Mamdani is a Real Person (On The Internet)
Democrats Need to Start Filtering their Candidates for Visible Extracurriculars
Much has been written about NYC Mayoral Primary Winner Zohran Mamdani.
And from the sound of it, he’s an interesting guy. When I googled his hobbies I found this:
More than the sum of his abundant hobbies and hot wife, Mamdani seems like a real person (tm). He talks about places New Yorkers actually go; he probably knows what an art hoe is; he’s the proverbial “kinda guy you’d grab a (craft) beer with”.
Contrast this with what I find when I google the also popular, and possible robot-wearing-a-human-skinsuit, California Governor Gavin Newsom.
The AI summary of my search for his hobbies begins:
His Wikipedia page isn’t any more humanizing and the media hasn’t graced us with anything that allows me to envision him doing more than golfing with someone who might give him additional political power.
ChatGPT can’t even hallucinate an interesting factoid about him.
This isn’t to say that Newsom is a bad guy or that he doesn’t, in fact, have a rich personal life with his loved ones - but this side of him definitely doesn’t show in his media presence, even when I dig for it above and beyond what any normal voter would do.
The Democrats spent a fair amount of time this year arguing that Harvard should be able to keep Asians out of their programs on the basis of the nebulous (and possibly racist) “Personality” statistic collected during admissions. Regardless of what you think of affirmative action, I think Dems should start following their own admissions advice.
As an aside, some people might knock the use of the Google AI summary here but I’m not trying to dig up the objective, factual reality of Newsom or Mamdani. I’m looking for what each candidate can project into the media landscape. That little summary is the first thing someone will see when googling a candidate’s personal life and it is largely representative of the publicly available information on a topic. Here is Mamdani’s for reference:
It’s accurate, specific and generally representative of what I already knew from my organic interaction with his campaign. The AI, for its faults, is a good summarizing tool.
It pains me to say all of this. I don’t mean to put out a hit piece on the politicians who largely agree with me. Policy for policy, I basically hate Mamdani’s agenda and his economically illiterate attempt to fix grocery stores; I love Newsom’s new YIMBY vibe. If I had my way, people like John Kerry, Howard Dean and a few boring semi-libertarian YIMBYs and economists you’ve never heard of would be running the country … but we absolutely know why they aren’t.
When I'm flying, I usually take an Ambien and listen to one of my own speeches on my iPod. I'm out in seconds — Sen. John Kerry
Biden and Harris suffered from this to a lesser degree, although quality matters as well - “woke Auntie” didn’t work as well for Harris as “woke Zaddy” is working for Mamdani and her lack of candid media appearances made people think she was hiding something. Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney (from ‘the before time’), however, were beaten, in large part, because both came across as corporate, power seeking machines. It was so easy to catch them mispricing groceries or downplaying unbelievable rich-people activities and vacations. With no solid personality baseline to fall back on, those attacks were enormously damaging.
In the case of Mamdani’s New York race, the establishment’s boring mistake candidate was disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo whose similarly boring AI summary charitably leaves out his most infamous hobby:
Last year, the Democrats spent a fair amount of time arguing that Harvard should be able to keep Asians out of their programs on the basis of the nebulous (and possibly racist) “Personality” statistic collected during admissions. Regardless of what you think of affirmative action, Dems should start following their own admissions advice. In the age of TikTok(tm), they need to start reading the extracurriculars section of a candidate’s biography carefully before giving them the greenlight for national exposure.
Governor Newsom passes the metaphorical ‘political SAT’ with a perfect score. He has the donor connections, he knows how to fire people up at a rally and he knows how to deliver policy but, if he runs nationally, the Dems risk having another John Kerry on their hands. I just can’t imagine the guy outside of a zoom call about finance, politics or consulting - and the average voter is going to get the same robot-skinsuit vibe every time they see a photo of him smiling during the campaign.
Again, the people I’m criticizing here are good policy-makers, and may be perfectly interesting people in the real world, but that personal interest story needs to show up in a way voters can identify. It’s possible the Republicans will also run a boring policy wonk (one can dream) but, if they run another entertainment genius like Trump, a Newsom-like candidate is going to get cooked on “vibes” the way Cuomo did in New York. It’s time to start recruiting candidates that read as real human beings through the filter of social media era campaigning.