Greatest city in the world, baby
We have a left that plays ball now. What's everyone going to do with that?
It’s Election Day in New York City. Do you feel the energy in the air? I woke up this morning and immediately started crying, thinking about all the people this campaign has inspired and all of the hours I spent talking to voters and having interesting conversations with fellow volunteers. For once in my life it felt like the effort you put into something actually had dividends. I’m not much of a crier, but the political realignment is here and it’s emotional!
We likely won’t know who the next mayor will be for several days, but here’s one thing we already do know, no matter who wins: the city’s political landscape is different now. As of 3pm today, more than 760,000 New Yorkers citywide have already cast their ballots, with an inevitable evening surge still yet to happen. For context, less than a million votes were cast in the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary. Voters of all stripes have flexed their collective power in ways that Democrats will have to contend with for at least a generation. No election in the history of New York City has ever been so polarized by age. New York City DSA now has thousands of enthusiastic new members and built an impressive volunteer machine citywide that will almost certainly pay dividends during the 2026 election cycle. The Muslim and South Asian voter blocs, long overlooked and taken for granted, might actually change the course of this city’s history.
I spent most of this year so far in a state of torpor, overwhelmed by a series of misfortunes that compounded in effect although most of them were only moderately distressing by themselves. I dissociated for hours a day. I didn’t return texts or calls. When I did meet friends I would often spend the whole time complaining about my unhappiness, giving me yet another insecurity to beat myself up over. It felt ridiculous to assume that anyone found my depression anything other than annoying and tiresome. I felt utterly alone, and I isolated myself in turn.
I didn’t accomplish much else this year, but I put in a lot of hours for Zohran. I’m not trying to say I’m special; a lot of people worked a lot harder than me and they, not I, deserve all the credit in the world for potentially pulling this off. I’m saying that for months, attending a canvass or staffing a fundraiser would often be the only truly productive thing I did that week, because forcing myself to volunteer was the only thing keeping me from feeling like I had given up on my life. I think it probably worked. Organizing is a good way to get out of your own head and into the physical world.
I found that the amount I was willing to tolerate, both physically and mentally, increased. It’s 100 degrees outside right now and after I send this I plan on going out and canvassing anyway, something I probably would not have done under any circumstances even a year ago. I’m just one of many who have found themselves changed. At every single canvass I attended this year I met multiple new volunteers who had never gotten involved with a political campaign before but felt inspired by what they were seeing and hearing in the streets, among their friends, on their social media feeds. Afterwards I would ask them how they felt. All of them said they wished they had gotten involved earlier and that they would sign up again. In my almost ten years of being involved in Democratic politics, I’ve never seen anything like it.
I believe anything that gets people off the couch and into the streets matters no matter how unlikely the cause is, because I think it’s important for people who identify as being on the left to understand that this shit is really hard. People are much more complicated than one’s Twitter feed, full of people who say things so definitively, would have you believe. If your perception of the political landscape is constructed primarily from reading the opinions of spectators who agree with you, it becomes easy to believe that everyone offline also passively agrees with you, and that those who don’t either haven’t heard the good word yet or must have something irreparably morally corrupt about them. If your objective is to receive validation in your outrage from strangers on the internet, it benefits you to be overly declarative. It’s not a great attitude to take if you are trying to organize other people. When you talk to voters, or tenants in your building, or coworkers during a union drive, this much becomes obvious very quickly: all kinds of people believe all kinds of things, and they have all kinds of reasons for doing so. Our terrible education system, asymmetrical information landscape and broken civic culture accounts for a lot of that, but for the most part your political opponents have thought through what they believe in as thoroughly as you have. That voters can often be easily swayed is not a refutation of that. Like so many others, I stand by my beliefs, but I am always open to new evidence!
The crux of the left’s electoral strategy is this: universalist politics are popular. People across the political spectrum, regardless of their voting history, gravitate towards candidates who focus on issues that actually affect the American people, and our cost of living crisis is the most pressing issue to most voters. This is why Zohran’s campaign on the affordability crisis is so exciting, but more importantly, it’s practical. A rent freeze has been done before. People who ride the buses want them to be faster and more accessible. There is plenty of empirical research about how making them free actually does help make this happen, and a successful pilot route (championed by Zohran!) in every borough is proof. If you’re a person who prefers to ground your opinions in data and research, there is plenty of it to suggest that progressive policies are effective, cost-efficient, and sustainable.
The hardest part has always been how to actually convince enough voters that all of this is true. People want competency from their politicians because most of them have failed us our entire lives. It’s not enough to point out the (many) disqualifying failures of Andrew Cuomo, although it certainly helps in something as time-limited as an election. Winning state power is a more complicated endeavor with few such clearly defined markers of success. To win an election, but also to win a popular mandate to achieve the policies that empower the working class despite inevitable backlash from capital, you have to make people believe that there is a plausible path forward. Why should voters trust a 33 year old democratic socialist to run the world’s capital? For some, including me, Zohran’s ideological allegiances were enough to take the jump and believe. We have to accept that’s not true for everybody. I wish that everyone was as easily convinced by the revolutionary potential of mass politics, but how could they be? This is such an individualistic country. We’re all swimming in the fascism no matter how moral we believe our worldview to be. Can you blame voters for wanting to see some evidence that the leap of faith you are asking them to take will actually pan out?
Zohran’s campaign is special because they took the question of credibility more seriously than any other socialist candidate for higher office that I have seen in the past several years. This was an airtight campaign that outperformed everybody’s wildest expectations. There were no weak links—an incredible social media presence, an unprecedented massive volunteer machine, and a once-in-a-lifetime candidate who stayed relentlessly on message despite a disgusting onslaught of Islamophobic vitriol from all of the billionaires and pro-Israel freaks this city has to offer. Who in American politics is working harder than Zohran Mamdani? Andrew Cuomo, who thinks he can waltz into Gracie Mansion without actually talking to any voters? Give me a break.
It’s not fair, but life isn’t fair. Socialists can’t afford to be lazy because the forces of capital and the political establishment have more money and power to wield. We have a moral obligation to do things correctly and work harder than everyone else. You can complain all you want about how the system is rigged, but everyone already knows that. Moral victories don’t pay the rent, but actually getting out there and knocking 1.5 million doors might freeze it!
I took a lot of long walks this year, avoiding my phone as much as possible (my phone was where all the unread texts were), desperate to get out of my own misery and inhabit the present again. New York is paradise for people watchers. Did you guys know this city is really freaking big? I know I’ve just outed myself as a transplant, but you could probably live here your whole life and never get over just how big and diverse this whole enterprise is. There really are eight million people crammed into the five boroughs from all walks of life, from every country you can imagine, speaking over 800 languages, taking the same trains, walking the same streets, complaining about the same heat and the same traffic. We all put up with some of the country’s worst politicians year after year as the rent goes up, the weather gets hotter, the trains become more unreliable. We might elect a mayor today who sees our shared humanity. Can you imagine? The greatest city in the world, the most international city on the planet, governed by a man and a movement that believes everyone, no matter who you are or where you come from, should have the right to a decent life. I almost can’t believe it, but I’ve seen it. Fifty thousand volunteers. More small dollar donations than any candidate in New York City history. 1.5 million doors knocked. We have a left that plays ball now, and we can win. Let’s bring it home.