A Mamdate.
A couple of weeks ago, a quarter of a million New Yorkers filled the streets of Manhattan for the national No Kings Day protests — a show of defiance against Trump and Trumpism.
Yesterday, four times that many New Yorkers marched again — this time to the polls — and made history. They elected Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, Muslim, African-born immigrant, as New York City’s next mayor.
Mamdani’s opponent, Andrew Cuomo, was a pillar of the Democratic Party establishment — a man who had every donor, every consultant, and every institutional lever on his side.
Make no mistake: this was a crushing defeat not only for Trump, but for the Democratic machine itself. Many of its leaders, right up to the final moment, couldn’t bring themselves to follow their own slogan — “vote blue no matter who.”
For years, those same Democrats have brushed off the rise of AOC, Bernie Sanders, and Mamdani as a New York quirk — something that could never take root in Nebraska or Iowa.
If they really believe that, then why not let New York be New York?
Maybe it’s not that these ideas are uniquely New York at all. Maybe they’re just popular.
After all, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
Cuomo’s backers poured millions into his campaign, hoping that a toxic mix of racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and anti-trans fearmongering could turn the tide. It didn’t.
A year ago, after Trump clawed his way back into the White House, pundits said he’d captured a slice of the Democratic base, pointing to his higher margins in New York.
But as I wrote then, those numbers told a different story — not of Trump’s strength, but of Democratic disillusionment. Progressives stayed home.
This week, they didn’t. They came out. And they changed the city.