Outside Rep. Adriano Espaillat’s primary night party, four men on the sidewalk were dressed in full neon sequins, trying to get the party started. Inside, the bar had barely opened.
Espaillat spent 20 years trying to get to Washington and another 10 years in Congress. He arrived to give his concession speech and left in under 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, the real party was going on about three miles away. That’s where Zohran Mamdani was completing his victory lap of three celebrations with candidates who likely would not have gotten near Congress without his endorsements, just a year after he stunned the political world by beating Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary.
IMO, savvy supporters of his should start flipping these silly phrases on their head. Like:
“We’re not burning bridges, we’re replacing stubborn gatekeepers.”
or
“We’re not burning bridges, we’re building new ones to the workers who feel abandoned.”
or
“We’re not radical leftists because what’s more centrist than speaking to the heart of America, it’s working class?”
or even
“Washington doesn’t have a ‘lack of centrists’ problem, it has a self-centerist problem.”
When they say that it’s “allyship on my terms” that is me not giving in to establishment demands. That’s me not giving concessions on your behalf to corporate megadonors and the politicians supporting them. I am here to represent you, the people, who elected me and I won’t back down. We will have our terms, not the billionaires.
If I were Mamdani