What I Read This Week: The Dem Blue Wave Edition
The left scored early electoral victories not just in expected strongholds, but in places they haven't reached in decades and by margins unusual in any election year. Let's read about it.
As I said in my recap about the elections results from Tuesday night: how great did that feel?
Each day of this year has felt like a slow extinguishing of the small but many parts of my broader hope for the future. Every brazen act of criminality or abuse by the Trump administration has been dispiriting and painful. Worse, the opposition party simply laid down under their siege, often times minimized the threat and even suggested the path forward was finding common cause with the vandals of our democracy.
Tuesday felt like the first challenge to this ever-worsening status quo and a repudiation of the politics of surrender.
But the joy is what I’d like to take just a quick a moment to focus on. I don’t just mean our own personal elation, but the communal kind. This piece in the New York Times on Zohran Mamdani’s campaign also being a way to get young New Yorkers unmoored from community to be together is so sharp and incisive. It speaks both to why his campaign was successful as a political project and why their organizing resonated with so many of the disaffected. Critics claim Mamdani’s campaign won because it told the gullible what they wanted to hear, but the available evidence suggests it more so gave them something they deeply needed.
For this week’s edition of the newsletter, I’ve included both pre- and post-election analysis, focusing mostly on Mamdani’s win for mayor of New York City. I’m not an NYC resident, but this race served as the most prominent example of repudiation of Trump’s second administration as much as it was the aging relics of the Democratic party.
Domestic
The amount of monied interests hell bent on stopping Zohran Mamdani is truly a sight to behold.
“Cuomo beat Mamdani in June by 18 percentage points in the Bronx. Last night, Mamdani won NYC’s poorest borough by 11 percentage points.”
The existing fight within the right over MAGA vs. groypers is tearing institutions apart.
Great piece from the conservative side of things of how tired MAGA fearmongering failed to make a dent in Zohran Mamdani’s campaign.
Interesting article here from
arguing the huge Dem gains on Tuesday have the party believing they can retake the Senate in 2026.Andrew Cuomo’s political career is finally and affirmatively over.
The NYPD has a sweeping surveillance project, something now Mamdani is going to be in control. So, what happens to it?
Matt Stoller’s pre-election newsletter got the general tenor of things exactly right.
“The history of literacy is the history of class.”
Good piece explaining why Zohran Mamdani’s biggest foe isn’t Donald Trump, but the old guard of the Democratic party.
Francis Fukuyama takes a look around one year after Donald Trump’s reelection and says things are dire.
David Dayen argues the Dems are clearly winning the perception battle on the shutdown, but also may not get anything from it.
Good piece from the Financial Times on the right being unable to pin their antisemitism problems on the left.
The Heritage Foundation’s support of Tucker Carlson for interviewing Nick Fuentes has produced a gigantic rift in the party over antisemitism, support for Israel and much more.
This guy predicted how the New York City mayor’s race would go block by block and I’d say he got a lot of it right.
Adam Johnson on the end of what once could be considered liberal credibility is both timely and dispiriting.
An interesting look at Zohran Mamdani’s college alma mater not really taking any opportunity to highlight their relationship to him.
Juan Cole has an interesting article explaining that in the wake of Zohran Mamdani speaking Arabic in a political advertisement, there’s debate over Arabic being a “new” language in the country. He argues it’s been here much longer than most know.
Newsrooms are cutting outfits designed to focus on minority communities.
International
The U.S. might start bombing Colombia. No, I’m not kidding.
Very worthwhile and timely piece on the counter-revolutionary acts of the UAE since the Arab Spring.
Much to my surprise, doomsday economist Nouriel Roubini believes Argentina under Javier Milei is on a path to success.
Toronto major Olivia Chow called what’s happening in Gaza a genocide and now the world is crashing on top of her.
The title here says it all: Exxon funded thinktanks in Latin America to spread climate denial.
Tech and Science
Would it surprise you to learn that OpenAI engaged in mass deletion of pirated books it used to train its AI and now it might be in trouble?
Matteo Wong and Charlie Warzel have a piece outlining how the AI crash is going to go.
Taylor Lorenz argues billionaires can’t make good art:
Sports
The Japanese are struggling to provide care to their aging population. One of the solutions being tried to fix this problem? Bodybuilders!
Why is the governor of Louisiana getting involved in the head coach search for LSU?
Pablo Torre appeared on one of my favorite political programs to discuss the NBA betting scandal. It’s a good summation of where we are:
Cheap Plugs
I did a reaction podcast after Ariel Helwani’s bombshell report on the UFC betting scandal:
