Politics

Great post and clearly explains the appeal of politicians like Mamdani which have shocked the conventional political leaders. Despite being left of conventional US politics, Mamdani appeals to these non-aligned voters by speaking to the real issues they care about, and importantly, they don't care about his more left stances. This means there is no need to do things like abandon the defense of trans people, Palestinians, etc. to appeal to the center.

However, I think this does raise some important questions for how this winning political coalition (left+nonaligned) can govern. These voters don't have the knowledge or interest to develop concrete policy preferences--they care about attention to their economic issues first, but they also expect results later. This is why this group embraced but later rejected Trump and Biden. And it's why our country seems to be caught in this policy yo-yo between incompatible visions of America. Because the non-ideological voters aren't getting what they need, so the only thing they can do in the next election is throw the bastards out.

So, if a party can actually deliver lasting economic benefits to these voters, they might be able to forge a relatively long-lasting political rule. But how to do this is less clear because the economy is hard to manage and not directly under the control of political leaders. Things are too gridlocked to push through radical changes that have a chance of really improving things, and policies that are small enough to be passed won't have a big enough effect to mollify people who want prices to go down. I predict Mamdani, despite running a brilliant campaign will fail to overcome this problem.