Nicholas Fandos

It's

anti-corporate power.

It's big government.

It's tax the rich.

It's pay for social services to help working people.

And it's pulled the United States away from its alliance with Israel.

And on each of those issues, now they're going to be speaking in a louder way and in a way that, frankly, may cause problems for Jeffries as he looks towards the midterms this fall, where races are not going to be won and lost in deep blue New York City, but in swing districts across the country.

I think there is no doubt, as we've been watching primaries play out across the country this year, and frankly, ever since Donald Trump was elected, that Democrats are really frustrated with their leadership.

They're frustrated that they lost to Trump in the first place, and they're frustrated that they have not been able to stop him from enacting much of his agenda over the first couple of years.

And so in any election like this, I think there is a degree to which voters are coming out to vote against the status quo.

They're going to look at any candidate that's backed by leadership and be against them.

And that's got to be concerning for Jeffries because if that spreads across the country enough, he could end up with an unruly caucus or nominees in close contests that can't win against Republicans.

But I also think that there is something undeniably particular happening in New York City where Mamdani, who is in some ways a product of that discontent himself, is also able to kind of harness it and put a frame around it and direct that energy behind a particular alternative.

And so what I think he did in these races that was risky but also powerful was

was by associating himself so much with these other candidates, he was kind of able to link together races that might otherwise have been sleepy, disparate primaries fought about different things and make them all kind of a referendum on what the Democratic Party is right now, his version versus the status quo.

And so that kind of amplifies both the discontent and it offers a particular alternative and tries to put some force behind it so that it can become, you know, more relevant in national politics.

And

New York City, of course, is in some ways an anomaly, but in some ways it has often been a leading indicator in politics.

I mean, this is the place, after all, where Jeffries is from, but so is Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader.

And it's the place that in 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her own surprise Democratic primary against Joe Crowley.