The two best analyses of Zohran Mamdani’s recent victory are this one, by Michael Thomas Carter, and this conversation that Daniel Denvir, the Terry Gross of the left, hosted with two organizers in New York City. Both analyses focus on the elephant in the room. Virtually all of the commentariat have emphasized Mamdani’s videos, his undeniable charisma and political fluency, and Cuomo’s weaknesses. The latter were oddly invisible to most commentators up until the very night that Cuomo conceded; then it became obvious that he was a weak candidate and was always going to lose; there’s a lesson there about power, which people always treat as static, when it’s not). But easily the most important factor in Zohran’s victory is […]