Democrats Need a Mamdani-Type to Win
If you're still talking about his policies, you're missing the point.
New York City’s mayoral primary has served as a kind of theater for what the future of the Democratic Party should look like in the United States.
The story is told through three characters:
The Trad Democrat, played by Andrew Cuomo
He’s the Joe Biden of Democrats, the most “electable” because, just as we can associate Biden with Obama, we can associate Cuomo with the warm, fuzzy Covid briefings that made us all feel better. As a result, he’s juuuust famous enough to be the only name on the ballot everyone’s heard of. Plus, he has enough of a New York accent to make it seem like he’ll be tough on crime and fight for the working class. Most importantly, the rich have come around to liking him even though they used to hate him because, despite all the scandals and failures, he’s no risk to their money. He’s coincidentally the most funded candidate, but only from a tiny group of wealthy individuals, a third of whom don’t even live in New York City. Michael Bloomberg “donated” $8.3 million and 1/3 of Cuomo’s total funding.
The Social Democrat, played by
He wants free childcare, free bus fare, and to make housing more affordable by freezing rent-stabilized apartments and building more housing. Plus, he has a dazzling personality, a great website, and killer videos. Endorsed by Bernie Sanders and AOC, the media call him a “socialist” and “populist,” brand him as a “radical,” and make him out to be all kinds of scary. We all know where that leads us: Higher taxes. And sure enough, his plan to foot the bill is to match New Jersey’s 11.5% corporate tax rate, and apply a flat 2% tax to earnings above $1 million annually. Naturally, all of the big money has gone against him, and he refuses to take on big donors himself. Still, he’s so popular he’s raised more money than Cuomo in New York City, and all from small donors. As of early May, he had almost 19,000 donors to Cuomo’s 2,700. The people love him! Even though Democrats are already trying to find a way to bury him as they did Bernie…
The Abundance Democrat, played by Zellnor Myrie, Brad Lander, Whitney Tilson, and Adrienne Adams
These guys want things everyone wants: To reduce zoning restrictions and build more housing, workers’ rights and to raise the minimum wage, education reform, and public safety and/or gun reform. Endorsed by Abundance NYC, itself an outcropping of the Abundance book, these guys have a lot of interesting policies but lack the dazzling personality and marketing know-how of a Mamdani. As a result, they’re side characters, there are no good media headlines we can make of them, and they attract little funding. They are the energy vampires who try to talk policy at a party when all you want is for someone to show up in a dress that has “TAX THE RICH,” scrawled across it in blood.
What kind of Democrat do we want in America? Well, that’s the subject of the show, and you, as the audience member, can vote on who wins.
But be warned: Whoever you choose will have to go up against one of Trump’s henchmen in the final round this fall. And whatever’s modeled here in New York City could eventually be modeled in the state, and even the country.
Can your choice of Democrat defeat Donald Trump in the final showdown for our country?
Only one combination will win
I have no interest in the Cuomo archetype. I don’t think the status quo is what we need right now, and I’m tired of people getting into office just because they are mildly famous career politicians who agree to not rock the boat and save the rich money.
I’m very interested in the latter two players though, and all the writers I like seem to be pitting them against one another as archrivals.
And not for good reasons.
I read
and ’s Abundance book, and I agree with nearly the whole thing—it’s a solid blueprint for the future of the Democratic Party. Yes, we need to remove red tape so we can build more housing and build more trains! Yes, we need to supercharge innovation and R&D! Yes, we need to advance energy and infrastructure development! Yes, we need to focus on the goals we want to achieve and develop policies that are effective at achieving them!I am pro-abundance! I’ve written about that before:
But the Bernies and AOCs and Mamdanis of the world want all the same things (affordable housing, affordable transit, investment in innovation and energy), but also universal healthcare, tuition-free public college, and universal childcare and pre-k. They want the benefits of capitalism to be distributed more equitably, rather than just to the investor class, and they want policies that benefit all people, not just the wealthy.
I am pro-social too! I’ve written about that as well:
(Though, for the record, I think all of this should happen at the state level, not the federal level, as I’ve written about here:)
I don’t think abundance Democrats and social Democrats should be opposed. Both sides agree the US doesn’t build enough. Bernie supports public transit development and Green New Deal–scale investments. Mamdani supports deregulating exclusionary zoning. And both sides agree that the market alone won’t achieve everything they want to do! Even abundance democrats don’t want a free-market free-for-all. They support public investment in science, clean energy, and transit. They just emphasize the obstacles to execution—like environmental review processes and local veto power.
There’s no reason we couldn’t combine Bernie’s social state with Ezra’s efficient state. It’s not just possible, it’s already practiced abroad. That’s how Norway works!
But abundance types don’t go far enough, and this is my central criticism of the movement. Because as much as we need to build more housing and trains and energy infrastructure, we can’t also ignore that corporations and wealthy individuals are deciding our governments. That the benefits of the stock market and our economy go to them, not the average American. That our government is going into debt for no good reason, and we’re all paying for it with our tax dollars. That we have terrible healthcare and education and politics, and we need to reform just about everything.
That democracy is eroding!
Everything about the abundance movement is correct, but it doesn’t go far enough. They need the “radical socialist” who will go a step further and address not just our lack of building inefficiencies, but also our oligarchy!!
This is the hurdle I’m seeing a lot of my favorite abundance writers ignore. As this was a ranked choice ballot, many of them put all of the abundance politicians first, then chose between Cuomo or Mamdani for last place:
put Cuomo ahead of Mamdani, Abundance NYC and put Mamdani ahead.Their reasons for not liking Mamdani come down to specific policies. As
(and just about everyone else I’ve read) points out, rent control and city-owned grocery stores won’t work. But that’s to bury the lede! After listing all of the reasons those two policies wouldn’t work, Smith ends by saying Mamdani’s plan for free childcare would. Free childcare!? From the ages of six months to five years!? All affordable with his plan!? That is a HUGE social perk!!!! What does it matter if rent control and city-owned grocery stores don’t work if families in New York have access to free childcare? That would be an enormous win for social Democrats!(It’s worth noting: Mamdani’s rent freeze is only a bandage on a previously bad “rent stabilization” policy. It only impacts 1 million apartments whose residents would have to completely move out of the city without some salve. And he only wants to build city-run grocery stores in five food deserts where there is currently no option for fresh produce, but where private grocery stores aren’t viable.)
, who literally wrote the book on Abundance, tried to bridge the gap, interviewing Mamdani about the ways the politician is also pro-abundance. Mamdani does say he wants to build more housing and transit, after all. Thompson’s gripe, however, is that he doesn’t believe him, saying: “I can judge Mamdani only by the words he said to me. I cannot judge the degree to which he means them, or his ability to translate words into policies, or policies into outcomes, such as accelerated housing construction or reduced per-mile building costs for the subway.”These abundance writers are focusing way too much on specific policies, and not enough on the big picture. When Mamdani won, I saw a lot of this take:
Policy is important in an election, but it’s not enough. I can look through every politician, whether Democrat or Republican, and like half of their policies and hate half their policies. I do! But to vote on a politician based on building policy alone, or on a rent freeze that only affects a minority of residents, is to completely miss the big picture of everything else going on in our country!
People voted for Zohran because they want a social democracy (“vibes”), regardless of whether Mamdani’s policies are the best possible social policies we could implement. We have to make that kind of decision with every politician we vote for.
And we need to pay attention to those big picture vibes! We need the stump speech and the rallying cry and the bold plan to fix our country. “Populism,” of the Bernie or Trump variety, was always going to happen. People are very unhappy with the American government right now on both sides of the aisle, and everyone is looking for a drastic change. To replace Bernie with Joe Biden was to block that drastic change. To replace Zohran with Cuomo or an abundance Democrat would have been to block that change.
That’s why we have Trump, and I don’t think a trad Democrat or abundance Democrat will be able to beat Trump with a list of good policies but no plan to drastically alter our government.
The “Tax the Rich” dress here is required. People are mad.
Especially when we see who Mamdani is going up against in the fall. Eric Adams, the former NYC mayor, is still in the running despite committing bribery and fraud. He agreed to allow ICE into a sanctuary city in exchange for Trump’s pardon, then switched parties to run in the race as an Independent. Cuomo, who resigned in disgrace during his last term and just lost to Mamdani in the primary, has now switched parties to run against Mamdani again in the fall as an independent. We now have two politicians who didn’t win a primary but still somehow get to run in the fall against the one who did.
How does that make sense?
We need a more ambitious counter to this kind of politics.
Trump is promising to end all wars, build the biggest economy the world has ever seen, and burn the old government to the ground so he can build a better one in its place. If Democrats counter with “we’re going to build more houses and fix permitting,” they won’t just lose the election—they’ll lose the plot entirely. We need a Mamdani-type candidate who can rally a movement. Who can name what’s broken in America and dare to reimagine what could take its place. In an ideal world, that person would also embrace the abundance policy agenda—with bold, practical policies that materially improve people’s lives and pull the country out of its spiral.
But abundance alone won’t be enough.
If we’ve learned anything from the theater that is American politics, it’s that we’re heading into the climax. The audience is restless, the stakes are sky-high, and the country isn’t waiting for a policy wonk with a white paper—it’s waiting for a protagonist with a vision. Someone who can step into the spotlight and rewrite the story of what this country can be.
We need the abundance Democrat who’s going to create a more effective government—absolutely! But we also need the social Democrat with a bold plan to rebuild our country from the ground up. Finding the person who can merge these movements together and create a bolder one America can get behind, I think, is the central task of the Democratic Party.
I'm with you -- with every word of this amazing article. And especially with your well-worded peroration:
" . . . we’re heading into the climax. The audience is restless, the stakes are sky-high, and the country isn’t waiting for a policy wonk with a white paper—it’s waiting for a protagonist with a vision. Someone who can step into the spotlight and rewrite the story of what this country can be.
"We need the abundance Democrat who’s going to create are more effective government—absolutely! But we also need the social Democrat with a bold plan to rebuild our country from the ground up."
Thank you for the links that take us back to your essays that flesh out your points.
To all of this: Yes!
Great article, Elle. I ranked four "abundance " candidates and with sadness put Cuomo fifth. Now that Mamdani won, I assume he will be the mayor and as such I hope he does a great job.
I agree that we need vibes and charisma to push and pull us closer to the Scandinavian model. And we need higher taxes to pay for it.
NYC competes with Florida and other places for the wealthy. I personally think it's absurd for people who earn enough to worry about their marginal tax rate to move for tax reasons. But wealthy people are just as irrational as any other economic class and perhaps more paranoid. So to me it's a question of whether a higher tax rate will mean greater tax revenues assuming there is some flight. In any event, the state sets taxes and the Gov. has already said no to the tax raises.
The state vs, state competition for businesses and residents is why I think federal taxes are the best mechanism to raise more revenue to fulfill an abundance agenda. But unfortunately we're right now moving in the wrong direction.