Charismatic leaders can roll their base

Plus a detailed explanation of something obscure Chuck Schumer did in 2008

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at a press conference. (Photo by Anadolu)

Over the weekend, I went with some friends to see “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.”

None of us knew anything about it — we’d never seen the Canadian web series and television show that it’s based on — and just went on the basis of Sean Fennessey’s strong recommendation. It’s really funny! But also kind of sweet. And includes some fascinating “How did they do that?” movie magic. I recommend it highly.

I also recommend the act of going to the movies. One issue with the modern paradigm, in which it takes a lot to get people out and into the theaters, is that by the time your butt is in the seat, expectations have often been ratcheted up to a point that it takes some of the fun out of the movie. But the three films I’ve seen this year without knowing much about them — Nirvanna, “The Housemaid,” and “Send Help” — are all movies with strong points and weak points, and because I just saw them casually without much in the way of expectations, I had a lot of fun.

Now for this week’s questions.

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Stale: You have said that the purpose of charisma is to streamroll your own base. Can you expand on what you mean by that? It seems weird to me that Dem pipeline or machine hasn’t produced a politician with Obama or Clinton level skills yet. I wonder if structurally after Bernie, it is impossible for such a politician to come from the moderate wing. And that’s why the closest figure with Obama/Clinton level skills is from the left left (Zohran). Did we have such clear factions back in the day? I think Bernie fundamentally changed internal Dem party dynamics and it remains an underexplored reason why we haven’t had a charismatic moderate since then.

What I mean by this is just look at Zohran Mamdani.

In office, he has not suddenly remade himself as “a moderate,” but we’ve seen — starting with the decision to re-appoint N.Y.P.D. Commissioner Jessica Tisch — that he has been grappling with the realities of municipal governance, and doing that requires a lot of pragmatism.

You see that also in the fact that he has forged constructive working relationships with Hakeem Jeffries and Kathy Hochul. One of the terms of those relationships seems to be that he has undercut left-wing primary challengers to both of them, leading both challengers to drop out.

That’s smart politics. Those challenges were unlikely to succeed, and even if they did they wouldn’t really have achieved anything for Mamdani. And Mamdani, uniquely, has the credibility to cut those challengers off at the knees. In exchange, it’s not like Hochul has joined the Democratic Socialists of America, but she is being nice to Mamdani and working with him on a child care proposal that she’s willing to give him credit for.

Beyond that, though, Mamdani acknowledged this week that New York City’s current spending commitments are incommensurate with its tax revenue. Whatever tax increases he manages to get through are more likely to be run-of-the-mill local property taxes than special taxes on billionaires, and the money will be used to reduce the need for spending cuts, not to do big, exciting new stuff (one good reason for the left to embrace YIMBY reforms is that unleashing new market real estate is good for the tax base and gets you out of these austerity dilemmas).

His approval rating is (so far) going up in the midst of this drama, as a slice of New Yorkers who didn’t vote for him decide that he’s a smart guy and the sky is not going to fall.

But what about the New Yorkers who did vote for him? Well, that’s where charisma comes in.