Mamdani is the Answer to the Democrat's Problems - Will They Listen?

I won’t speak to what’s going to happen next Tuesday in the New York City Mayoral - as important as it is to New York voters, the outcome doesn’t take away from the ramifications of this race nationally.

Regardless of the outcome next Tuesday, Zohran Mamdani has shown us the way forward in Democratic politics but Democrats have to decide if they will listen.

Zohran Mamdani, the Assemblymember wunderkind who shocked everyone by running a pitch-perfect campaign and rising from 1% polling to being a neck-and-neck contender for mayor of New York City, has given us the roadmap to a future where Democrats could actually be popular again. Something the Democrats have been saying they need to do since they lost the election in November and have been raising tens of millions of dollars to make possible (albeit without anyone in the room who didn’t cause us to lose the election in the first place - a bad start, some might say).

Their argument goes that we have lost the culture, we need to run on popular “abundance” minded policies, we need to win back young men, and we need to excite a younger base. Zohran Mamdani does all of those things and more. He was formerly a rapper (Mr.Cardamom), he learned Spanish with such incredible fluency people thought it was AI generated to speak to latin voters, his videos regularly generate upwards of a million views, he has shown up as humble and decisive in media attacks, he is running on simple and popular policies that are feasible (free and fast buses, childcare access, rent freezes, and public groceries) and creators across the country have been committing their time (for free) to making videos that support him - adding millions to his campaign in earned media.

That’s how excited people are about this candidate and it’s not just from the left.

A review of comments from a CBS news segment, while not a poll, does not have the anti-socialist rage-baiting that most of us would expect from a DSA-aligned candidate. Instead, they are positive - even defensive. Mamdani gets emotional in the video, something you would expect the right and neoliberal class to gleefully attack, but they can’t. They can’t, because you can see in the video that this is not politics as usual. This is a young man with a promising political future fearing for his life and the life of his family and friends. Fear that is fueled by his opponents blatantly racist attack ads.

It’s a rare moment to see in politics.

It’s vulnerable and heavy and real.

Strategically, Mamdani left no room for attack because he made a human connection with his audience, with voters. That is the power of new media that the Democrats are so desperate to capture but they want to do it without getting their hands dirty. They don’t want to give any of the authenticity that Mamdani has allowed us. (Real authenticity, not just saying fuck on a podcast).

Democrats want us to trust them.

They also want to keep lying.

They want to attend fundraisers with Marc Andreesen while promising us a clean energy future. They want to talk about affordable housing while voting to sell off public land to Blackrock. They want to vote in favor of crypto while decrying the efforts of Silicon Valley to buy elections.

As usual, the party wants to have its cake and eat it, too. But that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

We cannot achieve supremacy in new media while giving nothing of ourselves. Mamdani has shown that you can be a human being, vulnerably running on your desire for a better world, and it doesn’t have to come with strings attached. He doesn’t have to talk out of both sides of his mouth to placate one constituency over another - he just has to speak his truth and hope it brings people with him. Bernie Sanders has done that his entire career and he has only grown his appeal - not just to people across generations but across political ideology and class. Mamdani is a continuation of this principled approach, while also attempting to bridge divides beyond generation and class. No, he’s not the messiah - he’s just a guy. But he is “doing the work” as they say.

Despite the vitriol online from pundits and establishment Democrats loyal to AIPAC, Mamdani has the second-highest polling numbers among Jewish New Yorkers. He has done this without changing his positions on Israel and Palestine, he has not attempted to placate people. Mamdani lets people decide on the merits of his arguments whether or not they believe him. This is the clearest path forward for Democrats if want to regain any legitimacy with voters. The mealy-mouthed appeals to both sides is what got us here - and no amount of new media strategy spending will dig us out of that hole.

We need candidates with integrity, with character, with plans that resonate beyond means-tested polls.

Zohran Mamdani is that candidate.

The Democratic Party needs to decide if they will embrace candidates who embody these ideals or not - but they won’t be able to buy back their integrity, they’ll have to earn it.