democrats nationally as well. The odds are that mamdani’s victory is actually less significant than you think. In part, that’s because the media, still New York centric, tends to hype New York mayoral politics beyond its real significance. Everyone is now treating New York’s mayoral race as if it were a presidential one. Do you see Mamdani as the future of the Democratic Party. And it’s also because the Office of Mayor of New York City has tended to be a political springboard to nowhere. We’ve repeatedly seen New York City mayors, from John Lindsay to Rudy Giuliani to Michael Bloomberg, hyped as national political influencers, only to flop outside the 5 Boroughs when Eric Adams was elected just four years ago. There was a lot of talk about how his distinctive branding as a tough on crime, African-American moderate. This is not going to be a city of violence. Might make him a leader for the National Democratic Party. Look at me. You’re seeing the future of the Democratic Party. Obviously, that didn’t work out. And all of those figures were at least trying to be centrists or moderates. Whereas Mamdani has been elected as the left wing mayor of a left wing city, and imagining that makes him a model for how the Democratic Party should compete nationwide is a little bit like imagining that a far right Republican elected in Alabama or Idaho is likely to offer a template for how Republicans should compete in swing states. That’s likely to be a fantasy. Will the Democratic leadership learn from his campaign. I doubt it. I’ll say this for Mamdani, though. He’s come on the scene at a moment when the leftward wing of the Democratic Party is looking for a national leader because Bernie Sanders can’t live forever. And it’s not clear that Alexandria ocasio-cortez, until we flip the seats in Congress or any other figure is quite ready to fill Sanders shoes. So there might be a future where Mamdani ends up getting elected as a governor or a Senator and becomes an important factional leader on the left, if not a leader of the Democratic Party as a whole. And that could happen, I suppose, if he governs absolutely brilliantly, maybe even by imitating Sanders own successful turn as the pragmatic sewer socialist mayor of the somewhat smaller city of Burlington, Vermont. I think that’s the best case for his long term political significance, but I still think that it’s more likely that four years of actually governing New York City will demonstrate, yet again, why getting elected mayor is so often a career peak, rather than an opening into something bigger than the Big Apple.
