Will a Mamdani Victory Push the Democrats Further Left?

Plus: Virginia and New Jersey governor’s races, a court ruling extending SNAP funding during the shutdown, and Trump’s tariff fight reaches the Supreme Court

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Will a Mamdani Victory Push the Democrats Further Left?

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This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch discuss the upcoming New York City mayoral election and what a Zohran Mamdani victory could mean for both the city and national politics. They weigh the best-case/worst-case scenarios of a leftward turn in New York, asking whether Mamdani represents a lasting anti-AI socialist movement or simply the newest iteration of the Democratic big tent.

The editors then turn to the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey, where Democratic wins would signal continued strength for the party's centrist wing. They examine a federal judge's order requiring the government to keep SNAP funded during the ongoing shutdown, and then analyze Trump's tariff case as it heads to the Supreme Court and what a ruling could mean for presidential trade powers. Finally, a listener asks whether libertarians who work in the defense industry are violating their principles or simply operating within the system as it exists.

0:00–The best-case scenario and worst-case scenario for a Mayor Mamdani

8:09–Gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia

20:04–SNAP benefits and shutdown politics

29:32–Does the GOP have an Obamacare alternative?

34:57–Listener question on ethical contradictions

44:37–Tariffs case reaches the Supreme Court

55:05–Weekly cultural recommendation

Mentioned in This Podcast

"The Democratic Thrill for Mamdani Is a Tell," by Matt Welch
"Will Democrats Find Their Way?" by Liz Wolfe
"Mamdani's Socialist Mayorship Will Make New York a Worse Place To Live and Do Business," by Nick Gillespie
"Zohran Mamdani's $5 Billion Corporate Tax Hike Threatens NYC's Status as the World's Financial Capital," by Filippo Borello
"3 Reasons Why Zohran Mamdani's City-Run Grocery Stores Will Fail," by Natalie Dowzicky
"New York City Is About To Elect a Socialist Mayor in Zohran Mamdani. Why Won't This Failed Ideology Die?" by Zach Weissmueller
"About 1 in 5 Kids Are at Risk of Losing SNAP. Centralized Control Keeps Failing Low-Income Families," by Romina Boccia and Tyler Turman
"SNAP Stops," by Liz Wolfe
"In Tariff Case, Trump's Attorneys Can't Decide if Foreign Investment Is Good or Bad for America," by Eric Boehm
"Trump Hopes To Bully SCOTUS Into Upholding His Tariffs," by Damon Root
"Trump's Tariff Tantrum Proves He Shouldn't Have That Power," by Joe Lancaster
"In Yorgos Lanthimos' Bugonia, Elites Are Alien Creatures," by Peter Suderman
"I'm Just A Shill (FT. Zohran)," by Andrew Cuomo

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Video Editor: Ian Keyser

What are we consuming this week?

Nick Gillespie

• In Waves and War, directed by Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen

Katherine Mangu-Ward

• 3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years (The Time Traveler's Passport), by John Scalzi

Matt Welch

• Game 7 of the World Series

Peter Suderman

• Bugonia

---

Comments

[KARl hungus]

I want Mamdani to win just because it will piss off Liz Wolfe.

Viva la Raza!!!

[Chumby]

Make Gotham Like Shithole Portland

MaGoLiShPo

[Lester75]

If you think Portland is a shithole, you should go to Memphis.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

Yeap. Still a bore.

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

Dick Cheney dead at 84……

https://www.newsmax.com/us/dick-cheney/2025/11/04/id/1233095/

[Mother's Lament]

"I want Mamdani to win just because it will piss off Liz Wolfe."

100% expected of you. Zero surprises there.
...and also because he'll try and institute a communist dictatorship all while sporting the magic (D).

[KARl hungus]

“...and also because he'll try and institute a communist dictatorship all while sporting the magic (D).”

Another wild accusation or outright lie from Sk’elep.

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/health-services-benefits/medical-assistance-dying.html

[Chumby]

Hoping NYC gets Mamdani’s entire agenda. It will be glorious.

[mad.casual]

[fingers crossed] AOC's face gets covered and we never hear from her again.

[JohnZ]

And they will get it, good and hard.

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

Popcorn! Get yer popcorn heah!

[Longtobefree]

BEER!
This calls for beer. Lots and lots of beer.

[Chumby]

But not at an empty shelves govt run co-op grocery store.

[JohnZ]

Envision long lines of hungry people waiting for their daily share of some nasty bread baked by camel humpers.
A scene out of Lenin/Stalin's Russia.

[Social Justice is neither]

Further left than the murderous psychopaths they already are? Ask #Redwedding Welch how much further left he and the other psycho with his surname can go, or ask the Dem Virginia AG candidate. No, they've gone feral and now the cultural rabies that is leftism needs to be burned out by any means necessary.

[Longtobefree]

If they move further left they will fall off the edge of the world.

(just before global climate warming change destroys it)

[Rick James]

Will a Mamdani Victory Push the Democrats Further Left?

You've got to be joking me with this question...

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

They think democrats are still the moderates. See how many said they were voting for Kamala. How many voted for Biden.

[JohnZ]

ANTIFA is just a ..........

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Private militia for the Democrat party?

[Lester75]

Bunch of unemployed guys living in their parent's basement who like to wear black hoodies.

[Rick James]

*thinks back*

Me in 2012-2013: What's up with this cuckoo bananas Democratic party?

Reason: Ugh, omg with the kultur war stuff! Let's agree to disagree!

*high speed tape audio sound*

2025 Reason: What's up with this cuckoo bananas Democratic party?

[Chumby]

Give Ron another 8 years and he might figure out covid.

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

Will a Mamdani Victory Push the Democrats Further Left?

I hope so.

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

I hope it pushes them so far that Americans finally develop the will needed to exterminate the Marxists and destroy the Democrat party for all time.

It shouldn’t take much.

[shadydave]

Further? So like the liquidation of the Kulaks is next?

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

They already call for that, and act on it

[LIBtranslator]

After 25 muted mindless mudflinging MAGAts this mental midgit shows up as #26. The looters are REALLY worried about these Reason Roundtables.

[mad.casual]

Will a Mamdani Victory Push the Democrats Further Left?

You mean like defending fiery protests as mostly peaceful, equivocating on vaccine mandates and passports, defending the grooming, brainwashing, and castration of children with "Get over your evil, conservative moral panic, this is just about bathrooms.", and advancing an open borders agenda with "Kyle Rittenhouse shouldn't have been there."?

Do you mean that far, evil, and stupid Left or even further than that? Because, Nick "If rural Americans are feeling left behind, why don't they just move to the city?" Gillespie, I'm going to need you to be more clear about what's further left. When I and half the population guessed 3 decades ago what was further left, we had no idea how utterly untethered basally immoral and dishonest you sick fucks actually are.

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

If you added in the left becoming more fully morbidly obese that would fit DemJeff to a ‘T’.

[Juliana Frink]

One thing you can ALWAYS count on with these Reason podcasts:
Goony looks and eye-rolling, sneering expressions. It's probably because they realize most people won't read or view the content so they have to front-load their belittling of reality.

Or maybe it's just the weed.

[LIBtranslator]

Compared to what? Goony-eyed Christian National Socialist reciting heads or Sharknado International Communist reciting heads? Which?

[Ersatz]

Get a grip man!
You're reacting like he just violated your granny.

[JohnZ]

I expect Mamdani to win the election, then watching every business leave the city like people running from a burning building.
It will be glorious to watch as the Big Apple becomes so rotten the stench will invade everyone's nostrils to the Mississippi.
To the people of N.Y. City: if you vote for and elect this clown, you deserve everything that happens. Don't complain, shut up! You have no right to complain.
You voted for it much the same way people in L.A., Chicago and Oakland have and deserve.

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

The silver lining for you is that he will go after the Jews.

[Weigel's Cock Ring]

New York Shitty might be the most overrated place on earth anyway, and the election of this worthless communist assclown will make it a VERY easy decision for even more high net worth individuals and businesses to finally pick up stakes and relocate.

Besides the food (which admittedly is really good), I'm not sure why any intelligent, rational, industrious, sane person would want to live there in the year 2025 anyway, unless they're the sort of weirdo who loves Broadway musicals. You can make just as much money running your financial institution or hedge fund out of Miami-Dade County, Phoenix, Arizona, or even Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for that matter. The high speed internet is just as fast and reliable in all these places as it is in lower Manhattan now.

[mad.casual]

(which admittedly is really good)

Never understood this. Never will. All the "America doesn't have a/it's own national cuisine" arguments apply double to New York. Even Tim Walz' hot dish is more distinct and uniquely identifiable.

The closest they get is New York-style retroactive branding on dishes produced the same way everywhere else without any real creativity beyond a disregard for any existing particular method or style.

[SRG2]

The only argument in favour of Mamdani being elected is that it will provide practical evidence that socialist bullshit doesn't work - as if more evidence were needed.

The true hard left almost always make the mistake of thinking that when the right start losing support, this is their chance to get in there, so they try to move the party further left and they fuck it up. It's almost their SOP.

[LIBtranslator]

We're getting ample evidence EVERY forking day that Christian National Socialism doesn't work--other than to shoot South Americans and hire Trojan Horse saboteurs to turn the LP into another Just-Say-Nein Hitlerjugend. How about something NON socialist for a change?

[LIBtranslator]

Idi Amin is my yard man
Mows the lawn does the best he can
Kinda scary but he looks so grand... (Reggae bis)
Well he came from Uganda a few weeks before
Find a job as a dictator
The dictator's jobs were just too few
So he waited the tables at the VFW

[LIBtranslator]

Remember when Barak Obama Bin Hussein LAUGHED at the idea of cops NOT shooting kids over weed? Shrillary also LAUGHED at the very idea until 19 million people voted libertarian in November 2016.

[jabbermule]

A better question would be: Is it possible for the Dems to go any further left without becoming full-blown anarchists?

[LIBtranslator]

Mamdani is the same thing as republicans: islamic sharia law girl-bulliers. It is another losers-adopt-winner policies creep-out.

[LIBtranslator]

Ron Paul, the race suicide girl-bullier infiltrating and wrecking the LP? Nice ethnocratic populist Kool-Aid, Matt.

[LIBtranslator]

Bamberger against initiation of force in 1991. That was the year George Holy War Bush demanded a “real death penalty” meaning: kill marijuana smokers.

[LIBtranslator]

A real free market in healthcare was precluded by Woodrow Wilson Herbert Hoover and the League of Nations urging customs to shoot people for production and trade. Obamacare was hospitalization for narcs shot in reprisal by people they coerce.

[LIBtranslator]

Linguists work for contractors that turn out to have CIA, DEA, FBI, KGB and Geheime Staatapolizei clients. Also for the occasional foreign government those worthies infiltrated, black-bagged, coerced and intimidated. But that I am forbid to tell, there is an unfolding tale whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes to start from their spheres, and each particular hair to stand on end, like quills upon the libertarian porpentine. In a nutshell, politics, as she is, is not always a pleasant thing.