Of all the words I just wrote to describe Mamdani, the most important one is this: authentic. I have spilled a lot of ink criticizing progressives for their bad ideas, purity politics, intolerance, and groupthink. Mamdani is unabashedly progressive, but he somehow avoids seeming preachy — he is not insufferably condescending, he doesn’t lecture about language use, and he doesn’t practice purity politics. He focused entirely on persuasion — pitching people outside the progressive base that he’s right about kitchen-table issues, and the old Democratic guard is wrong. In short: He’s a great politician.

He’s already abandoned one of his more controversial positions, promising to “work with the police” to reduce their burden by hiring more cops as well as more social workers rather than “defunding the police.”