The Liberal Cope at Zohran Mamdani’s Win

The Left finally won. On November 4th, Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year old Democratic Socialist and State Assemblyman, won the New York City Mayoral Election. 

Mamdani’s ascent was impressive, given how controversial he was within his party. Several top democrats were hesitant to endorse him. This included Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who to this day will not say who he voted for in his home city of New York. He shocked the world last summer when he defeated the establishment favorite, Andrew Cuomo, who lost to him in the general election again this month.

There’s no doubt that Mamdani will be the future Mayor of New York City. But the debate over whether Progressives like Mamdani are the future of the Democratic Party rages on. The American liberal establishment is still fighting hard against Mamdani in the columns and on social media. They argue that Progressives like Mamdani are not the “Future of the Democratic Party."

A New York Times Op-Ed from Binyamin Appelbaum titled, “Mamdani Isn’t the Future of the Democrats. This Guy Is," minimizes Mamdani’s win to something only achievable in blue states and asserts that centrist Democrats like Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro are the real future of the party. 

The claim that centrism is the way Democrats can win isn’t a new one. A large portion of Democratic voters simply do not believe that Progressives can win, and more “pragmatic” candidates are electable. 

This notion is odd since for the past three cycles, the Democratic Party has only run moderate candidates, and all it's given them is more Trump. Meanwhile, a Progressive candidate like Bernie Sanders outpolls a moderate candidate like Hillary Clinton against Trump, but still gets hit with the label, “unelectable” because of “socialism.” 

But the reality is, the real future of the Democratic Party is moving to the left. Progressive policies are popular. A 2019 survey conducted by CNBC found a strong majority of Americans supported Progressive priorities such as raising the minimum wage, paid maternity leave, more money for childcare, tuition-free public college, and Medicare for All. Americans want democratic socialism, but the largest and most moderate faction of the ostensibly left-wing party does whatever it can to stop it from happening.

There are many theories as to why centrist democrats oppose popular left-wing policies. Some argue that it’s corruption. Progressive policies take power and wealth away from the richest people and corporations in the country. Thus, these corporations donate to as many democrats as they can to keep them from moving to the left. 

The second theory is that centrist democrats are not further left merely for ideological reasons. This is the more positive spin that articles like Appelbaum’s aim for. He argues that Shapiro is good at making centrism “sound urgent.” He touts Shapiro's pragmatic approach of incremental reform as opposed to big structural change. 

The problem with this article and others like it is that they pretend that there is some great ideological battle within the Democratic Party between the establishment centrists and progressives. But the reality is, there is not. Centrist Democrats do not have an ideology; they are careerists who merely react to the policies of the right and the left. 

We saw this in the New York City mayoral election. Zohran Mamdani stole the spotlight by running on big campaign promises: fast, free buses, rent freezes, and universal childcare. They were so exciting and so well-marketed that almost anyone in New York could name them. Andrew Cuomo did not offer a similarly exciting platform, but rather the statement: Better things are not possible. He merely reacted to Mamdani’s primary win by launching his own affordability agenda of forgettable half-measures and justifying them by labeling himself as the candidate who stands for "real affordability."

This is a common trend. We saw this type of reactionary policymaking during the 2020 democratic primary, where moderate Democrat Pete Buttigieg reacted to Bernie’s single-payer healthcare proposal with a public option, dubbing it, "Medicare for All..who want it." Biden promised a public option too, but never brought it up once taking office. And this is the point: Centrists often seem like they lack authenticity because they do not believe in anything. They want to be status-quo managers, not change-makers.

Mamdani’s affordability strategy worked so well that even moderate democrats are now talking about affordability, although they’re proposing significantly less ambitious policies, and this is part of the problem. If your policies are less bold, less developed, and less dedicated, people will not know about them. They will also not attribute them to you. Mikie Sherrill ran on affordability too, but with significantly less focus on policy and way more focus on the platitude itself. Why? Because she’s a centrist. And centrists do not ride or die for the policy, which is a shame, because in a lean-blue state, they could pretty easily enact it.

Centrists run on experience, pragmatism, and electability, but never policy. In my home state, former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper would rather avoid policy altogether, as his US Senate campaign website lacks a policy page. This is a sad practice that is all too common with moderate democrats.

But who can blame them? The policies that get people excited about Democrats–Medicare for All, tuition-free college, paid family and medical leave, a fifteen-dollar minimum wage, universal childcare–are all coming from the Left.

In our increasingly vibes-based voting patterns, Americans value authenticity above all else. Republicans can be authentic by being unabashedly bigoted and offensive. Democrats must respond to this gross authenticity with their own kind of authenticity: showing that they believe in progressive policies that their stated values would espouse. 

 If we want to defeat Trumpism, we cannot try the same old playbook for a fourth time. Democrats like Mamdani are inspiring: not just because of their social media prowess, but also because their policies are bold and tangible enough that people can feel them, remember them, and attribute them to their leaders. That’s part of what makes them so charismatic. 

There’s a reason why Mamdani’s mayoral campaign gained global attention, and the presumably higher-stakes Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races did not. Mamdani was able to overcome all of his personal controversies by relentlessly focusing on policy to enact an affordability agenda. Everyone knows Mamdani’s policies; hardly anyone knows or talks about the policies of Abigail Spanberger or Mikie Sherrill. If Democrats want to win, they need more Mamdanis and less Shapiros.