In an election cycle swept by a blue wave, Zohran Mamdani is surfing the crest. Mayor-elect Mamdani, as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is New York City’s most openly socialist mayor. However, despite being the Democratic nominee in a staunchly Democratic bastion, he only received 50.8% of the vote. This wasn’t a resounding victory that a Democrat in New York City typically wins; in the 2021 mayoral election, Eric Adams won with 67.4%. And despite Mamdani’s opponent, Andrew Cuomo, being a disgraced former governor of New York, accused of sexually harassing 13 women and running as an Independent, he still came away with 41.3%.

But to his credit, Mamdani received a record 70% of the vote from those aged 18-44. That’s a massive amount of younger adult supporters, and combined with much of his rhetoric, I can’t see any other word to describe Zohran Mamdani than “populist”.

Populism, or the movement representing or claiming to represent the people against the larger enemy (typically the “establishment”), started on a large scale in the United States with President Andrew Jackson. He was renowned for his anti-federalist stance, instead........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)