Zohran Mamdani.
Who? What the heck is going on in New York City?
We see a spark of articulate passion on the political stage. We can learn something.
I began writing this blog almost 10 years ago, back in August, 2015, after my wife and I attended a fundraising event for Hillary Clinton. We each paid $2,600 for the privilege, and we needed to drive to Portland to see her. I stood six feet from her in the lovely garden of a wealthy person's house, on a lovely day. I heard her speak for an hour. She listed her plans and policies, which sounded reasonable to me: sensible, practical, center-left policies. She was a notch or two more liberal than her husband, Bill.
My takeaway, though, wasn't policy. It was about her presence. Her presentation. I noticed that she wore slipper-like shoes, that she stood having her photo taken with guests and speaking for two hours and 15 minutes without touching a nearby stool. She had stamina, something that Trump tried to make an issue a year later. But most important, I noticed that I was somewhat bored by her speech.
I reflected on my reaction. I tried to adjust the scale to account for my own position in the spectrum of voters. I was a fan -- fan enough to have attended a maximum-gift fundraiser. I have attended events headlined by Bill Clinton.
For goodness sake, I had actually paid an artist to paint a portrait of the Clintons back in 1994, a painting that I have had in my living room for 30 years. If I wasn't thrilled by her, who would be, I wondered? There was no excitement or pizzazz in her talk. She was missing something. That convinced me to go to New Hampshire and other early-primary states to watch political speeches by other candidates and to write about them. And so this blog.
I was up close to watch Trump, Rubio, Cruz, Huckabee and over a dozen other Republicans.
I was up close to watch Hillary, Biden, Sanders, Harris, Warren, and over a dozen other Democrats.
I wrote frankly that Joe Biden could read an OK speech from a teleprompter with a weak voice, but that he could not "sell" anything. He sucked the energy out of whatever he talked about.
I don't vote in New York City, and I don't have a feel for the issues of wealth, cost of living, crime, transportation, and livability of the city, so I won't judge Zohran Mamdani as a candidate. He has said things about Israel, Hamas, police, rent freezes, and wealth taxes that I disagree with, and I don't think he is a successful model for Democrats hoping to win majorities in the two houses of Congress or the White House.
But he has something Democrats should observe. He has the spark. He is fast, articulate, and interesting. He looks confident. He can sell. On that scale of political presentation, he is the opposite of Biden. Here is a very short clip of him:
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| Click: 36 seconds |
I recognize that governing is not show business. But it is a little bit show business, and Donald Trump is the proof of that. Governing in a democracy is about the will of the people, and that makes the politician's job one of salesmanship and persuasion. We aren't electing a package of policies. We are electing a person who can get us to believe he or she should lead us. A political leader is a salesperson.
Democrats will be on the losing side of elections until they wake up to the necessity of having a candidate that voters find interesting and personally appealing. Again, I don't think Mamdani is the guy. But he has the spark and confidence Democrats should demand in a leader. He demolished poor Andrew Cuomo. New Yorkers overlooked a lot of policy disagreement in order to vote for Mamdani.
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13 comments:
We hear about demographic changes in America, it shouldn't be a shock to see them actually happen. Also a very predictable counter to MAGA and the turgid politics of Cuomo.
A fellow American who sees the needs and is stepping up to address them. Shocking!
Shocking...
If the medium is the message, so too to some extent is the messenger?
Tellingly, Mamdani’s base is progressive whites, not blacks and Latinos.
Luxury ideas and fashionable visionaries are affordable for some. For now.
Governing is not about show business. Winning elections is about show business.
Governing is show business, too. A leader needs to explain what he is doing, sell it, sell the benefits, explain some more, sell allies on the benefits of them, too, explaining it. On a 1 to 100 scale, Biden, alas, was a 2 on explaining. Therefore, the solid governing he did was broadly scorned.
Governing is show business, too. A leader needs to explain what he is doing, sell it, sell the benefits, explain some more, sell allies on the benefits of them, too, explaining it. On a 1 to 100 scale, Biden, alas, was a 2 on explaining. Therefore, the solid governing he did was broadly scorned.
Anymore, winning elections seems to be about calling opponents stupid names and making promises only idiots would believe.
Peter,
You can say that again! 😀
Praised by MTG, who called Cuomo a “dirty establishment Democrat”. Those establishment Dems will crush Mamdani as an apostate.
… making promises only idiots would believe.
Free buses, gov’t run grocery stores, improved housing stock via rent control, anti-Israel rhetoric that is somehow, magically, not antisemitic.
There's nothing antisemitic about being against the mass slaughter of civilians.
When murderous terrorist combatants are physically shielded by complicit non-combatant fellow-travelers, even unto sacrificing their own children for the evil cause, that’s not “mass slaughter of civilians”.
Well, perhaps, just not by Israelis…..
There’s something antisemitic about denying Israel the only way it can fight back against Hamas, which hides like cowards behind human shields who are their own fellow Gazans.
A demand that Israel value the lives of those human shields over the lives of its own citizens is a demand for Israel’s hands to be tied. The world’s sole Jewish state is the only country that this is demanded of. Double standards like this, wielded only against Jews, are a historically well-known component of antisemitism.
The mass slaughter of 50,000 or so civilians, the majority women and children, isn't collateral damage - it's deliberate. Inflicting mass starvation on a population is a war crime. What Hamas did to 1200 Israelis was evil. What Israel has done in response is about 50 times worse.
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