Harris was unable to do either of these things. The latter, especially, cost her last year’s election.

This wasn’t entirely Harris’s choice. During the general election, she tried to stop talking about her unpopular culture war stances and rolled out speeches and position papers about affordability.

But Harris was defined more by her opponent than her own campaign. By the time Democratic primary voters cast their ballots, Mamdani had mostly defined himself.

Whether Mamdani is elected mayor of New York City will depend on the effectiveness of his opponents’ efforts to change voters’ impressions of this bright, young affordability crusader.

Mamdani was a better candidate than Harris. He was more entrepreneurial in using new media, while she was exceedingly risk-averse. He had a finely honed message, while she was known for word salads. Mamdani seemed comfortable in his own skin, while Harris shied away from uncomfortable interviews or unscripted moments, though she did have a good debate.

Harris was also the sitting vice president of the United States. She was part of the administration that presided over inflation hitting a 41-year high. For much of her term, she had low approval ratings.

Mamdani, first elected to the state legislature from Queens in 2021, was introducing himself to many voters for the first time. They did not have ingrained perceptions of him, as many already did with Harris.

Another difference is that President Donald Trump was a better candidate in 2024 than past-his-prime former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is now. Cuomo ran a more conventional and less adventurous campaign than Mamdani this year and Trump’s presidential campaign last year. Cuomo did not capitalize on mountains of opposition research that could have dented Mamdani’s numbers.

Trump and his allies made sure voters saw Harris staking out unpopular, left-wing positions in her own words on-camera. Her aides usually only amended or abandoned those positions, often under the cloak of anonymity in news stories. While some media outlets cooperated with her cleanup efforts, conservative-leaning voters generally didn’t believe the disavowals, while liberals were occasionally demoralized by them.

It would be just as easy to unearth clips of Mamdani talking about seizing the means of production, which he directly linked to more popular progressive policies such as “Medicare for All,” or having student loans bailed out by taxpayers, or saying things about Israel that would divide New York City Democrats.

Left-wing, even Marxist, economics may be more popular in a New York City Democratic primary than biological men competing in girls sports or taxpayer-funded surgeries for transgender prison inmates are in rural Pennsylvania. However, many of the topics on which Mamdani could have been vulnerable are only really being litigated now that he has won the primary in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, which seems like political malpractice. 

Even in a general election, Mamdani has advantages that were never available to Harris. Deep-blue cities sometimes elect radical politicians and, unlike when Rudy Giuliani was first elected in 1993, there is now a national trend in favor of replacing bad mayors with worse ones (see Chicago). Mamdani’s opposition would need to consolidate behind a single alternative, which is difficult with the incumbent mayor, a former governor, and a perennial Republican candidate already on the ballot.

Despite, or perhaps because of, his socialist ideology, Mamdani still has problems that plagued more mainstream Democrats like Harris. His supporters are heavily college-educated and affluent, while the working class has been noticeably slower to warm to his appeal. Mamdani lost in the neighborhoods with the highest percentages of black and Hispanic residents. 

WHO IS ZOHRAN MAMDANI, THE SOCIALIST CANDIDATE CHALLENGING ERIC ADAMS TO BE NYC MAYOR?

If Mamdani wins, national Democrats will take away two lessons. The first is that it is possible for even socialist Democrats to position themselves as cost-of-living cutters rather than leftists, especially if Trump has ceded the affordability issue by focusing on tariffs and the Medicaid reforms in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. (Even if at the federal level, heavy spending to make things “free” is more directly inflationary than the Trump tariffs.) The second is that the politics of 2019 and 2020 weren’t some progressive fever dream from which Democrats need to awaken but the party’s future. 

The latter is a theory Democrats were unwilling to test by nominating Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and believe failed them with Harris in 2024. Mamdani could change their minds.