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“Democrats swept a trio of races on Tuesday in the first major elections since Donald Trump regained the presidency… In New York City, Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, won the mayoral race, capping a meteoric and unlikely rise from an anonymous state lawmaker to one of the country's most visible Democratic figures. And in Virginia and New Jersey, moderate Democrats Abigail Spanberger, 46, and Mikie Sherrill, 53, won their elections for governor with commanding leads, respectively.” Reuters
The left celebrates the election results.
“Why did all these things happen?… Because food prices are still high. Because energy prices are up 11 percent. Because soybean farmers have been getting screwed. Because [Trump] and his party have not passed a single law to try to make working people’s lives better (15 years after Obamacare—still no health care plan!). Because it turns out Americans don’t want masked and out-of-control quasi-vigilantes rounding up brown people willy-nilly…
“This debate about whether the Democrats should focus on economics or threats to democracy is silly… Americans are mad about it all—so talk about it all… They don’t have to agree yet on a specific agenda for the country… For the midterms, they just need to agree in broad terms that they’re trying to help make working people’s lives easier, and that Trump is (a) failing utterly at that and (b) posing a daily threat to our democracy.”
Michael Tomasky, New Republic
“The Democratic establishment tends to pan socialists as hopeless idealists, but moderate liberals are the naive ones. They remain wedded to a party defending the liberal capitalist status quo at a time when the neoliberal consensus has shattered and huge swathes of America rightly feel there’s something fundamentally wrong about the way the economy distributes wealth…
“Trump cynically lies about immigrants being the source of the problem, but at least he has something to say about the persistent feelings Americans have that the system isn’t working for them. Democrats, to their shame, continue defending a widely disliked status quo. In the process, the party has lost twice to Trump and yet still insists on only incrementally tweaking its standard playbook.”
Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC
Others note, “The left bought so much Zohran stock during the extended battle with Andrew Cuomo that the ‘Mamdani is the future’ spin is inevitable. But is winning 50 percent of the vote in New York City all that impressive? If he does manage to create city-owned grocery stores and the stores are amazing and people love them, that will be impressive and a great policy to copy.”
Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring
“You can’t run on [Mamdani’s] exact platform in Georgia or Montana, but proposing simple ideas instead of the Democrats’ usual tax credits and 14-point plans is a clear lesson from his win… Some of Mamdani’s advisers are now helping Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner and Nebraska’s Dan Osborn, and perhaps they can flip seats in challenging areas by simply being more interesting candidates than the usual Democrats.”
Perry Bacon, New Republic
The right is disappointed in the election results.
The right is disappointed in the election results.
“Americans — whether they consider themselves Democratic, Republican, or independent — are once again frustrated by the state of the economy, and they’re taking it out on incumbents. Americans feel poorer — because inflation in the post-pandemic era remains stubbornly high (something like 50 percent higher than the 2 percent target set by the Fed as an acceptable standard) while their incomes have not kept pace…
“What’s more, Donald Trump — via his ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs — has taken political ownership of this economy… The issue of affordability — high prices, high interest rates, inflation, sluggish wage growth — will be everything next year. If Republicans don’t figure out a way to address that priority, no amount of complaining about Zohran Mamdani and the rise of socialism is going to save them.”
Mark Antonio Wright, National Review
“Time and again, we’ve seen famous New York City mayors, from John Lindsay to Rudy Giuliani to Michael Bloomberg, hyped as national political influencers, only to flop outside the five boroughs. When Eric Adams was elected just four years ago, there was a lot of talk about how his distinctive branding as a tough-on-crime African American moderate might make him a leader for the national Democratic Party…
“Obviously, that didn’t work out, and all of those figures were at least trying to be centrist or moderates. Whereas Mamdani has been elected as the left-wing mayor of a left-wing city, and imagining that makes him a model for how the Democratic Party should compete nationwide is a little bit like imagining that a far-right Republican elected in Alabama or Idaho is likely to offer a template for how Republicans should compete in swing states.”
Ross Douthat, New York Times
“Mamdani didn’t win because New York suddenly fell in love with socialism. He won because he captured something every politician should be listening to right now — a deep frustration that the system doesn’t feel fair anymore. New York used to run on ambition. It was the city of hustle, where, if you gave everything, you could climb. But that promise feels broken now…
“Even people with good jobs feel like they’re running faster just to stay in place… [Mamdani] told them, ‘You’re right — the deal’s been broken. Let’s fix it.’ He didn’t offer a revolution. He offered recognition. And in a city this tired, that was enough. If that sounds familiar, it should. Because it’s the same emotion that powered Donald Trump’s rise… Different neighborhoods. Same feeling. Both men understood the most powerful message in politics: The system is rigged — and I’m the one who’ll unrig it.”
Lee Hartley Carter, Fox News
