Mamdani
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Some perspective:
Zohran Mamdani and Abigail Spanberger, both victorious in yesterday's US elections, offer two competing visions for the future of the Democratic party. His background is affluent and highbrow; her parents were a police officer and a nurse. His worldview is just the combination of blame-Israel-and-America-first third-worldism and modish socialism you'd expect from a child of privilege; she, while decidedly liberal, is far nearer the political center of gravity and, for instance, supported Trump's bombing of Iran.
Mamdani has never really had a career outside politics; Spanberger was an operations officer with the CIA, giving her credibility on national security, as well as a concrete sense of how the real world works. He, for all his genuine charisma, could never be elected outside a deep blue metropolis like New York City; she just won statewide office, and will succeed a Republican governor, suggesting her brand of politics has real crossover appeal. He openly embraces the "socialist" label, anathema to most American voters; she has openly called on Democrats to avoid it like the plague. And so on. In other words, Spanberger's model of political success is one that can and should be transferrable while Mamdani's victory only proves that any number of toxic views and associations can be overcome, if you have the good fortune to run against deeply compromised opposition in one of America's most left-wing cities.
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Sliwa's being quite the asshole about the whole thing.
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Bloomberg agrees with me, and Hochul is not on board.
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