The Witness Chronicles, 7/1/25
A wake up call for Democrats
New York City Voters Shocked Democrats Across the Country
And it’s a needed wake up call
Note: I took a long weekend off from the news and writing. Call it a mental health break. But as things go in Trump world he continues to outrageously push his racist agenda and the worst budget bill in the history of our democracy. More on that soon. Meanwhile the NYC Democratic primary is rocking the world.
It was old school vs new blood and a 33 year old Muslim who handily beat Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary sent a shock wave through the Party this week. Cuomo, as traditional a politician as they come, son of a popular Governor, a former HUD Secretary, and two term Governor himself, looked like a shoo in as soon as he announced his candidacy. He had a huge war chest, major endorsements, and was popular despite leaving the governorship under a cloud of sexual accusations.
But it was not to be and Cuomo had the graciousness to admit defeat and compliment his opponent’s campaign, which depended on classic door to door campaigning with social media saturation aimed at younger and disenfranchised voters. But is this an outlier limited to the Northeast’s most liberal major city?
That’s a legitimate question, but nevertheless the Party should take a hard look at who they are running, their age, and their political stance. The primary winner, Zohran Mamdani, who describes himself as a liberal socialist in the AOC/Bernie Sanders mode (both endorsed him), represents a major departure for the Democrats: young, Muslim, and promising free bus fares and city owned grocery stores in areas that are food wildernesses.
Mamdani will face current mayor Eric Adams, GOP candidate Curtis Sliwa, and possibly Cuomo in November.
New York, the nation’s most populous city, including an estimated one million Muslims, has become a prohibitively expensive area to live in but with many low income residents working in its numerous restaurants and hotels. Mamdani may not be representative of the rural voters who helped re-elect Donald Trump but he looks and sounds a lot like many voters in cities where the majority of voters in the country live.
This is yet another indicator of the dissatisfaction with the Party. Sanders and AOC have consistently drawn overflow crowds at appearances in solid red states. Pete Buttigieg and Tim Walz have repeatedly told Democrats to go where opposition voters live and both are some of the only nationally famous politicians to regularly appear of Fox News. The Democrats who have held town halls in red bastions have also drawn large crowds.
The Party is widely seen as disorganized and out of touch, too old, especially in the Senate, and generally ineffectual. The question is can the Party change and what direction should they focus on?
The other side of this upset is the predictably hate filled response from MAGA Republicans who immediately and openly implied he is a supporter of terrorism and anti-Semitic based entirely on his religion and ethnicity (he is Indian born in Uganda). No big surprise there as they always lead with that kind of hate filled speech.
Unfortunately, hate speech based on race, religion, or ethnicity has been proven an effective weapon by the President of the United States and his followers. Mamdani is inevitably already getting death threats against him and his family. But aside from the inevitable racist bro culture, Gen Z will see him as one of their own and those threats may tilt the younger vote away from the right.
But there’s a big if there. If the Democratic establishment takes advantage of Mamdani’s win and supports him. Given Cuomo’s sketchy history and ditto for Eric Adams, there is certainly justification for backing him. Taking advantage to score points with Gen Z, Muslims, and immigrants is not just bonus points.
The problem I see with this thinking is that the Democratic establishment is not unified, the DNC’s leadership is in disarray, and there is no strongman figure like Trump to keep the troops in line. And they have already removed a major Gen Z leader in David Hogg, the Parkland shooting survivor who briefly was deputy chair of the Party committee. Until he threatened to primary older incumbents in favor of helping bring more youth into the party leadership.
Whatever you think of that, it tells me that there is a major rift in the Party and Mamdani just mobilized that division. You can bet Trump will take advantage of it. That’s his favorite tactic. But so far national Democratic figures have been very guarded about their reaction to his win, trying to be supportive, sort of.
The Party desperately needs to fix this mess and get a coherent strategy for unifying these sparring elements and they need to do it fast. That will require real leadership willing to set aside self interests and twist arms when necessary. Someone like Pete Buttigieg is a logical candidate. He is relatively young, a veteran, well respected, and willing to cross intraparty lines. But it looks like he is seriously considering a run in 2028, something I want to see.
Quite a quandary.
But it illustrates the real problem here. I can’t come up with a name other than Buttigieg to fix this mess. The Schumers of the world won’t cut it. And neither will ‘strongly worded letters’. This is about the future of the democracy and the Union, nothing less.
Information is power and sharing it is resistance.
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Martin