Mamdani's moderation wasn't just about helping him win
A socialist mayor-elect apologized to the NYPD, kept Jessica Tisch, and softened his line on schools and slogans — and the left voted for him anyway. That’s not cowardice.
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While Democrats overperformed in a special election held last week in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, they weren’t able to clinch a victory.
The fairly conservative district may have gone to the Republicans no matter what, but progressives probably made the race tougher than it had to be. Democrats nominated state lawmaker Aftyn Behn, who was pilloried by right-wing interest groups with ads featuring her comments rationalizing left-wing rioting and support for harassing ICE agents. (Bizarrely, she also courted the overt help of N.Y. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, known as one of the most left-wing members of Congress — not a great way to show that you’re standing in the common-sense middle.)
A lot of Tennesseans are concerned with the state of the economy and think President Donald Trump is overly harsh in the way he is enforcing immigration policy — but they’re not exactly ready to start a revolution. Behn barely tried to put her past comments behind her; in multiple TV interviews, she declined to reject her support for defunding the police.
In the end, Behn failed to present an image of a moderate candidate who has evolved from her younger, more radical years. Her inability to win over enough voters in a more conservative district suggested that Democrats — who need to compete in red states if they hope to hold real power in Washington again — can’t quite breathe easy even after sweeping contests in November.
One of those races last month — where an avowed Democratic Socialist won — showed how moderation can win. Zohran Mamdani took voters’ concerns about affordability seriously, and he was elevated to the role of the first Muslim American to run New York City.
But affordability wasn’t the only thing that helped bring Mamdani to Gracie Mansion. He also had to reckon with the more extreme positions he had taken in the past and understand that pragmatic moderation is not a vice, but a virtue.
It’s not just practical to moderate in order to win elections; there is also a moral responsibility to be accountable and responsive to voters. The left understandably resents the power elites have over political outcomes in this country; they should be careful, lest they become the unaccountable elites they criticize.
Mamdani’s moderation is a lesson
Mamdani, the son of a renowned filmmaker and an academic, was elected to the New York State Assembly in 2020, where he was known as a firebrand progressive. He was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and his politics often involved staking out positions that were to the left of the left.
That included joining the left-wing call in the summer of 2020 to defund police services and, in general, adopting a hostile view toward law enforcement (in one social media post, he referred to the New York Police Department as “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety”).
Yet in the five years since he marched hand-in-hand with the Great Awokening, Mamdani came to understand something: New Yorkers care deeply about public safety and believe that the NYPD is an essential part of that. Policing is not perfect or above the need for reform, but slashing the budgets of public safety departments and insulting their officers will not make the city safer nor reduce police abuses.
So when he ran for mayor, he no longer supported defunding the police, castigating his own past remarks.
“I apologize because of the fact that I’m looking to work with these officers. And I know that these officers, these men and women who serve in the NYPD, they put their lives on the line every single day,” he said during an appearance on Fox News during the general election campaign.
He also went further and retained Jessica Tisch, the NYPD’s popular commissioner, in her role — a move that did not sit well with the far left but probably helped assuage New York City voters’ concerns over crime.
At the same time, Mamdani distanced himself from esoteric left-wing slogans about Palestine like “globalize the intifada” and flipped his position on specialized high schools, coming out in support of testing requirements that are especially popular among Asian-American voters.
All of this amounted to two stunning victories over New York’s former Governor Andrew Cuomo — once in the primary and once in the general election. Mamdani even reportedly earned the praise of former President Barack Obama, who called him twice to commend him on a successful campaign.
None of this would have been achieved if Mamdani had retained the left’s aversion to moderation.
The left hated Mamdani’s moderation — but they still voted for him
It has long been a foundational belief of the left that principle means standing by your values and your positions even in the face of political necessity. In debates among progressives, lefties frequently call each other sellouts or say they are compromised for moderating issue positions or rhetoric. They even tell themselves that moderation doesn’t have any political utility, anyway.
An exchange between Briahna Joy Gray, a progressive pundit known for her scathing criticisms of the Democratic Party from the left, and Nathan Robinson, the founder of the left-wing magazine Current Affairs, is emblematic of this tendency. Gray excoriated Mamdani in September for formally apologizing to the NYPD for referring to them as racist in the past.
“This is a bad idea,” Robinson intoned on Twitter. “Apologies don’t appease bad faith critics. They just embolden them to ask for more, because now they realize they can bully you into groveling. If you show weakness they attack you harder.”
Gray agreed: “Moderating gets you no new fans, does nothing to appease your bad faith enemies, and loses you your base.”
Yet Mamdani did not lose his base. And he won over large swaths of New York voters — like most Black residents — who value the police presence in their neighborhoods, even if they would support reforms to make policing more transparent and accountable.
But did Mamdani win by selling out? Did he sacrifice all of his principles? Do we really win anything at all when we become Republican-lite to win an election? This is the kind of rhetoric you’re likely to hear on the Democratic left.
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