Two quick points about Zohran Mamdani that we need to remember.
First, it’s easy to see Mamdani’s victory as one data point, lost amid a sea of other data points. But Mamdani’s victory is a continuation of what I called the “Nevada Moment,” back in February 2020.
The Nevada Moment was the moment when Bernie Sanders decisively won the Nevada primary, powered by a coalition of Latino, Asian, and union voters, with many younger immigrant voters persuading their parents and grandparents to vote for Bernie, despite their skepticism.
That moment was immediately overtaken by Joe Biden’s victory in South Carolina the following week, when an older Democratic establishment rallied behind Biden to close ranks against the Left, and then COVID-19, when the entire country shut down.
But there was always this tremendous promissory note that was written in the early weeks of February, from the left to the center of the Democratic Party, vowing the creation of a new coalition of voters — younger, multiracial, immigrant, working-class, and progressive — that would take on and topple the establishment.
Tuesday night, in New York City, we saw the second phase of the Nevada Moment, the Mamdani Moment, which may now, at last, become a movement. A similar dynamic was at play on Tuesday, this time, with younger, immigrant, Asian, Black, and Jewish voters talking to their parents and grandparents and persuading some portion of them to vote for Mamdani and against the dynastic forces of Andrew Cuomo and Donald Trump.
Second, I’ve been continually astonished at how fluid and fluent Mamdani is in a certain vision of American history. It’s as if he read his Eric Foner when he was very young and has never forgotten all the lessons and words of Eugene Debs (whom he cited in the second sentence of his victory speech on Tuesday), Martin Luther King, Vito Marcantonio (the left-wing Harlem congressman who voted against the Truman Doctrine, the formation of the CIA, and the US…
Auteur: Corey Robin
