My Thoughts on Mamdani and Why 2 Million New Yorkers Just Voted for Socialism
I have so many thoughts on this. Since Wednesday morning I can’t stop deep diving into the Mamdani election results. He was expected to win, so that part wasn’t really too shocking to me. But what absolutely floored me is that over 2 million New Yorkers showed up to vote, the biggest turnout since 1969. This was record-breaking enthusiasm for socialism! HUH? The exit polls are giving us a real snapshot of where young peoples heads are at right now- they LOVE socialism, or at least they think they do…
Anthony and I are both 38, which makes us “elder millennials” and we’re definitely not who Mamdani was talking to. His biggest supporters are Gen Z kids in their twenties who’ve never known a world where a college degree guarantees a good job or where a starter home costs less than half a million dollars. Anthony and I got married at 26 and spent a good majority of our early marriage eating ramen and driving crappy cars so we could throw every penny at our student loans. Date nights meant buying a value pack of craft beer and watching Law and Order because movie theaters weren’t in the budget. I’ve never felt a bigger sense of freedom that came from paying off our final student loans to Sallie Mae (we had 150k combined). We finally bought our first home in CA at 33, which felt impossible during all those years of feeling like we were drowning in debt. But here’s what made the difference: we genuinely believed the math would work if we stuck to it. Budget every dollar, find ways to bring in more money, sell stuff we didn’t need, repeat. We trusted that working the Dave Ramsey plan would actually lead somewhere and it did. These Gen Z voters supporting Mamdani don’t believe that anymore. They think the game is rigged and looking at housing prices (and interest rates!) now versus when we bought just five years ago, I can’t entirely blame them. Their solution terrifies me because I know socialism isn’t the answer, but I understand why they’re desperate enough to try it…
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