No, Mamdani's Win Was Not a Thrashing of the Democratic Establishment

It's super weird to blame them for this

1. It’s Obviously the Establishment’s Fault

Much to my dismay, Zohran Mamdani won the New York City Mayoral Democratic Primary the other night. Probably this means he’ll win the office itself, and hopefully it means he’ll moderate and try not to run the city into the ground with his awful leftist ideas.

*Ahem*

Anyway—

Everyone is trying to figure out how this happened, because no one really saw it coming. Early on, Mamdani was polling as low as 1%; the dude had no name recognition and no shot.

So why did he win? A number of reasons:

• The man is objectively a hottie.

  

  mm, mr. mayor is right

• He’s also genuinely charismatic, invigorating, and had incredible ground game: 50,000 volunteers, one million doors knocked, and some of the best political ads since LBJ.

• People like economic populism. It’s part of Trump’s appeal, and it’s also obviously part of a democratic-socialist like Mamdani’s appeal. “Freeze the rent” sounds good, so do “free buses” and “city-run grocery stores” and a “$30/hr minimum wage.”

• Mamdani was running mostly against Andrew Cuomo, a guy who, admittedly, sucks a whole bunch. He killed a lot of old people, harassed a lot of women, and, worst of all, doesn’t eat bagels. It can’t really be that difficult to beat such a major jackass.

For some reason, this list isn’t enough for many commentators. They’re out for blood; particularly the blood of the Democratic Establishment, that great vaunted bogeyman of 21st-century political ineptitude.

Seriously, everyone is blaming this on the ineptitude of the Establishment—here’s the center-left-ish

Nate Silver

:

Zohran delivered the Democratic establishment the thrashing it deserved

…

It’s hard not to be reminded of the past three presidential races, and particularly the Democratic establishment forcing an eat-your-spinach choice down the throats of the primary electorate … Zohran thoroughly earned the win, and Cuomo and the Democratic establishment thoroughly earned the loss.

Here are the far-left Democratic Socialists of America (the New York City chapter):

We are in a new political era. We have proven every establishment Democratic Party leader wrong: only well-organized people inspired by a socialist vision of the future can beat Trump’s fascism.

And here’s a rightist, Vice President J.D. Vance:

‪Congratulations to the new leader of the Democratic Party, Zohran Mamdani.

I mean, look, I understand the impulse. When it comes to politics, there really often is a shadowy cabal of elites trying to manipulate the results. And that’s especially true when it comes to New York City politics—a hundred years ago, the discourse would be all about how an outsider finally stuck it to Tammany Hall.

However.

Tammany Hall was a pretty well-defined thing. It had a clear leadership body, they made it fairly obvious who they wanted in charge, and everyone sort of knew that theirs were the dirty hands.

I don’t think the Democratic Establishment acted much like that at all—it’s not entirely clear what it is, it wasn’t obviously in Cuomo’s camp, and it’s crazy to say that Zohran’s proven it to be a totally outdated failure.

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2. The Apparatus

In a sense, there actually is a pretty strictly defined Democratic Establishment—it’s the party itself, which is run by the Democratic National Committee, which has various executives in various leadership roles.

Did the DNC weigh in on the New York City Mayoral Primary? Did they try to tilt the scales for Cuomo, then get totally punked out by Mamdani?

Not really!

Because that’s just not how the Apparatus works! The point of the primary is to decide who the Party ends up endorsing. It’s very rare for them to step in and pick a candidate to support beforehand.

…Which is why it was such a shocking, scandalous affair when they did exactly that and swayed the 2016 Presidential Primary for Hillary Clinton! And why it was shocking and scandalous when they did much the same thing (somewhat less explicitly) for Biden in 2020… And, of course, why it was shocking and scandalous when they did it again for Biden in 2024, plus it was the reason for all the extra shock and scandal after they also did it for Kamala Harris in 2024.

Nate Silver writes about some similarities between those old cases and that of Cuomo:

Cuomo’s campaign produced a laundry list of endorsements, such as Bloomberg, former president Clinton, [and] former majority whip Jim Clyburn.

I think the word “former” is pretty important here! No doubt, these people still hold some sway among Democratic elites, and even Democrats in general—but Michael Bloomberg simply is not that big a deal anymore—not as influential in the Apparatus as he was when he was mayor, and mutatis mutandis for Clinton and Clyburn.

Clyburn and Clinton are also subject to another constraint on their Establishmentiness: they’re not New Yorkers! Jim Clyburn was particularly helpful in getting Biden the 2020 nomination because he’s from South Carolina, and South Carolina was an early primary state (and he was Majority Whip at the time)—but his word was never gonna count for nearly as much in New York City.

What about the local Establishment?

Well, the New York City Dems as an organization certainly didn’t endorse any candidates before the end of the primary. And local Apparatus politicians seem to have split their endorsements pretty evenly between Cuomo and Mamdani. For the former, I counted six State Senators, 19 State Assemblymembers, and six City Councillors. For the latter, it was six, nine, and ten. So, maybe a slight edge to Cuomo—but Zohran’s got more hyperlocal endorsements, and he also won support from the State Attorney General and hugely-popular local congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, so I think it mostly balances out.

It’s also important to note: since Mamdani won the nomination, he certainly hasn’t been shunned by the local nor national Apparatus. He, of course, has the NYC Dems’ support, and even despite his very real anti-Israel record, Jewish New York Senator and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer quickly endorsed Mamdani on Thursday.

So I’m skeptical that the Apparatus was ever really seriously deployed against Mamdani; that he ever actually went up against it and brought it down.

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3. The Groups

This is a term I mostly associate with

Matthew Yglesias

, and he goes into more detail about what he means by it here.

I started a 7-day free trial just to read that post, and… I’m still not super clear on what he means! My best guess is something like “policy-based advocacy orgs, and also unions, and also identity-based advocacy orgs, and maybe some other collections of angry people too.”

Did the angry left-ish people all favor Cuomo?

To be clear, if they did, that would be kind of a shocking result—the Groups are notorious for making good, moderate, abundance-y policy very hard to do, and instead trying to empower big-government types who do stupid things like build very little housing because they’re jumping through one thousand Group-ish environmental- and labor-protection hoops.

But, ok, did the groups swing for Cuomo anyways?

Well, he certainly picked up a lot of union endorsements, and he won support from a ton of identity-based organizations too—as Nate Silver put it, “Black groups, Jewish groups, Italian groups and every other stripe of the rainbow.”

…But Mamdani won some important Groups too: the Sunrise Movement, Young Democrats, LGBT organizations, Muslim and South Asian groups, and even a few unions (including a pretty huge United Auto Workers chapter).

I’ll admit that this one seems a bit more Cuomo-tilted—though I’d be remiss not to point out that many of his supporting Groups weren’t so much “pro-Cuomo” as they were “anti-Mamdani.” For instance, one influential Jewish group first endorsed outside-shot candidate Adrienne Adams, and then switched to an endorsement of Cuomo only a week before the election.

Now, it’s certainly still impressive that Mamdani went up against all these Groups and won!

But I don’t think this points in the direction of “the Democratic Establishment is a stupid, rotten failure.”

The Groups were generally far from thrilled with Cuomo—they weren’t responsible for promoting his candidacy over the many better alternatives—they just didn’t want Mamdani to win!

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4. The Blob

The Indigo one, to be clear…

This is an idea straight from Nate Silver. The Blob’s got some overlap with the Groups, but is a bit more expansive: it includes various media, academic, scientific, and even celebrity figures too. Mark Cuban and The New York Times are neither Apparatus nor Group—but they’re both very Blobby.

So did the Blob promote Cuomo, or at least rally behind him?

Silver writes:

The New York Times, which can be incredibly influential in the city, issued a half-hearted anti-Zohran endorsement after initially swearing off involvement in local races, encouraging voters to rank Cuomo toward the lower end of their ballot but Mamdani not at all.

This is… true… but also a bit misleading: the Times editorial never actually suggests anyone rank Cuomo. In fact, they treat him pretty harshly, writing:

Mr. Cuomo has his own significant shortcomings. He resigned as governor in 2021, during his third term, because of allegations of sexual harassment or inappropriate touching from at least 11 women. This board called for his resignation at the time because of the disturbing, credible nature of the accusations. We noted that his treatment of women was part of a larger pattern of bullying, self-serving behavior.

The bit that Silver’s referring to comes at the end, where they write: “We do not believe that Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers’ ballots.”

And after that… no Cuomo endorsement! The closest they get is: “For any voters tempted to leave both off their ballots, it is important to understand that this decision would be tantamount to expressing no preference between the two.”

So, yes, in effect, obviously the Times said they would prefer if voters ranked Cuomo over Mamdani. But they made nothing close to a real endorsement, and cloaked whatever “encouragement” there was behind many layers of technicality and interpretation.

Based solely on vibes, I think that’s pretty much what the rest of the Blob did too. Whenever there was an endorsement of Cuomo, it was prefaced with something like “Yes, we know he’s a huge gaping asshole, but…”

Now, I thought this was actually a pretty bad strategy—if the Blob preferred Cuomo to Mamdani, then by the very end of the election cycle, the proper game-theoretic choice was full-throated endorsement!

Of course, that neglected the possibility that the Blob would lose credibility in the case of a Mamdani victory… But, apparently, they’ve still lost credibility, even though they never went full-bore pro-Cuomo!

My conclusion here is much the same as it was for the Groups: Mamdani did an impressive job overcoming some vague halfhearted opposition, but that opposition was clearly unenthusiastic about its preferred alternative, and it’s weird to blame them for how terrible an alternative he was!

When the Times ran a piece called “The Choice,” asking 15 influential and representative locals who they thought would make the best mayor, seven chose Comptroller Brad Lander. Mamdani and Cuomo received just two votes apiece.

In their later Editorial—the one containing the softest Cuomo endorsement ever—they had this to say about the Comptroller:

Mr. Lander is another Democrat who adopted dubious ideas, such as cuts to policing, during the party’s leftward shift of the late 2010s and early 2020s. He has since moderated, though, which demonstrates a welcome ability to learn from experience. He has also proved to be an effective manager of the city’s sprawling budget office. His mayoral agenda includes the construction of 500,000 housing units, expanded pre-K and faster subway service. Mr. Lander exudes competence if not inspiration.

Far more positive language than either Cuomo or Mamdani received!

All this, of course, begs the question: if the Apparatus and the Groups and the Blob weren’t behind him…

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5. Why Was It Cuomo?

Why couldn’t moderates have coalesced around literally any other candidate?

I think the answer has a lot to do with name recognition. Cuomo was governor not five years ago, his brother Chris is on cable news every night, and his father was governor back in the 80s (and 90s). The Cuomo brand is strong and recognizable and deep-pocketed—Andrew Cuomo simply had a huge head start over everyone else.

But could the Apparatus, Groups, and Blob have thrown their weight behind another candidate? Maybe Brad Lander? Would it have worked? Should they have tried it?

I don’t think we should be too optimistic—there are enough voters who actually positively like Cuomo that the Establishment would simply be opening itself up to attacks from the other side. Brad Lander is unabashedly progressive—he wanted to defund the police (though he said he’d reconsidered!), and he went fairly big on youth gender medicine. If the political machine threw its weight behind him, then I think a) he still probably would’ve lost to Cuomo, or needed to cross-endorse Mamdani to ensure a progressive win, and b) if Cuomo did win, the degree of condemnation from the center would’ve been insane, well beyond what we’re seeing now.

So what could the Establishment have done?

Really? What was the alternative to softly opposing Mamdani, while trying to distance themselves from the whole affair?

I don’t think this indicates any sort of rot, or any sort of general leftist-upheaval of Democratic politics. It’s the Establishment picking its battles—the New York Mayoral race was gonna be a stinker no matter how they played it. Best to preserve some unity and some credibility before the midterms, and before 2028, when they’ll probably find themselves dealing with an ugly Buttigieg–Ocasio-Cortez contest.

So lighten up with the condemnations! The Mayor of New York City is a fairly marginal position in the grand scheme of things. I think the Democratic Establishment played their cards about as well as they could’ve, and at least they’ve lived to fight another day. In politics, that’s about as much of a win as you can hope for.

why are they all pointing at each other? why are political cartoons always so weird and hard to understand? agh.