The thing about off-year elections is that there are so few of them that it’s tempting to over-interpret their significance. That’s particularly true when the key races are viewed as tests for a Democratic Party that is terrified about its past and future and unsure of its identity.

Right now the four off-year contests that are getting the most national attention are the mayoral race in New York City, gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, and the Prop 50 retaliatory gerrymandering ballot initiative in California. Prop 50 seems to be gliding toward an easy win. Democratic advantages in New Jersey and Virginia seem fragile . So the really exciting story for Democrats, and particularly for self-identified progressives, is Zohran Mamdani ’s upcoming mayoral victory.

It really

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