The Times They Are a-Changin'

ZOHRAN WON! WE (yes we) DID IT! We elected a south asian man, a 34-year-old, a SOCIALIST, as mayor of New York. A guy who looks like me is the mayor of the greatest city in the world, and that means more than I can put into writing.

But this also means another thing,

Infinite discourse on what this actually means, and infinite people trying to copy the social media and the aesthetics, without the two things that made this campaign work:

1:The policy platform, focused on people’s material conditions and needs.

2: The people. The volunteers, the leaders, Zohran himself. All of the people in this campaign made this possible.

Taylor Lorenz Has a great article on this at THR

But Zohran wasn’t the only winner on Tuesday night; Democrats won up and down the ballot, in states red and blue.

They won in part because of Trump, and everything currently going on in DC, as well as the inflation crisis still ongoing.

But there’s something else.

The three biggest campaigns, We’re all different, some campaigned from helicopters, or on their lived experience as a mom. Each winning democrat was unique.

Zohran’s campaign was uniquely New York. It was diverse, joyful. It celebrated the culture of bodegas. It celebrated this beautiful city and all its people, from the hasidic jews to the Construction workers.

I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas, Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses, Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties. Yes, aunties. -Zohran Mamdani, ‘Hope Is alive”

From Spanberger in Va, to Sherrill in Nj. Each of these campaigns was unique to the place they were running in. That must be our path forward. Our campaigns have to be specialized, not generalized. (This does not apply to presidential elections, obviously)

The strategy that worked in NYC isn’t gonna work in A small town in Ohio, and vice versa. We have to build a democratic party that represents the people of America, that represents its diversity of ideologies, of backgrounds, of experiences.

We need a politics of people. Not power.

A politics focused on new voices from various backgrounds, who will give a voice to the people they represent, a voice to the voiceless. to the silent. We must work to, in the words of Mayor-Elect Mamdani, listen, not lecture. We must build a party that realizes that we can have left candidates, and also in some places more moderate candidates, who many (myself included) may not love, but who are the right person to win in that place. Zohran wouldn’t win in Texas. But James Talarico can. Ezra Klein and many others often talk about a big tent, and I agree, but we see different visions for the tent. I believe our tent should be open to anyone committed to our goals as a party, committed to protecting democracy, but also committed to being on the side of labor, to fighting corporate power, and committed to helping the American people.

We need a new agenda as a party, and we must prioritize being a home for the working class in that process. We must build a party of people, not just Harvard lawyers, but ordinary working people. people from all slices of life, People who haven’t always been perfect, and have maybe fucked up a bit in life. We have to be willing to redeem, to allow people to grow. People shouldn’t have to always plan to run for office. This is the ONLY way to get young people to run for office.

We also need to campaign to people. Our campaigns shouldn’t center on not being Trump, but on our plan to fix the problems for which he is often a symptom. I think a key person to look at here is Morris Katz, who ran Zohran’s campaign and is working with Graham Platner. He has come up with a “two-pronged” approach, where we not only approach fighting Trump, but also fighting the economic and social issues to which he is seen as a solution.

(For more on Katz: Vanity Fair)

The democratic party must not stand by its old guard. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are not the leaders for this moment, and we must do the work to build a party of people who are, Many of whom are in the party already, but pushed to the side. Think of perhaps David Hogg, who was pushed out at the DNC for wanting to challenge gerentocracy. Or Bernie Sanders, who was pushed to the side in 2016, and wanted to run as a democrat for the rest of his career, but was pushed out of the “big tent” that the DNC claims we should have, but if this tent only has room for Liz Cheney but not Bernie, is it really all that big? Or is it only open to the right?

We need to build a tent that is open to all, A party that is not of the corporate interests, not of the PACS, but of the people. And that party must be willing to work to improve the lives of those people, not to work for billionaires and corporate interests as we have for far too long.

We must be the party of the people.

Our time is now.

-Aarav