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By Dan Walters
OPINION (CALMATTERS) – The Democratic Party’s eight months of internal debate, recriminations and soul searching that followed Donald Trump’s win and Kamala Harris’ loss in last year’s presidential duel got another jolt last month, when an otherwise obscure 33-year-old state legislator finished first in New York City’s mayoral primary.
Many Democratic leaders have concluded that Trump’s win was rooted in the image of their party reflecting priorities of college-educated coastal elitists rather than everyday issues affecting blue-collar families, such as inflation, crime and immigration.
The remedy, many concluded, lies in turning a bit to the right, downplaying such issues as climate change and paying more attention to bread-and-butter concerns.
However, the surprise primary win in New York by declared “democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani, making him the favorite to become mayor of the nation’s largest city, creates a new wrinkle in the Democrats’ post-election debate.
Mamdani stressed the cost of living and other working class issues, promising that if elected he would make life easier for New Yorkers. He’s advocated for rent freezes, increases in minimum wages and having the city open its own grocery stores to drive down food costs.
Mamdani’s emergence as a new party leader with a pronounced left-of-center campaign resonates a continent away in California, a one-party state whose dominant Democrats are often divided along ideological lines, pitting Mamdani-like progressives against business-oriented moderates.
In the main, progressives have been losing ground to the mods, even in the San Francisco Bay Area, the bluest region in a deep-blue state. Daniel Lurie’s recent election as mayor of San Francisco, on pledges to balance the city’s deficit-ridden budget and crack down on street crime, is one indication of that trend. The recall or rejection of other Bay Area progressive officeholders in recent elections is another.
As the political website Politico noted recently, “Zohran Mamdani’s rise in New York enraptured progressives across the country. But for activists in San Francisco, it’s a sobering reminder of just how far they’ve fallen in this onetime bastion of progressivism.”
