Youth vote

Zohran Mamdani’s victory came as little surprise. On both the left and right comparisons to the 2008 presidential election abound; Mamdani is said to mean nothing less than the rebirth of American liberalism. Like Obama, he was initially a foe of the Democratic establishment, but then embraced. And like Obama, he gets his intellectual and cultural ballast from politically active, urban, college-educated men. Mamdani’s victory can, in a narrow sense, be explained by the demographics of New York City. But what differentiates him from Cuomo and other establishment Democrats is his ability to speak to the popular, online leftism that millennial, professional New Yorkers traffic in. This particular subculture has seen little electoral representation until now.

Welcome to Thunderdome. It’s obvious that when it comes to 2024, Donald Trump doesn’t want the race to be about the culture war issues that he views as a major drag from the past few years of elections, with abortion at the top of the list. He’d rather it be a race about immigration, the economy, and oddly enough, his own persecution by the Deep State (which motivates his core supporters, but not many others). What’s clear is that in the aftermath of his statement on abortion, Republicans aren’t taking up Trump’s call.