Captain America?

NYC's mayoral candidate has Kennedy-like charisma, a global profile, and nepo baby instincts.

- 

MAN IN THE MIRROR The candidate, on the cusp of 34.

He is also a proud democratic socialist who has both Donald Trump and the left-wing establishment in a lather. JAMES POGUE examines the question of whether Zohran Mamdani is the future of American politics.

It was the primary fight that changed the course of the Democratic Party. A craggy-faced master of insider politics squared off against a suave and handsome upstart, whose youth and relative inexperience masked the fact that he had a very hard-nosed understanding of machine politics. The older man was confident. He sat back and quietly logged support from party dons, donors, insiders. He would step in when the moment was right.

The younger man campaigned at a pace that seemed to test his physical limits. He and his network of supporters badgered every ward heeler and union boss who would listen, often with a simple request that they agree to meet the candidate. Because if you met the candidate, you would be charmed, sure, but you would also learn that he was very serious about this thing, that he intended to win, and that he had plans for what he'd do when he did. He also had a fervent base of support from a bloc of poor immigrants whose values and religion had long been seen as dangerous, alien, and simply un-American. Then he transcended that base. By the time the general election came around, it was hard to imagine that anyone else could have been the nominee. It was 1960, the year Lyndon Baines Johnson lost the Democratic presidential primary to John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

"OH, NO. OH MY GOD."