Dave Weigel

It was...

Really unsurprising.

The president's been kind of boring, frankly, about New York.

And you could tell that Zoran was bored in talking about it.

He was a very on message candidate, kind of famously.

It was a very funny interview he did with Ari Melber where Melber dares him to connect everything he can back to the cost of living.

Yeah, right.

But, yeah, it wasn't a secret.

I think what Republicans and Trump would tell anybody that would listen, oh, we want this guy to win so we can use him as his foil in every every district.

And Senate Republicans had a memo today saying we're going to here is how every single person running against we're going to tie to Mamdani in some way.

And.

I think the way it played out in New York, there's so many inputs that went into this.

This is the highest turnout for a New York mayor's race since I think the Beatles were still a band.

The selector was very different.

Lots of things influenced it.

Andrew Cuomo going around begging people to drop out, that helped him.

But...

The premise of Trump criticizing Mamdani was often I don't like his policies and I will hurt the city and take its money away to punish him.

Cuomo kind of went along with that, the whole protection racket idea of the president and saying he's going to eat you alive, but I know how to deal with them.

And.