David Wallace Wells -- Why So Much of America Loves Mamdani

[ancianita]

"... How did this happen? The short answer is actually pretty intuitive, I think: Mamdani is a really good politician offering a wildly appealing and easy-to-understand brand of transformational politics. Voters who wanted more from their government had grown to resent the way this desire had long been derided as pie-in-the-sky. Whether voters will think Mamdani delivered over the course of a full term remains to be seen. In the meantime, so long as New Yorkers believe that he is earnestly trying to make government work better on their behalf and improve their lives, he’s probably going to remain popular.
But the story is also a bit more contingent and complicated than that. Here are a few threads.

The mayor has actually made serious, concrete progress already, gratifying his enthusiastic voters....

He’s also conspicuously moderated, appealing to some skeptics....

Whether you call it sewer socialism or just eager competence, Mamdani looks to most New Yorkers like he is working really hard...

And he seems to have forged what looks like a working relationship with Trump...of course Mamdani benefits from direct contrasts with Trump himself. Nationally, liberals continue to feel frustration if not rage that the Democratic Party seems to lack real leadership. But in New York, they have someone around whom they can actually rally..

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Mamdani is offering something no other politician in America has seemed able to for years now: a relentless optimism about what is possible through politics.

From most vantages, these days, the political landscape looks grim. But when I come across the mayor in my social media feed, it’s like news beamed in from an entirely different universe — more colorful, more energetic, much less intimidated by local sclerosis and far more certain that government can do a lot more, for many more people, than it has.

Partly, I think, this is because a 34-year-old mayor can bounce around the city much more busily than a 68-year-old former governor (or perhaps an even older member of the gerontocracy).
Partly it’s ideological, since Mamdani was swept into office on promises that the city can and should be remade, not just swiftly but mostly painlessly.
Partly it’s a credit to the social media team that has won so much praise since Mamdani’s upset primary victory last summer, with the mayor’s messaging still focused on proving that voters were “right to believe” rather than voting more cynically.
But it’s also a reminder of a corny truth: Even at a time when our politics is layered over with algorithmic rage, people want to be hopeful about the future — and want leaders who are, too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/opinion/mamdani-popularity.html

(Sorry not to be able to find an archived URL on this.)