The Collapse of the Professional Left
The state of play in NYC
Four years ago, when I had many fewer readers, I wrote an essay about the fading of the liberal left in New York City. I always felt ambivalent about what I had written because, in the years since, I wasn’t sure how true it would turn out to be. It certainly seemed true to me during the 2021 citywide Democratic primaries in New York. My prediction, in essence, was that New York politics was evolving into a clash between leftists and moderates, with the liberal non-socialist ending up on the outside looking in. From 2021:
With the rise of DSA and the durability of anti-socialist moderates, it’s easy to imagine, years from now, these two factions becoming far more dominant in New York. DSA is highly-organized, with a high ceiling for growth. They’re picky endorsers, which means large slates of socialists won’t enter office together in any one cycle, but their influence has clearly been felt in the state legislature already. At the same juncture, an anti-DSA bloc will inevitably rise: of moderates wary of the socialist label, who are willing to pull closer to the police and real estate. New York City itself has a very diverse ideological electorate and there’s no guarantee that today’s immigrant class, as they age and acquire wealth, won’t evolve in the same direction the Irish and Italians of yore did: toward a patriotic, pro-capitalist, and pro-police worldview. Rising shootings and murder rates can push them there even faster. And then, unable to excite the young socialists and unable to placate the rising tide of people with no interest in their buzzy nonprofits, left-liberals may be left in an uncomfortable place.
In 2025, my predictions seem to have come true—and even faster than I ever could have believed. I did not forecast, four years ago, the top two Democrats running for mayor would be Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani, who was then spending his first few months in Albany. As readers here know, Mamdani is a friend of mine, having managed my lone campaign for public office. I’ve thought very highly of his political talents and believed he would be able to rise, but this mayoral campaign—polling a strong second, hitting the spending threshold for public funds—has far exceeded my expectations. It’s remarkable to watch. Win or lose, he’s obviously a once in a generation talent. What if Barack Obama were actually left-wing and Muslim—and had a better sense of humor? We’ve found out what that’s like.
Of course, Mamdani is not winning. Cuomo, the ex-governor, still is. Cuomo represents that moderate faction I said, back in 2021, was bound to grow. He is unabashedly pro-police, pro-Israel, and hostile to progressives and leftists. Crushing the left has been, for much of Cuomo’s political career, a primary objective. If he wins this mayoral race, he will have whipped but not crushed them, though. That’s because Mamdani has turbo-charged DSA’s growth in New York City and already prepped the socialist group for future battles. If Mamdani finishes second, he will have run, at scale, the most significant left-wing campaign for public office since Bernie Sanders’ two presidential campaigns. Of course, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, by winning, had a great impact on local and national politics, but her defeat of Joe Crowley occurred in a single House district spanning parts of two boroughs. Mamdani is currently running in a race that will see as many as one million Democrats vote.
If Cuomo wins, moderates will have plenty to brag about. But if Mamdani keeps to his polling and rises from where he was last October—0%—to winning somewhere around 30 or 40% of the Democratic electorate after the ranked-choice votes are counted, socialists will have much to hang their red (non-MAGA) hats on. The opposite is true for the liberal left, embodied by the Working Families Party and politicians like Brad Lander. Also known as the professional left, the NGO left, the “groups,” or alphabet left—a term I prefer—they are quietly in shambles. This Democratic primary for mayor has been a disaster for them.