Zohran Mamdani’s recent primary win in New York wasn’t just a triumph of social media savvy and grassroots organizing. It marked something rarer: a progressive campaign built on substantive policy, not on reactive posturing against Republicans. In doing so, Mamdani has charted a path the Left has long struggled to find.
Available for purchase at Governor Gavin Newsom’s new “Patriot Shop” is a t-shirt branded as “The Chosen One.” The shirt, yours for $32, depicts an AI-generated image of Newsom surrounded by three men. Their eyes are closed and their hands rest on the governor’s shoulders. “Show your devotion to America’s favorite governor,” the shirt’s description reads. Newsom’s TikTok account has, as of late, taken a similarly ironic tack. Various videos on the governor’s official account, set to a rotating cast of viral audios, splice together unflattering images and videos of President Trump; a video posted on Aug. 30 features an up close shot of bruising on the President’s hands and a clip of him failing to hit a golf ball.
In many ways, Newsom’s marketing campaign has taken up the mantle of Kamala Harris’s famed “Brat” campaign strategy, as the youthful bastion of politics on social media today. When Harris first assumed the status of Democratic nominee last summer, her campaign appealed to youth culture and internet trends; Charli XCX famously declared Harris herself to be “Brat.” Harris’s strategy seemed ideal to me — and to many Americans. The trending videos posted on Kamala HQ felt easily accessible to the teeming American masses looking for community and connection, a stark contrast to Trump’s bombast and polarization. No matter, though — Harris ultimately lost the popular vote to the Republican candidate for only the second time in the 21st century.
The virality of Newsom’s TikToks today, and of Harris’s in 2024, does nothing to remedy the underlying vacuity of their messaging. This method of political posturing and branding reflects a rather scary trend: the influence of Trump across all political arenas. Trump’s particular brand of unbounded sensationalism has infiltrated the American political psyche — and even the most mainstream politicians’ social media pages. And this is a cause for concern. The preferred social media strategy of the Democrats today is not a counter to Trump’s politics. Rather, it’s a direct reflection of them. No matter how ironic his TikTok account’s videos, Newsom’s current branding represents a descent further into a theatrical mockery of current affairs; he is merely falling in line with the state of American politics that Trump helped craft.
The growing sensationalism of politics extends beyond mere social media posts. Take, for example, Newsom’s recent push to redistrict California, a reaction to Republicans’ moves to redistrict Texas. Newsom’s Proposition 50 would temporarily override California’s independent map drawing commission, creating districts more favorable to Democrats. However, gerrymandering is currently illegal in California (importantly, it was Democrats who initially campaigned to create the law banning gerrymandering). The contradictions of this strategy, then, are evident. What is more troubling, though, is that this policy is purely a knee-jerk reaction to Republican dysfunction.
To live in this political climate means that new strategies will be necessary, as new attacks on democracy arise every day. But Newsom’s aim to redraw congressional districts aligns with the America that Trump has created: a country of heightened partisanship and an impossibility of governance without spectacle.
Contrast these tactics — social media smoke and mirrors and the false presentation of a campaign as “in touch” — with Zohran Mamdani’s strategy in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. He — and a team of flesh and blood volunteers — walked the length of Manhattan four days before the election, speaking face-to-face with voters and advocating for his platform. As many Democratic campaigns pivot their efforts toward presenting a brainrotted version of the Left, Mamdani’s campaign represents a back-to-basics approach. New Yorkers did not care about how many Trump edits or AI images a candidate could generate; they wanted a better economy for themselves and their families. Mamdani won the primary by 12 points.
Mamdani’s success demonstrates that American politics does not demand capitulation to politics without substance. In fact, his success necessitates a broader rebellion against the recent politics of the Left: their appeals to centrism and reliance on attacking an enemy rather than promoting themselves. Mamdani’s campaign is one of the most radical campaigns in recent history to gain such traction. He is an established member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He ran against Andrew Cuomo, a politician who, even if disgraced, enjoys powerful name recognition. Mamdani’s success in America’s largest city, then, serves as a rebuttal of conventional wisdom. New Yorkers, and the American public at large, are not guided by an understanding of the radical as necessarily wrong. Even still, amid America’s fractured and polarized state, the people care about policy. Politics is inherently personal, and Mamdani figured out how to strike a rare chord between the two.
As Eric Lach wrote for The New Yorker about Mamdani’s campaign, “This race wasn’t just about old New York versus new New York; it was about the politics of the visible (tweeting, door-knocking, organizing) and the invisible (power, relationships, familiarity.) Mamdani is on people’s phones and on their streets, his volunteers wear his merch, and he offers explicit promises.”
Lach’s identification of the “politics of the visible” highlights a significant source of tension for the Left at the current moment. The policy should make the messaging, not the other way around. Mamdani’s campaign, in some ways, mirrors Trump’s own strategies — the simplicity of his messaging, the populist sentiment. Interestingly, Mamdani also won many districts of New York City that swung towards Trump in 2024. “Brighton Beach went for Trump by 44 points. Last week, we won it by 16,” Mamdani said in a video posted after his victory. “College Point was a plus-11 Trump neighborhood. We took it by eight points.”
But crucially, Mamdani’s messaging aligns with his own policies. Trump’s messaging — painting him as a man of the people — is directly in contradiction with his politics, a politics that has systemically estranged Americans from their government. A good example of this is Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which will result in up to 12 million Americans losing their health coverage by the end of the next decade and reduce food benefits for low-income Americans.
Newsom’s messaging is similarly removed from his political platform — in that his branding does not reflect anything of substance about his beliefs. Yes, it may be mere trolling; it may elicit an occasional chuckle (A Sept. 5 TikTok on Newsom’s account features a photo of J.D. Vance photo-shopped onto a suit, set to Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance,” in a nightclub setting, wiggling around the screen). But it doesn’t matter how in touch Newsom’s 21-year-old interns are. A humorous TikTok account does not truly show anything about the governor’s own platform. Harris’s campaign was visible, that’s for sure. Brat green saturated the summer of 2024. In the end, that didn’t matter; what was visible was certainly not her platform.
Indeed, Mamdani’s “politics of the visible,” to use Lach’s term, identifies a key source of the resonance of his campaign with so many Americans — that he embraces politics as a distinctly nonparasocial act and that he rejects the Trump-ification of political discourse and online engagement. This isn’t to say that Mamdani’s campaign doesn’t use virality to its advantage. As Mamdani said during the June 12 debate, in what would become an oft-circulated quote, “To Mr. Cuomo, I have never had to resign in disgrace. I have never cut Medicaid. I have never stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA. I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment… And I have never done those things because I am not you.”
There is, certainly, immense value in social media as a means of political messaging. Mamdani’s campaign did this well. His graphic design harkens back to a distinctly New York aesthetic, a welcome contrast to the amorphous internet sensibilities of many of Newsom’s videos. Clips of Mamdani are shot in film, and infographics on his page encouraging New Yorkers to vote employ a deli-esque bright blue and orange. One video depicts New Yorkers participating in a scavenger hunt organized by Mamdani’s campaign that led voters throughout various city landmarks. A participant said of the scavenger hunt, “We saw today what this campaign is all about, which is a love of New York City.”
In this, Mamdani is not building just a campaign but a community. His campaign shows how social media, at its best, can be used: in line with one’s messaging, with room for displaying personality but also presenting a legitimate vision for the future. Social media should be an active tool for messaging. But in order for this to be effective, the left must have a meaningful message to convey. Mamdani shows that the left need not capitulate to meaninglessness, that there is a real and necessary balance to be found between joy and genuine advocacy.
What is so inspiring about Mamdani is that his policy is the point of his campaign. That passion for policy shows through in his speeches, in his campaign slogans — “A New York You Can Afford,” “Freeze The Rent,” “Fast and Free Buses” — and even in that video of him criticizing Cuomo. Mamdani is passionate. That passion has carried him to success; he currently holds a 22 point lead, less than two months out from Election Day. And Mamdani’s candidacy will, hopefully, lay the groundwork for the future of the Left — a Left made up not of AI-generated gimmicks, but a politics of ideology, principle, and purpose.
Featured Image Source: CNN Politics
