Can the Mamdani machine kill the Democratic establishment?

Last year’s New York primary night, when a young Muslim socialist beat the odds and toppled the worst kind of establishment candidate, was a hard act to follow. But last Tuesday proved worthy of its own place in the city’s political history.

A slate of young and largely unknown socialists up and down the ballot swept through bitterly contested races, with the boost of America’s most popular mayor — most notably the eccentric Ph.D. student Darializa Avila Chevalier in the 13th District and Assemblywoman Claire Valdez in the 7th District. The wins should leave leftists across the country wondering whether the surest career move is to become a Democratic Socialist of America and Justice Democrats recruit. Both of this year’s star “Mamdanites,” as the New York Post dubbed them, are transplants to the city they are poised to remake.

The Democratic Socialists have proven to be anything but amateur, outorganizing and out-messaging a flailing municipal Democratic establishment still reeling from its failed effort to install Andrew Cuomo in Gracie Mansion. But are they poised to “kill” the Democratic establishment nationally? Or will what happened in New York stay in New York?

Establishment leaders were quick to point out progressive candidates’ worse results elsewhere across the country. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) described the New York socialist wave as high-income, transplant-centered and confined to “the most gentrified district in the nation, by far” (the 13th District, worth noting, sits near the top of the national poverty scale.)

And yet, as Peter Rothpletz observes, New York is hardly some uniquely radical city. It elected Eric Adams four years ago. I agree with him that the prevailing Democratic “Tea Party of the left” narrative remains too crude, and too premature, to explain what is........

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