Thank you. I can’t believe all the Big Brain columns saying some version of “Oh My God! This is a disaster for the Democratic Party nationwide!” Assemblyman Mamdani, who couldn’t be elected in Missouri or Arizona, will be one voice among many in his party. These people are writing like they started covering politics 15 minutes ago. It’s just silly. Will he have a nationwide voice? Only if he runs New York well. In that sense, an urban executive is exposed in a way a legislator is not.
I think one of the big mental blocks to taking away the right lessons from this is that the Democratic Party is constantly chasing a monoculture, or single winning formula whereby they can start cramming all their messaging, candidates, and campaigning into one mold.
I think one of the big things that screwed over the party through the last cycle was the gradual strangling of the varieties of politician under the tent: the Obama coalition had tech entrepreneurs, anti-war libertarians, progressives, and affluent high-brow liberals under the same tent. Trump's 2024 coalition triangulated tech CEOs, young national conservatives, union workers, evangelicals, and business types under one tent. Fringe blocs can quickly add up if you keep alienating them. Biden died a death of 1000 cuts and Trump is currently vulnerable to the same w/ his actions right now.
The Dems can't just be the party of Jewish Obama, Gay Obama, Woman Obama, etc. Both the "moderates" and the "progressives" fall into this trap of trying to force messaging monocultures because there's this universal "cultural cringe" among liberals right now which scorns anything which deviates from whatever the current (often arbitrary) consensus on what "optimal messaging" is at a given point. 2020's bench was abysmal in a lot of ways, but there was genuine representation of various lanes among the "weirder" candidates (Tulsi, Yang, Sanders, etc) that helped voters still feel represented and stay in the fold. It was a lot harder to replicate that w/ Harris, who had only four months to rebrand herself as the ultimate median Democratic candidate.
If I were to play armchair strategist on a national level right now (feel free to call me out if I'm completely talking out of my ass here), I think the play would be to start doing the long and slow work of cultivating a variety of organic regional ideological sects across the country to rebuild the tent. Run the Thiel VC model: distribute your investments wide, and gamble for long odds. Past a point, investing in the same outlets/message/demographic/candidate has diminishing returns. One longshot winner can justify a bunch of smaller losers. It concerns me that liberals seem to be more focused on pouring everything into finding the One Formula That Will Save Us.
Whether that be Abundance/libertarian types across the West Coast, the democratic socialists, or moderate populists, you need to work on building up a variety of lanes to re-cement the Democratic Party as the center of ideological innovation (which the GOP is trying to do right now). I think having Mamdani beat out Cuomo is a good step in this direction, but the takeaway shouldn't be "we need a bunch of Mamdanis".
This creates room to court a new generation of elites who can run from angles more risk-averse strategists might not consider, and can pull in their respective constituencies into the tent. It also means each local failure doesn't sink the whole party, but there's other sects willing to pick up the slack. Self-sabotaging behavior that's eroded Democratic credibility (like keeping Biden in for way too long) is easier kept in check when each of these sects are given more flexibility to criticize and challenge each other. Hopefully by 2028 you'd have a bunch of different lanes with their own visions, each able to attack the current administration from their own respective angles, and you'd "feel" the center of political energy shift back to the Democratic Party.
I was guilty of screaming (although into a pillow so as not to alarm anyone). I feel better now after reading this.
Thank you. I can’t believe all the Big Brain columns saying some version of “Oh My God! This is a disaster for the Democratic Party nationwide!” Assemblyman Mamdani, who couldn’t be elected in Missouri or Arizona, will be one voice among many in his party. These people are writing like they started covering politics 15 minutes ago. It’s just silly. Will he have a nationwide voice? Only if he runs New York well. In that sense, an urban executive is exposed in a way a legislator is not.
I think one of the big mental blocks to taking away the right lessons from this is that the Democratic Party is constantly chasing a monoculture, or single winning formula whereby they can start cramming all their messaging, candidates, and campaigning into one mold.
I think one of the big things that screwed over the party through the last cycle was the gradual strangling of the varieties of politician under the tent: the Obama coalition had tech entrepreneurs, anti-war libertarians, progressives, and affluent high-brow liberals under the same tent. Trump's 2024 coalition triangulated tech CEOs, young national conservatives, union workers, evangelicals, and business types under one tent. Fringe blocs can quickly add up if you keep alienating them. Biden died a death of 1000 cuts and Trump is currently vulnerable to the same w/ his actions right now.
The Dems can't just be the party of Jewish Obama, Gay Obama, Woman Obama, etc. Both the "moderates" and the "progressives" fall into this trap of trying to force messaging monocultures because there's this universal "cultural cringe" among liberals right now which scorns anything which deviates from whatever the current (often arbitrary) consensus on what "optimal messaging" is at a given point. 2020's bench was abysmal in a lot of ways, but there was genuine representation of various lanes among the "weirder" candidates (Tulsi, Yang, Sanders, etc) that helped voters still feel represented and stay in the fold. It was a lot harder to replicate that w/ Harris, who had only four months to rebrand herself as the ultimate median Democratic candidate.
If I were to play armchair strategist on a national level right now (feel free to call me out if I'm completely talking out of my ass here), I think the play would be to start doing the long and slow work of cultivating a variety of organic regional ideological sects across the country to rebuild the tent. Run the Thiel VC model: distribute your investments wide, and gamble for long odds. Past a point, investing in the same outlets/message/demographic/candidate has diminishing returns. One longshot winner can justify a bunch of smaller losers. It concerns me that liberals seem to be more focused on pouring everything into finding the One Formula That Will Save Us.
Whether that be Abundance/libertarian types across the West Coast, the democratic socialists, or moderate populists, you need to work on building up a variety of lanes to re-cement the Democratic Party as the center of ideological innovation (which the GOP is trying to do right now). I think having Mamdani beat out Cuomo is a good step in this direction, but the takeaway shouldn't be "we need a bunch of Mamdanis".
This creates room to court a new generation of elites who can run from angles more risk-averse strategists might not consider, and can pull in their respective constituencies into the tent. It also means each local failure doesn't sink the whole party, but there's other sects willing to pick up the slack. Self-sabotaging behavior that's eroded Democratic credibility (like keeping Biden in for way too long) is easier kept in check when each of these sects are given more flexibility to criticize and challenge each other. Hopefully by 2028 you'd have a bunch of different lanes with their own visions, each able to attack the current administration from their own respective angles, and you'd "feel" the center of political energy shift back to the Democratic Party.