"Mikie Sherrill, who just won the race to be New Jersey's next governor, was a helicopter pilot turned federal prosecutor. Zohran Mamdani, the thirty-four-year-old state assemblyman who will soon be New York City's mayor, was rapping as Young Cardamom and volunteering for left-wing City Council candidates. For much of the past decade, the Democratic Party has seemed stuck in a pre-Trump past; Tuesday seemed like the turning of a generational page."
"The 2025 elections were always going to be about the Democrats, not just because this year's major races were set in blue places but because the Party has been adrift since last year's Presidential election. Lately, the most reliable rhythm in political news has been commentators explaining what the Democrats "should" and "must" do. ("The Democrats must add to their collective vocabulary two words . . . equality and oligarchy," Fintan O'Toole wrote, in The New York Review of Books, urging a more populist turn."
None of the three Democrats who won convincingly on Tuesday was in politics when Donald Trump was first elected President. In 2016, Abigail Spanberger had recently left the C.I.A. and was working for an educational consultancy. Mikie Sherrill was a helicopter pilot turned federal prosecutor. Zohran Mamdani rapped as Young Cardamom and volunteered for left-wing City Council candidates. For much of the past decade, the Democratic Party seemed stuck in a pre-Trump past; Tuesday felt like a turning of a generational page. The 2025 elections focused attention on Democratic identity as commentators urged populist and pluralistic directions. Centrist leaders publicly distanced themselves from Mamdani's expansive left-wing views.
Read at The New Yorker
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