The Mamdani Model

Democrats may have finally found a young, charismatic candidate who can show the party how to campaign like populists

New York City mayoral election, candidate Zohran Mamdani attends a campaign rally, calling for the full enforcement of the city's Sanctuary City laws, June 21, 2025, in Diversity Square in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of the borough of Queens, New York City. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Ladies and gentlemen, the left:

As my centrist and conservative readers are happily aware, and as my lefty readers endlessly lament, I am not on the left myself. (I can’t imagine casting a ballot for Zohran Mamdani.) Yet I delighted in Brandy Jensen’s tweet when I saw it around the time the first-round outcome of the Democratic primary in the mayoral race in New York City became obvious on Tuesday evening. I can always appreciate a good diatribe, and I love sharp writing and concision—and on all three counts Jensen’s tweet merits some kind of prize.

I also empathize with (and feel some of) her anger at the Democratic establishment and have long argued that responsible Democrats would be foolish to continue making the case for themselves in terms of defending a system in which many millions of voters have lost trust and lack confidence.

The outcome of the Democratic primary in New York City illustrated this more vividly than any event since Bernie Sanders’ narrow loss to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primaries. Above all, the results on Tuesday demonstrate that the right Democrat can tap into and channel populist discontents with as much potency as any MAGA Republican. For that reason Mamdani’s stunning upset can serve as an inspiring model for other left-of-center anti-establishment candidates—even those less committed to the specifics of Mamdani’s policy agenda.

The Mamdani-Cuomo Smackdown