From time to time, a piece of vocabulary comes along which the public didn't realize it was missing and soon enough can't live without. "Commie Corridor"-to designate the precincts of Queens and north Brooklyn overrun with youthful lefties-is one such phrase, a zippy addition to the city's lexicon of pop anthropology. Its sudden currency was the handiwork of Michael Lange, a twenty-five-year-old political analyst and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, who used it in his Substack newsletter back in June, just as early voting in the Democratic primary began. Zohran Mamdani, Lange wrote, might just be able to win, if he could inspire staggering turnout in this "young and hungry" base; when Mamdani pulled it off, the New York Times published Lange's analysis, bringing the coinage to a wider readership.
