Mamdani's Big Win
New York’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani scored a smashing triumph in this Tuesday’s primary elections, with all three of his endorsed candidates winning—in two cases against incumbents, in two cases against candidates with much more impressive political resumes and establishment Democratic support. Mamdani will claim, with obligatory false modesty, that these elections weren’t about him, they were about New Yorkers’ frustration with status quo politics. There is much truth in that, but make no mistake about it: this was a personal triumph for Mamdani, a genuinely gifted politician who has clearly captured the imagination of the bulk of that engaged segment of the Democratic electorate that votes in primary elections. (Note: there are about 3.5 million registered Democrats in New York City, of whom 531,000 [15%] voted on Tuesday.)
In my last post, I expressed some doubt about the wisdom of two of Mamdani’s endorsements—of Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier. I felt that given the need for Mamdani to build and maintain a broad-based governing coalition, it might have been more prudent to avoid antagonizing much of the party establishment as he did. (It’s worth noting that a more seasoned socialist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, didn’t join Mamdani in his endorsements of Valdez and Avila Chevalier.) But doesn’t his success on Tuesday belie such skittishness? Mamdani may have been gambling, but he won: isn’t he now a more formidable force in NY City politics? Maybe. It’s quite possible that a due respect for his evident clout with the Democratic electorate will balance or more than balance whatever resentment he has generated among Democratic power brokers with whom he needs to be able to work.
Inevitably, people will argue about how important Israel/Palestine was in these three races. It’s hard to know. Lander would have beaten Goldman in any case, and there’s no reason to believe that the Valdez-Reynoso race would have turned out differently if not for the Israel issue, on which the two candidates’ differences were minor. Conceivably, it could have provided Avila Chevalier—a highly problematic candidate, to put it mildly--with her margin of victory over Espaillat. In any case, a just peace in Israel-Palestine, if it is ever to be achieved, will require a huge shift in American policy. To that end, setting aside all other considerations, the replacement of Goldman and Espaillat by Lander and Avila Chevalier is movement in the right direction.
I can't really see any bright side of Chevalier's win. I think Jeff Maurer put it well: "On votes in the House that actually matter, it’s virtually certain that these three will vote the same way that the left-leaning Democrats they replaced would have voted.
But now for the bad news: These three — especially Chevalier — are a glorious gift to Republican flaks. What Michael Jordan was to Nike, Chevalier is to anyone whose job is to portray Democrats as radical, anti-America lunatics. And that is because she is a radical, anti-America lunatic; I hope normie Democrats loudly denounce her bullshit instead of trying to sanewash it. "
https://substack.com/@imightbewrong/p-203410145
Or Noah Smith, in a post entitled "The Democrats Have Their Own MAGA now":
"Avila Chevalier is as much of an extremist as anyone associated with the MAGA movement. The best comparator on the right would probably be Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has made a long string of similarly extreme and wacky statements. My typical line is that “both extremes are bad, but the Republican extreme is worse”. Avila Chevalier is severely testing that asymmetry."
https://substack.com/home/post/p-203606878
By my lights, the main difference between Chevalier and Espaillat is not in congressional policy on Israel or anything else, where a Democratic congressperson from New York was never going to be the tipping point. Rather, it will be in what they mean for the Democratic party's national brand. And for that, Chevalier is pure poison.