Despite what Sinatra would have us believe, if you can make it in New York it doesn't mean you'll make it in the mid west or any of the purple states. (Democrats haven't had a vote share lower than 65% since the 00s I think)
Yes, a record number came out to support him but almost as many came out to support anyone but him :(
My hope is that for all the naysaying, Mamdani turns out to be a technocrat in the Sewer Socialist model and shows the country socialism ain't so scary. The whole "laboratories of democracy" in action.
Really? NYC? On almost every metric it leans heavily Left. It has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, declared itself an asylum city, had Attorney Generals essentially running on a campaign of "I will indict trump", has some of the strongest LGBTQ+2S protections in the country, has some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country, has ambitious climate goals...
Even their "Republican" mayors run on platforms that would never fly in the republican party. When Bloomberg ran, he campaigned on free busses, raising taxes on the rich, community grocery stores etc.
But, when we're talking Zohran, we are talking, generally, economic progressive issues, i.e., raising taxes on the wealthy, free busses, community grocery stores (like republican Mike Bloomberg!) rent control etc. (Personally, I think these are generally workable, though I don't think Zohran actually has the authority to do a lot of what he's promised but that's a whole different issue)
I dunno. The argument on the progressive Left has, for years, been that if the Democrats would only field a truly progressive candidate, people would come out of the woodwork to support them and the Dems would coast to victory. And in Zohran, we pretty much got a perfect avatar of the progressive Left. And in some senses, the progressive Left was correct, folks did come out of the woodwork to support him with landmark turnout! But, almost half of the people in one of the most progressive cities in the nation came out to say No.
Maybe not in blood red states but in the states that the Democrats could conceivably win (the midwest, Georgia etc) the margins are thin. And if our kind of ideal progressive candidate can only squeak through in one of the most progressive places in the country, it is very hard to imagine we could pick up anywhere where we need to.