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There are two good articles in City Journal discussing Zohran Mamdani. (Here and here) The long and short of it is that Mamdani won for the same reason that AOC won. He had a very good campaign that made him likable and relatable.
His nights at the exclusive Zero Bond club, getting his ear pierced at Claire’s postelection, his Fendi scarf subway moment, his eyebrow-threading video, and most recently, his appearance at the Sands of Persia hookah lounge in Queens—the mayor has Internet-worthy moments to spare. If Adams embraces these episodes and turns viral content into campaign messaging, as Donald Trump has done, he could craft a narrative that feels authentic, relatable, and rooted in his “common sense” political platform.
Until then, Mamdani is running the show and building a movement. The upstart not only won votes but also created a mood. As the line between politics and social-media culture becomes increasingly blurred, that mood may matter more than any platform.
In a similar fashion, there are two essays on Ricochet about Zohran Mamdani that I have particularly enjoyed. (Link and link). While I learned from both of them, I don't think they fully appreciate Thomas Sowell's observation that most people don't go beyond stage one.
Eb Snider described how feedback loops work in engineering, and GrannyDude tries to understand the demographic and philosophic underpinnings behind voting for Mamdani. Both essays require you to think. Meanwhile, most voters see a funny commercial and they vote based on that.
The average Ricochet member is not the regular voter, and I think we forget that. For most people, it's about feelings that are mildly informed by logic. Mamdani gave off better feelings, so he won. It does not need to be more complicated than that.
In response to GrannyDude's request to explain the kind of person who votes for Mamdani, I would suggest the term Vibe Supremacism. A vibe supremacist is a person who judges public policies and politicians on the supreme criteria of how they make the receiver feel. Please note that feelings aren't merely the primary concern of a vibe supremacist. Feelings are the supreme concern. This isn't to say that that vibe supremacists are low-IQ. Undoubtedly, many have Ricochet levels of IQ. It's that logic just doesn't measure up to feelings.
The greatest bias that everyone has is the belief that other people think like them. Conservatives quite often think that
massive numbers of people disagree with their conservatism because they just haven't read the same books that conservatives read. But the differences go much deeper than that.
Discussion (24)
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It may be even simpler than that. I believe Mamdani is the latest Shiny New Thing, and Democrat voters tend to go for the sparkle over the substance . . .
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As Sowell says, they do think that they are morally superior. The fact that reason doesn't factor in to their decisions is irrelevant to them.
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A long time ago, I noticed that progressives/liberals focus on perceived or imagined motivations. If a fellow traveler does something wrong or stupid that negatively affects the country, the actions will be excused because the motivations were good. If a conservative/Repub does something that benefits the country, it doesn't matter to progs/libs because his motivations were most likely greed and self-interest.
So yeah, they do
thinkfeel they are morally superior. Easy to believe when you rely on what was called "situational ethics" long ago.To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
"I think that there's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right." - AOC Circa 2019
What I love about that quote is how it presents reality as being secondary to a person's
moralmorally tinged sentiments.Does AOC do this stuff in her personal life? If she is diagnosed with a cancer and the Doctor says that she needs to begin treatment immediately, does she accuse the Doctor of being morally wrong even if factually correct?
Yet for some reason, in public policy morality can trump reality.
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The odd thing is that, if pressed, these same people would likely insist that there is no such thing as objective morality. Yet their entire world view depends upon them feeling morally superior. I don't get it. I believe it's true ... but I can't wrap my head around it,
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