Zohran Mamdani's Win is Dividing His Enemies

The pragmatists will always play ball, while the ideologues pay the bills.

Photo by Yuki Iwamura-Pool/Getty Images

The left has not racked up a lot of wins in recent years. Just to survive, leftists have to get used to taking losses. But the longevity of a political movement is often directly linked to how it adjusts to defeat: does it self-destruct, does it refocus, does it adapt and change in useful ways? Fortunately, these are not questions that the left is asking right now, because on Tuesday night, Zohran Mamdani crushed former governor and current sex pest Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary. Stick it in the win column.

What’s interesting, to me, is that in the immediate aftermath of Mamdani’s win, we are seeing exactly how his political opponents react to defeat. The memes and posts and schadenfreude are delicious, of course, but in some ways, the most useful thing Mamdani’s victory has done to this point is make it very clear which side his various enemies are on.

There are, broadly, two camps: the pragmatists and the ideologues. The pragmatists are about who you would expect: most Democratic leaders, like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, fall into this camp. Call it the Nancy Pelosi school. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s win in 2018 was one of the last major internal shakeups that this establishment had to deal with, and we saw how that worked out. Yes, they still undercut her if they can. Yes, the relationship is frayed sometimes. But largely, the Democratic establishment has welcomed AOC in and harnessed her political talent for the purposes of the party, and she has in turn worked largely in concert with the party’s overall goals. You can see this as an indictment of AOC herself, but to me, the point of an upset like hers or Mamdani’s election is to take and keep electoral power in the hands of someone better than the establishment alternative, even if that requires that the politician moderates themselves in some ways in office. Anyway. Here are Schumer and Jeffries’ responses.