Democrats cannot afford to model future on Mamdani

Zohran Mamdani is guaranteed his place in the history books. At 34, he is the youngest person to become mayor of New York City in more than a century. He is the first Muslim mayor in a city that suffered the most destructive act of Islamist terrorism anywhere on September 11, 2001, and he is a Democrat who describes himself as a democratic socialist and espouses a left wing agenda - left wing by US, rather than European standards, perhaps - in the city that has long stood as the centre of global finance.

- MARY DEJEVSKY

His election set other records, too. At more than 2 million, the turnout was more than double that of the mayoral election four years ago; Mamdani won more than a million votes - the only candidate to reach that total since 1969 - and he took more than 50 per cent of the vote, with former state governor Andrew Cuomo, standing as an independent, taking 41 per cent; the Republican, Curtis Sliwa, trailed with 7 per cent. No one can complain that Mamdani does not have a democratic mandate.

As he declared in his victory speech, what is more, the stage could now be set for an epic duel - not just between two master communicators and instinctively populist politicians, Mamdani and the US president himself, but between the political and financial capitals of the United States. Mamdani clearly set up such a contest in his victory speech, when he said he had no doubt Donald Trump was listening and told him to “turn the volume up”.

Taken together, all the elements of Mamdani’s success - plus, it might be added, the arrogance and insolence to assume he has a direct line to the president - cannot but offer US Democrats a potentially tempting recipe for renewal in advance of the midterm elections this time next year, and the presidential election in three years’ time. Such a recipe has to be particularly attractive at the end of a year in which the Democrats have seemed to languish, devoid of the will and the ideas to mount a serious challenge to Trump in his second term. While there are undoubtedly points for the Democratic Party mainstream to note, however, there have to be questions about how far Mamdani’s victory could or should translate into a comprehensive template for the Democrats.