Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump have a lot in common. California should pay attention

Zohran Mamdani is an elegant and millennial Muslim and born African with a Hollywood pedigree who has just won the Democratic primary in the race of the mayor of New York.

If he sounds like Donald Trump’s worst nightmare, he may well be. But he also looks like her a lot.

They are both charismatic leaders who have shaken up their parties, exploited in current political philosophy which avoids traditional loyalty and, in doing so, made themselves popular with voters above to gain elections when – for many in the political elite – they seem exactly to be the type of candidate who should not be able to vote.

“The people of the working class want someone who really faces the status quo, who pushes an economic populist program and convinces them that something will change,” said Lorena Gonzalez.

She is the head of the Californian labor federation, who represents the unions, and even she is fed up with Democrats.

“There are days when I am, why am I still in this party?” She said. “When I see them comfortable to technology, when I see this problem of abundance that rationalizes workers’ protections, when I see this fascination for billionaires and what agrees not to tax billionaires and do nothing for the control of rents, you know, there is a point where I am, go, walk, develop balls, go and decide that you are for.”

Or, as Trump said in an article on social networks after Mamdani’s victory, “Yes, it’s a great moment in the history of our country!”

Trump is right, words that I do not often say – Mamdani’s victory can report something deeper than the race of a lone mayor on the east coast. People – on the left and right – are thirsty for authenticity, and want someone to believe, be a boomer with orange diapers or a hipster with brown skin.

Democrats, as Mike Madrid said, the political strategist, which has its own tea moment, when populist anger eats the old guard, as it did from 2007, when the extreme right of the republican party began its now successive takeover. Trump has never been the impetus of the party’s swing on the fringe, he has just capitalized on this.

“It is only a populist revolt of the Democratic Party against the establishment base,” said Madrid.

There have been quantities of ad nauseam of pontification on the current state of the Democratic Party. Should he go more centrist? Should he embrace the gradual end? But the truth is that the voters have already decided. They indeed want prices of the grocery store below, as Trump has promised but failed to deliver. But they also want democracy to collapse. And they want to buy a house, and maybe not have their neighbors deported. But really, in this order.

And they do not trust much, if not most of them, current democrats in office to deliver. Like the Republicans before them, they want foreigners (Mamdani, 33, is used for the State Assembly), or at least someone who can look like it.

Gonzalez spends a lot of time talking to the voters and she said to the left and right, democrat and republican, they see few remaining differences between the two parties and are tired of voting for career politicians who have not delivered on economic issues.

Mamdani, whose mother is the director Mira Nair (and who once struck under the name of Young Cardamom), campaigned on “A New York that you can afford”. This included the freezing of payments on the rent -controlled apartments, the construction of new affordable housing with Union workforce, public transport and childcare services and – you guessed it – cheaper races. Whether he delivers or not, these are messages that a large strip of New Yorkers, struggling with all of us with the cost of living, wanted to hear.

And he delivered them not only with credibility, but with an entertainment value which agrees with the influence of his mother: marking him in the style of Bollywood for the South Asian aunts, walking the length of Manhattan to speak with people, jumping in the Atlantic Ocean in a suit with a lean tie.

Charisma and Chutzpah.

Which, of course, is how Trump has made his own, promising ascent, with Showman Verve, being the voice of the voiceless who are increasingly risky to become poor workers. Yes, it is a crook that is clearly for the rich. But still, he knows how to deliver a line at his base: “They eat cats. They eat dogs.”

It may be the biggest lesson for California, where we will soon vote for a new governor in a crowded field – candidates for the establishment. Even Kamala Harris, perhaps especially Harris, adapts to this image of initiates, and certainly Gavin Newsom, despite the zigzag of centrist with pugilist, cannot transmit his presidential ambitions as something other than the old guard.

“What makes someone like Zohran so convincing is even if you do not agree with him on everything, what few voters do, you understand that he believes it and you know where he comes from,” said Amanda Litman, co -founder and executive director of Run for something, a CAP who recruits young progressives to present himself in the elections.

“I think that is the distinction between him and saying someone like Gavin Newsom, who is, as Gavin believes what he says? Is he buying his own bull-it’s a bit clear,” added Litman.

However, the anger of the voters is surprisingly clear, especially for those who have long been faithful to the Democrats. A new PEW analysis this week has revealed that around 20% of the republican base is now non-white, double what it was in 2016. The Republicans achieved gains with black voters, Asian voters and Trump attracted almost half of Latin American voters. Ouch.

“One of the real challenges for democrats is two central parts of orthodoxy is that they are the party of the working class and that they are the party of non -white voters,” said Madrid. “The two are proving to be more and more false, and the question then becomes, well, how to recover them?”

Litman said that the way to capture voters is to direct new candidates, the kind who do not come with history – and luggage. During the 36 hours after the Mamdani election, his organization asked 1,100 people to register to find out more about how to stand in the elections themselves, she said. It is the biggest peak since the inauguration, and it shows that voters are not disinterested in democracy, but alienated from existing options.

“The establishment is not unbeatable. They are not disputed,” said Litman. “And I think that the more the establishment of the Democratic Party, as much as exists, can understand that the people and the manuals that brought us here will not be the people and the manuals that will get us out, the better we will be.”

So maybe there are more Mamdani, waiting to show the way. If the Democrats are looking for advice, Trump may have offered the best I have seen for some time – highlighting the Democrats of initiates / foreigners who, like Mamdani, made their name by clicking on the establishment.

“I have an idea for the Democrats to bring them back to” game “, he wrote on social networks. “After years to have been left aside in the cold, in particular by suffering from one of the greatest losses in history, the 2024 presidential election, the Democrats should appoint the candidate with a weak QI, Jasmine Crockett, the president – and our future communist mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdan and our country respectively.

Or not.

Wouldn’t that be a slate?