Great analysis! Anecdotal, but as a 25-year old black college-educated renter transplant in the East Harlem neighborhood of NY-13, this is a great change to see. I voted for Adriano Espaillat in the 2024 election, but only because he was the only viable option. It’s an outside city and I never saw him on the street until he was getting challenged. He got too comfortable until it was too late and it cost him the primary. They also tried to overplay the importance of her 4-year old tweets when everyone has seen how much the republicans have gotten away with recently. I hope this is only the beginning for the country.
"The establishment is not spinning the results because they were ambiguous, but because they were clear. And clarity...is the one thing they cannot let the public see." Stone cold bars right there
Four most common responses I heard canvassing in NY-13 in order of frequency: (1) I have never heard from Espaillat, I didn’t know he was my rep; (2) I’ve already voted/will vote for DAC; (3) I’ve heard bad things about her on TV (still persuadable); (4) No, she’s Haitian and I’m Dominican (not persuadable).
As always, this is a well written and argued take. I have thought for a while that Espaillat was vulnerable because of Black voters, and was happy to see Chevalier take him out. Thanks for writing this thorough analysis!
The establishment response is panic dressed as analysis. They cannot say the obvious because it indicts them. Regular Democrats spent decades assuming Black voters would remain institutional, loyal, older, church-tied, machine-friendly, and controllable. But younger Black renters live in a different economy, different media world, different housing crisis, and different political atmosphere. The DSA understands that better than Hakeem Jeffries and Letitia James do. That does not make socialism right. It makes the threat real. The old Democrat machine is losing the next generation because it took them for granted while radicals gave them an identity, enemy, and mission.
“Does it make socialism right?” This isn’t about whether or not socialism is “right” or “wrong” anyway but whether it works. So far, it has worked. DSA is running New York City and people like it so far. They like socialism, they like socialist candidates, and they want to see more. Young people understand that socialism is, at the end of the day, focused on delivering results favorable to working people, whereas capitalism has proven to be a consistent producer of massive inequality and civic decay. “Is socialism business friendly? Is socialism godless? Is socialism WRONG?” Questions in that vein miss the point entirely. The real questions, and the only ones that matters to today’s voters are: does socialism work for the people? Does it address the real-life problems working people face day to day? Does socialism take a different, more positive approach to politics than the tired, ugly crony-capitalism that’s been draining America’s morale for the past 40+ years? The answer to all those questions so far seems to be “hell yes.” Right or wrong, it’s worth a try, because capitalism has demonstrably failed us, and miserably.
I’m not convinced Mamdani etc is really doing much “socialism” but rather closer to “social democracy.” Tbh, I think he’s just “open societies liberalism” à la Karl Popper via his Muslim PAC being funded by Open Societies Foundation (George Soros).
Not expecting him to seize the means of production or abolish private property tbh. I think he’ll just do mild redistribution and fund some new programs .
Okay, terrific, he never said he would seize the means of production. He never claimed to be a Communist revolutionary, and neither did any of his chosen candidates. Nobody I know who supports him expects him to overthrow the bourgeois class. That would be pretty neat, but that’s not what he was elected to do.
Everything he’s doing is something he said he would do back on the campaign trail. These programs he’s promoting are definitionally socialist in nature (not for profit, good governance, publicly-funded, common good-type stuff), and he calls himself a democratic socialist, so it’s safe to say, what he’s doing is socialist, both in spirit and execution. Or call it whatever you want; it’s something new and different, people like it, and it’s working for them, which is all that matters. Calling it “social democracy” wouldn’t change any of that.
Also, c’mon, neither CAIR nor any other ‘Muslim PAC’ funded Mamdani’s campaign, not via Soros or any other means. Let’s not carry water for the NY Post, please?
The Muslim PACs definitely funded Mamdani, your only tactic is denial. He’s not an organic candidate, he’s a media trained rich guy posing as a populist. Basically leftist trump lol.
The stuff you’re describing fits under social democracy or even just basic government. Interesting how the left is now using the old right wing (neoliberal) argument of “socialism is whenever the government does something.” Socialism has a specific definition, public ownership of the means of production and the abolition of private property. It doesn’t mean “popular programs that are working.”
Great piece! To rebut the charge that gentrifiers are responsible for the wave, though, I do think we need a more refined proxy for class than renter/owner. To state the obvious, a renter who can afford 5000/mo in a luxury building is rather differently situated than a renter with two jobs trying to stay in their rent stabilized apt.
Aren't you performing an analytical sleight-of-hand by assuming that the VAN breakdown for age and race of the presumed electorate in each election district can then be one-to-one assigned to who actually voted? On top of that we all know there are problems with the accuracy of VAN data because people move often and it undercounts or misaddresses young, minority and poor voters at a higher rate. Seems like a bit of a slender reed to carry such strong claims about the nature of the voters you are trying to describe.
On the first question, that's the point of Lange's "Homogenous" analysis, limited to election districts that heavily concentrate one group. I'm interested in discussion of his methodology--but a critique that only looks at one of his two measures, when he uses the second one explicitly as a check against the first, seems off base.
FWIW, political data reporters at the Washington Post (hardly a pro-DSA source) came to a similar conclusion (6/25/26): "A multiracial coalition of young, college-educated voters helped a group of democratic socialist candidates sweep House primaries in New York this week, giving the insurgent wing of the Democratic Party new clout and cementing its hold over the city’s politics....Tuesday’s Democratic primary wins by two Mamdani-backed DSA members, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, would not have been possible without significant support from Black and Latino voters who favored them over establishment candidates."
That Tish can happily march with war criminals and then turn around to bloviate about this is immensely disqualifying for someone of her stature. She must be primaried out of office.
I’m surprised at how little acknowledgment of the moderates’ failure in 2024, not to mention 2016, there’s been in all of this narrative spinning. The moderates/old guard predicated their entire brand on electability and couldn’t come through when it mattered most. And they keep invoking that boogeyman now, without even acknowledging their abject failure before. Why do they think people will or should trust that they are more electable after two catastrophic strikes on the biggest stage?
Really interesting and great read, as usual. What struck me most is that even facing the inheritor of a dynasty in AD-70 and without the big endorsements, Blackburn still got almost 47%. An insurgent candidate, whether him or someone else, might be able to pull it off it next time.
There is clearly something happening in New York City in particular, as your analysis shows, but I think many want to claim this signals a broader movement outside of NYC and the urban cores of a handful of coastal cities like LA and DC. I don't think *that* broader claim stands up to scrutiny. We aren't seeing many DSA or DSA-adjacent candidates winning in statewide or suburban races. Even in urban areas the results are mixed (look at how relatively more centrist candidates are thriving in San Francisco right now again leftist candidates). AOC's win in 2018 didn't presage a mass movement of leftists knocking out incumbents in primaries across the country then, and I think there's reason to be skeptical again about how much these primary victories presage.
The two exceptions of leftists not being a factor in non-urban races are Platner in Maine and El-Sayed in Michigan, which proves the rule. Both are very charismatic and, in Platner's case, faced very weak opposition, or in El-Sayed's case, has divided opposition. Also worth noting that neither currently identifies with the DSA or calls themselves "socialist". Indeed, Platner's electoral base seems to be more resist libs than leftists.
I'm skeptical of many of your assumptions, but to your last point, I think there's something to the idea that something very similar to what we're doing here could be "resist lib"-coded somewhere else. I haven't been to Maine in a minute, but it's easy to imagine how that could be the shape of things at this point.
So I don't know for sure if it's a perfect example or not, but in general the notion reminds me how much of what happens in politics is about group identity and shared culture, rather than ideology. It's part of why the nationalization of issues can only go so far. Things don't translate 1:1 between cohorts. Everyone has their own Narrative Wars.
The Democratic Party establishment knows this; there's a bunch of Types of Democrats that they keep in mind. I think we're right that universal policies have universal appeal, but I might also suggest that we should expect to need to communicate those policies in multiple styles, and moreover that people will need to be able to build movement spaces that match those styles. For me it raises questions about how DSA envisions itself (or doesn't) within the framework of a broader left, and underscores why it may in the future be beneficial for it to actively support other formations like WFP or, to its left, mutual aid networks -- so that they are not deprived of oxygen and can no longer be onramps to people that DSA cannot (or has not yet worked out how to) reach.
This isn't to say that we should reproduce the cynical weaponization of identity, though there's a fine line. The alternative can't be an enforced monoculture, so I tend to think the best route is a principled pluralism.
Great analysis! Anecdotal, but as a 25-year old black college-educated renter transplant in the East Harlem neighborhood of NY-13, this is a great change to see. I voted for Adriano Espaillat in the 2024 election, but only because he was the only viable option. It’s an outside city and I never saw him on the street until he was getting challenged. He got too comfortable until it was too late and it cost him the primary. They also tried to overplay the importance of her 4-year old tweets when everyone has seen how much the republicans have gotten away with recently. I hope this is only the beginning for the country.
"The establishment is not spinning the results because they were ambiguous, but because they were clear. And clarity...is the one thing they cannot let the public see." Stone cold bars right there
Yeah, i knew something was wrong with how people were reading the data. This helps!
Four most common responses I heard canvassing in NY-13 in order of frequency: (1) I have never heard from Espaillat, I didn’t know he was my rep; (2) I’ve already voted/will vote for DAC; (3) I’ve heard bad things about her on TV (still persuadable); (4) No, she’s Haitian and I’m Dominican (not persuadable).
As always, this is a well written and argued take. I have thought for a while that Espaillat was vulnerable because of Black voters, and was happy to see Chevalier take him out. Thanks for writing this thorough analysis!
Wow! Another tour de force! Brilliant and beautiful.
The establishment response is panic dressed as analysis. They cannot say the obvious because it indicts them. Regular Democrats spent decades assuming Black voters would remain institutional, loyal, older, church-tied, machine-friendly, and controllable. But younger Black renters live in a different economy, different media world, different housing crisis, and different political atmosphere. The DSA understands that better than Hakeem Jeffries and Letitia James do. That does not make socialism right. It makes the threat real. The old Democrat machine is losing the next generation because it took them for granted while radicals gave them an identity, enemy, and mission.
“Does it make socialism right?” This isn’t about whether or not socialism is “right” or “wrong” anyway but whether it works. So far, it has worked. DSA is running New York City and people like it so far. They like socialism, they like socialist candidates, and they want to see more. Young people understand that socialism is, at the end of the day, focused on delivering results favorable to working people, whereas capitalism has proven to be a consistent producer of massive inequality and civic decay. “Is socialism business friendly? Is socialism godless? Is socialism WRONG?” Questions in that vein miss the point entirely. The real questions, and the only ones that matters to today’s voters are: does socialism work for the people? Does it address the real-life problems working people face day to day? Does socialism take a different, more positive approach to politics than the tired, ugly crony-capitalism that’s been draining America’s morale for the past 40+ years? The answer to all those questions so far seems to be “hell yes.” Right or wrong, it’s worth a try, because capitalism has demonstrably failed us, and miserably.
I’m not convinced Mamdani etc is really doing much “socialism” but rather closer to “social democracy.” Tbh, I think he’s just “open societies liberalism” à la Karl Popper via his Muslim PAC being funded by Open Societies Foundation (George Soros).
Tbh, you're wrong.
Not expecting him to seize the means of production or abolish private property tbh. I think he’ll just do mild redistribution and fund some new programs .
Okay, terrific, he never said he would seize the means of production. He never claimed to be a Communist revolutionary, and neither did any of his chosen candidates. Nobody I know who supports him expects him to overthrow the bourgeois class. That would be pretty neat, but that’s not what he was elected to do.
Everything he’s doing is something he said he would do back on the campaign trail. These programs he’s promoting are definitionally socialist in nature (not for profit, good governance, publicly-funded, common good-type stuff), and he calls himself a democratic socialist, so it’s safe to say, what he’s doing is socialist, both in spirit and execution. Or call it whatever you want; it’s something new and different, people like it, and it’s working for them, which is all that matters. Calling it “social democracy” wouldn’t change any of that.
Also, c’mon, neither CAIR nor any other ‘Muslim PAC’ funded Mamdani’s campaign, not via Soros or any other means. Let’s not carry water for the NY Post, please?
The Muslim PACs definitely funded Mamdani, your only tactic is denial. He’s not an organic candidate, he’s a media trained rich guy posing as a populist. Basically leftist trump lol.
The stuff you’re describing fits under social democracy or even just basic government. Interesting how the left is now using the old right wing (neoliberal) argument of “socialism is whenever the government does something.” Socialism has a specific definition, public ownership of the means of production and the abolition of private property. It doesn’t mean “popular programs that are working.”
Yes. What has mamdami expropriated?
That’s a different question altogether.
Forget a soldier in the narrative wars, this is Field Marshal work
Great piece! To rebut the charge that gentrifiers are responsible for the wave, though, I do think we need a more refined proxy for class than renter/owner. To state the obvious, a renter who can afford 5000/mo in a luxury building is rather differently situated than a renter with two jobs trying to stay in their rent stabilized apt.
Excellent piece on Breaking Points. Bravo, Michael.
Aren't you performing an analytical sleight-of-hand by assuming that the VAN breakdown for age and race of the presumed electorate in each election district can then be one-to-one assigned to who actually voted? On top of that we all know there are problems with the accuracy of VAN data because people move often and it undercounts or misaddresses young, minority and poor voters at a higher rate. Seems like a bit of a slender reed to carry such strong claims about the nature of the voters you are trying to describe.
On the first question, that's the point of Lange's "Homogenous" analysis, limited to election districts that heavily concentrate one group. I'm interested in discussion of his methodology--but a critique that only looks at one of his two measures, when he uses the second one explicitly as a check against the first, seems off base.
FWIW, political data reporters at the Washington Post (hardly a pro-DSA source) came to a similar conclusion (6/25/26): "A multiracial coalition of young, college-educated voters helped a group of democratic socialist candidates sweep House primaries in New York this week, giving the insurgent wing of the Democratic Party new clout and cementing its hold over the city’s politics....Tuesday’s Democratic primary wins by two Mamdani-backed DSA members, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, would not have been possible without significant support from Black and Latino voters who favored them over establishment candidates."
It’s terrible methodology, which the author probably would have been willing to notice if it didn’t give him the answer he wanted.
That Tish can happily march with war criminals and then turn around to bloviate about this is immensely disqualifying for someone of her stature. She must be primaried out of office.
I’m surprised at how little acknowledgment of the moderates’ failure in 2024, not to mention 2016, there’s been in all of this narrative spinning. The moderates/old guard predicated their entire brand on electability and couldn’t come through when it mattered most. And they keep invoking that boogeyman now, without even acknowledging their abject failure before. Why do they think people will or should trust that they are more electable after two catastrophic strikes on the biggest stage?
Really interesting and great read, as usual. What struck me most is that even facing the inheritor of a dynasty in AD-70 and without the big endorsements, Blackburn still got almost 47%. An insurgent candidate, whether him or someone else, might be able to pull it off it next time.
There is clearly something happening in New York City in particular, as your analysis shows, but I think many want to claim this signals a broader movement outside of NYC and the urban cores of a handful of coastal cities like LA and DC. I don't think *that* broader claim stands up to scrutiny. We aren't seeing many DSA or DSA-adjacent candidates winning in statewide or suburban races. Even in urban areas the results are mixed (look at how relatively more centrist candidates are thriving in San Francisco right now again leftist candidates). AOC's win in 2018 didn't presage a mass movement of leftists knocking out incumbents in primaries across the country then, and I think there's reason to be skeptical again about how much these primary victories presage.
The two exceptions of leftists not being a factor in non-urban races are Platner in Maine and El-Sayed in Michigan, which proves the rule. Both are very charismatic and, in Platner's case, faced very weak opposition, or in El-Sayed's case, has divided opposition. Also worth noting that neither currently identifies with the DSA or calls themselves "socialist". Indeed, Platner's electoral base seems to be more resist libs than leftists.
I'm skeptical of many of your assumptions, but to your last point, I think there's something to the idea that something very similar to what we're doing here could be "resist lib"-coded somewhere else. I haven't been to Maine in a minute, but it's easy to imagine how that could be the shape of things at this point.
So I don't know for sure if it's a perfect example or not, but in general the notion reminds me how much of what happens in politics is about group identity and shared culture, rather than ideology. It's part of why the nationalization of issues can only go so far. Things don't translate 1:1 between cohorts. Everyone has their own Narrative Wars.
The Democratic Party establishment knows this; there's a bunch of Types of Democrats that they keep in mind. I think we're right that universal policies have universal appeal, but I might also suggest that we should expect to need to communicate those policies in multiple styles, and moreover that people will need to be able to build movement spaces that match those styles. For me it raises questions about how DSA envisions itself (or doesn't) within the framework of a broader left, and underscores why it may in the future be beneficial for it to actively support other formations like WFP or, to its left, mutual aid networks -- so that they are not deprived of oxygen and can no longer be onramps to people that DSA cannot (or has not yet worked out how to) reach.
This isn't to say that we should reproduce the cynical weaponization of identity, though there's a fine line. The alternative can't be an enforced monoculture, so I tend to think the best route is a principled pluralism.
AI written article