Why We All Should be Celebrating Mamdani's Win

And why the attacks on him actually reveal the deep flaws of his critics...

Every Democrat and frankly every American should be celebrating the remarkable election victory of Zohran Mamdani in New York City.

He’s young, brilliant, full of good ideas, ran a great campaign and having listened to the people of New York City, came up with a program that was both responsive to their real needs and represented real change.

He is a model for the kind of candidate the Democratic Party should be looking for.

Is he a New York model? Yes! Would Oklahoma City or Chicago want a Mamdani clone running? No. But, young, brilliant, full of good ideas, a great campaigner, who is a good listener, creative, responsive and a change agent is not a bad prototype for the type of candidate the party will need in the years ahead.

Let me put a finer point on that. 2028 will be the first presidential election cycle in which the majority of the voters will have been born since the year 1990. Perhaps twenty percent of them will have been born since 2000. That means that the majority of the electorate, the portion that can hold the balance of the next presidential election in its hands, will be Millenials and Zoomers.

The Last Boomer

We are coming to a generational watershed in American politics whether the olds like it or not. Donald Trump will be the last Boomer president. And, as a guy who is currently working on a book on the legacy of the Boomer (and near-Boomer) presidents, let me offer a hearty “it comes not a moment too soon!” Not that Boomers were all bad. We were pretty good as a generation with tech and we gave the world some pretty good music. But, net net, when history looks back and notes that the Greatest Generation handed the Boomers the keys to the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world and also the leading nation of the “free world” and then asks, “What did the Boomers do with that?” the answer will be discomfiting.

Like many who inherit great wealth and power, there is no doubt we squandered much of it and put what remains in jeopardy? Failson nation. Remind you of any presidents we currently have?

That’s not to say there were not good Boomer leaders but even the good ones possessed a fatal trait that reminds us of the Bible verse, “The children of the rich shall inherit most of the assets of the earth and then they’ll fritter it away because they take their wealth and status for granted.”

Ok, that’s not a Bible verse. But it is a pretty good description of the epidemic that hit us as a nation harder than COVID—and that’s the virus known as normalcy bias. Too many among us assumed that if we were born into a rich, powerful, largely democratic society that was held in high esteem by much of the world that it would always be thus.

Nope. The assuming is fatal. But so too is the fact that we just didn’t earn it like previous generations did. We didn’t sacrifice. We didn’t view it as fragile. In fact, the first Boomer president, Bill Clinton, came into office after the end of the Cold War and every president since has simply assumed we were the world’s sole superpower while each inadvertently took steps to ensure that would not long remain the case. (Ok, for Trump those steps may not all have been inadvertent.)

Much of what we had is already lost. More seems certain to be squandered away in the days, months and years immediately ahead. (Did you see Trump’s insane meltdown at the NATO Summit, attacking American media like an authoritarian thug in front of the whole world? It was not pretty and bodes ill for us all.)

Millenials and Zoomers are not guaranteed to do better. But with Boomers aging out, we’d better hope they can.

What is encouraging is they see what their parents did wrong. They also do not take anything for granted. Early in their lives came 9/11. Just a few years later came the financial crisis of 2007-2008. COVID followed behind that. Trump’s first presidency saw political abuses and unrest like we have not seen since the Civil War. And throughout the rest of the world many other developed and developing countries began edging us out in area after area—the metrics of quality of life, the quality of their government and governance. None of them were perfect. But as a well-known columnist said to me over breakfast this week, “If I were lower middle class, I’d much rather live in China or Europe than the United States.” He meant because those countries provide for the majority of people in their societies better than we do.

And in a variety of areas including technology these places are shooting ahead of us.

Yes, China is an authoritarian state. But if you have not been there, you do not understand. They are far, far advanced in how they use technology in society throughout the country compared to us. No one I know who spends much time in China (which, by the way, does not include some prominent China hawks who have never been there) would ever assume we are superior to them in terms of brainpower, innovation, creativity or entrepreneurial spirit. It’s just not so.

Don’t believe me? Here’s an idea…go visit China. Just hop on a plane and go. Don’t worry you don’t need a visa for visits of up to 15 days. That’s right, it’s much much easier to visit China than the U.S. And I say that a day or two after a person was turned away at our border because their phone contained an unflattering image of our vice president, the day after the Supreme Court okayed without any explanation allowing the Trump Administration to round up and deport people to foreign prisons without due process…and on the day when reports came out that a Canadian citizen just died in ICE Custody.

In other words, if you don’t believe me about how we have fallen relative to the rest of the world, I’m sorry, you’re just not paying attention or you’re in denial.

Why We Should Be Celebrating Not Attacking Mamdani

Reality is, in fact, the most persuasive case I can make that change is what we need in the U.S. As it happens, most American political swings are based on our fickle electorate’s desire to see change much of the time. Each election is, despite what you might hear from political consultants eager to tell you that it is their voodoo magic that directs our voters in one direction or another, about whether they want change or the status quo. And typically, after two terms of a president they want a new one. And typically, after a new one is elected, they want to vote his party out in the next midterm. Because frankly, the one thing the American people don’t seem to want is for any political party or leader to get too damn comfortable in power.

Political leaders and political parties and the entrenched establishment in this country have other ideas, of course. They like power and its trappings and the ka-ching they hear every time they get another mandate from the voters.

The entrenched establishment—the rich and powerful in the US—have worked like crazy throughout the Boomer years to grow their power and influence so that they would never be put at risk by anything so small or annoying as an election.

This reveals a fundamental tension in all societies that is particularly acute in democracies. The haves are happy and want to keep things as they are. The have nots want change. In a country in which the most successful represent a tiny portion of the population but have control of a hugely disproportionate portion of the wealth and consequent power…and in which, therefore, the have nots or also rans are the majority to whom democratic power should be accruing—the fate of the society and its existence as a democracy hangs in the balance of the struggle between the two groups.

For forty years inequality has grown in America. For forty years the rich have used their increasing slice of our national pie to influence election outcomes. For forty years they have used the victories they bought to change the rules of society—via legislatures and courts—to give themselves a more assured hold on power. For forty years the rich have sought to find leaders in both parties who would minimize the chances they were challenged regardless of election outcomes. (Yes, they wanted to rig elections—Citizens United, Shelby County, gerrymandering—and rig the system so that their folks in both parties were in the lead. That’s called good business. Belts and suspenders. Tails they win, heads you lose.)

So throughout the Boomer years, whether a president was a Democrat or a Republican, they served the advanced the goals of the country’s richest people. Dems would also try to do something for average people. But that was typically at the margins. Tax rates stayed low or got lower on the kinds of income that mattered to the rich. Regulations that hindered the rich were pared away. Under Clinton. Under Bush. Under Obama. Under Trump. Biden actually pushed back a bit…but even he was such an institutionalist that he was too soft on the hard right and enabled them to come back into power and seek under Trump Two policies that were essentially a feast for the rich and a famine for the poor.

Younger Americans saw all this. And they saw the excesses of Wall Street and the tech bros. They care about the environment because they saw the damage being done and they know by whom. They went through active shooter drills throughout their school years and know the psychological costs of both parties catering to the gun lobby. They lived in a country in which the single biggest cause of bankruptcy is medical costs and ask themselves why we’re the only country in the developed world in which that is the case. They saw the increasing inequality and noted they couldn’t afford to buy a home. They saw swings from one party to another and noticed that the leaders remained in place regardless of whether they were successes or failures. They saw the costs of cynicism and of hope.

A Turning Point in Our History—Whether We Like It Or Not

And now comes a moment at which change is both inevitable from a demographic perspective and essential from an existential perspective. The most corrupt and destructive government in American history is destroying everything that made us great from the rule of law to our international alliances, from our great institutions to the kind of free expression and intellectual inquiry that is essential to the development of any society. If we don’t produce change we will live in a nation that is not only no longer the greatest in the world but one in which life is a hell to be endured for many tens of millions among our friends, family and neighbors.

In the last election, Kamala Harris lost in part because she underperformed among young male voters who were so disgusted with our politics that they chose the guy who promised to blow it all up, the guy who spoke like the WWF goons they preferred watching instead of the talking heads of cable television news.

But we know that the future for both parties depends on who will engage and mobilize younger voters going forward. That requires candidates who understand them, listen to them and address their real problems.

When Mamdani was considering running in New York he went out onto the streets and into meetings and asked what average New Yorkers cared about. Unsurprisingly, the issue on their minds was how to afford to live in New York and how to actually have a decent life there. Their issues were bread and butter issues. Rent. Transportation costs. School. Affordable meals for their families. Real priorities and not hate-driven performative bullshit about how to get rid of the immigrants. In a city of a immigrants.

They also knew that the current president and the current mayor and the current party leaders were not getting it done.

And so this 33 year old assemblyman of Muslim, Indian and Ugandan background, well-educated, creative, a product of his generation, said, ok, let’s develop some ideas that will help give them what they want.

And against all odd and against the best efforts of the entrenched establishment he won a stunning victory.

But rather than have time to appreciate and celebrate it, today, only days after the win, the establishment is circling the wagons. They are terrified of a candidate who is not beholden to them. They are frightened that his priorities are not their priorities, that he wants to use a very very small tax on the very very richest New Yorkers to pay to ensure that the rest of the city could have decent lives.

He actually cares about the community and not the check writers who typically fund big campaigns.

Overnight big political donors started looking at backing the independent candidacy of Mayor Eric Adams, a crooked hopelessly incompetent mayor who will certainly go down as one of the worst in the city’s history, or another candidacy for Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor and credibly accused sex abuser who Mamdani has already soundly beaten once. Why? Because they know they can control these men. What is more, Dem leaders who are close to Wall Street and the status quo caucus that controls the party are whispering to newspapers that they are uncomfortable with Mamdani.

Why? Well, for one thing, they assert, because he calls himself a Democratic Socialist. And for another they say he has a position on Israel that means he could be an anti-Semite.

They don’t mention the fact that he is a Muslim or that he is brown or that he is the son of immigrants but rest assured, just as Cuomo’s campaign used slurs and darkened images of him during his despicable campaign, racism will be one of the drivers of attack on him again too.

The Attacks Do Not Stand Up to Scrutiny

None of the attacks stand up to scrutiny because of course Mamdani won…won in a city that is probably the capital city of global capitalism, won in a city that has the biggest concentration of Jews outside of Israel, won a diverse city that as it happens, while not without its divisions, its probably more colorblind than any in America.

The socialism attack doesn’t hold water because none of the ideas that Mamdani is proposing are radical. (You want radical socialism like government control of big business? For that you’ll have to look to Trump’s golden share in the the US Steel deal, the one that gives the US president a veto on crucial decisions made by the company, now owned by Nippon Steel.) Ideas like free buses or slightly higher taxes on people who make over a million in income a year or better public service or freezing rent hikes, these are pretty mainstream and have been in American life in other forms for many years.

What is more, they are more common around the world. In fact, being called a Democratic Socialist or a variant on it would put Mamdani dead center in the politics of most of the developed nations of the world…nations that are all doing better than we are at quality of life, at preserving democracy, at income equality, at providing healthcare, at education, at fighting crime, at fiscal responsibility…you name it. In fact, it is high time that we start realizing they know better than we do about how to run a society and that we ought to learn from them as Mamdani has clearly and smartly done.

As for the socialist label, it does not even mean anything when nearly two thirds of voters grew up in the post-Cold War world or barely remember the Cold War? Should it? Shouldn’t it be discounted because it is just a slam that has been wheeled out by Republicans for over a hundred years and has always been an empty, meaningless, scare tactic?

Do you doubt it? Here’s that crazy radical Harry Truman on the subject: "Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years. Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security. Socialism is what they called farm price supports. Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.”

Mamdani is approaching politics in the tradition of Roosevelt and Truman…and the fair tax rates of Eisenhower…and the environmental concerns of Nixon…and the compassion for immigrants of George W. Bush. It is an insult to the intelligence of New Yorkers for anyone—including Democrats like former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers—to suggest otherwise. The neo-liberals need to sit down. They did their dirty work, our society is broken as a result, and a new generation of leaders need to start asking what is in the best interest of the American people and American society instead of what do the guys at the hedge funds and with the big banks want me to do so I can get a nice consulting gig from them when I’d like one.

As for the the slur that Mamdani is an anti-Semite, it could not be further from the truth. Study his record. Search for his comments on the subject. Review the statements of prominent New York Jewish leaders like Brad Lander who ran against Mamdani or Congressman Jerry Nadler who endorsed Mamdani this week, who not only defend him but celebrate his decency and compassion and commitment to tolerance.

Some establishment Jewish groups are agitated because he has been very critical of the current regime in Israel. But the vast majority of Jews in the US are unhappy with that regime. Many openly share their disgust with the genocide in Gaza. Many are sympathetic with views such as Mamdani’s that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu should be held accountable for his crimes and that we should use all the tools at our disposal—including boycotts and divestiture—to put pressure on the Israeli government to change its policies and respect the human rights of Palestinians.

That’s hardly anti-Semitism. In fact, it is far more in line with Jewish values than the position of those in the Jewish American old guard establishment who are defending Netanyahu and excusing his crimes. It’s also more in the interests of Israel and the United States.

Again, New Yorkers know it. That’s why Mamdani won this week. It is why he will win again in November. In the interim, he will no doubt continue to be challenged by those in the establishment who fear change and who recognize it as a critique of their failures. Which it is.

They will lie. They will embrace far worse candidates. They will throw money at the campaign in a desperate effort to cling to their influence and a few extra millions they do not need. They will dress up their racism by having critiques or silence coming from kept Democrats who ought to be out cheering for Mamdani.

There are those in the Democratic Party who are beginning to understand what the Mamdani candidacy means…not just for New York but for the country, not just for this election but for this inevitable turning point in U.S. political history. AOC is one. Lander and former NY Mayoral candidate Maya Wiley and NY Attorney General Tish James are others. They not only understand this moment, but they are positioning themselves, like Mamdani, to be among the leaders of the future, the kind of leaders this country so desperately needs right now.