The Lesson for Democrats From Zohran Mamdani’s Campaign? Be Normal.
This was all documented by an incredible moment on NY1, when anchor Errol Louis asked a reporter at Cuomo’s election night party if the people in attendance looked “like they were out working today,” and the reporter replied earnestly, “No, these are the people who—their work was through writing checks for the Cuomo campaign.”
And just as important as the way Mamdani talks is what he talks about: buses, childcare, rent. Normal stuff that normal people care about. His appealing brand of democratic socialism—borrowing in part from Milwaukee’s so-called “sewer socialism”—was hyper-fixated on simple, straightforward, broadly popular ideas for making municipal government work better for regular people. He was singularly focused on the cost of living. When he talked about making the slowest buses in the country faster, he made a point of noting that long commutes were robbing New Yorkers not just of their “time,” but also their “sanity.” His campaign was focused relentlessly on making normal life for normal people more… normal.
This vision of politics recognizes that government can and should provide normalcy. You should be able to get to your job within a reasonable amount of time. You should have access to affordable groceries in your neighborhood. You should be able to afford an apartment and be able to send your kids to preschool. You should be able go about your day without secret police snatching you off the street or demanding to see your papers. You should not have to make tradeoffs between medicine and housing, childcare and food—especially in the richest city, in the richest country, on Earth. This is a set of policies organized more than anything else around the principle that life should, simply put, be livable.
Hysterical Republicans and their allies in capital now find themselves in the unenviable position of having to make these reasonable ideas sound scary. It’s a tough sell. A CNBC host claimed Mamdani was “taking Wall Streeters and making them walk out on the ice,” like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. (If Bane had actually focused on hedge fund brokers and corporate CEOs, he might have had more support.)
