By Perry Bacon

Copyright newrepublic

Through all this, what Mamdani hasn’t really done is abandon his policy positions. He had been a much more left-wing figure in the past, speaking in favor of defunding New York police for example. But for his primary campaign, he settled on a more modest platform instead of running on all of the ideas from his Democratic Socialist of America allies. Those ideas, like public grocery stores, of course are still fairly left-wing, but they’re less attack-able from the center.

In the general election, Mamdani has met business executives, police officers, and others outside of his base. He has apologized for anti-police rhetoric that he used in 2020 and distanced himself from the phrase “globalize the intifada.” What Mamdani has not done is sideline any of his major policy proposals. Nor has he had made commitments to centrists that would probably undermine his mayorship, such as keeping anti-reform Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch in her post.

You can see how Mamdani’s approaches could be used by progressive candidates running for major offices in heavily Democratic areas. Courting the establishment’s political support without bowing to its policy demands isn’t that hard in, say, Boston. But Mamdani’s general election campaign also offers lessons for Democrats running in red and purple areas, and nationally. Candidates seem inauthentic and unbelievable when they are constantly switching positions. It may have been wise for Harris to drop many of her 2019 liberal primary campaign pledges during her 2024 general election run. But her reluctance to do interviews and her wooden performances when she did sit for them happened in part because Harris was struggling to explain why her stances were so different compared to five years earlier. Her line that attempted to square this circle—“my values haven’t changed”—just wasn’t convincing.