Is Zohran Mamdani’s “Sewer Socialism” Resonating?
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2026
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
The New Yorker staff writer Molly Fischer joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss Zohran Mamdani’s first hundred days as mayor of New York. They talk about how Mamdani has carried his highly disciplined, media-forward messaging style into office—and how his governing style combines practical city management with a focus on visible and public-facing execution. They also explore the status of his core initiatives, including universal child care and other affordability measures, whether he has scaled back or recalibrated some campaign promises, and how he has navigated relationships with figures such as Governor Kathy Hochul and President Donald Trump as he tries to harness his political momentum into durable results.
This week’s reading:
- “Zohran Mamdani, Perpetual Student of the City,” by Molly Fischer
- “ ‘The Peace President’ Gets Belligerent with Iran and the Pope,” by Robin Wright
- “What Brought Down Eric Swalwell,” by Jon Allsop
- “TMZ Gets Political,” by Paul Mejía
- “The Hungarian Election Shows That Even Strongmen Can Lose,” by Andrew Marantz
- “The Extremes of Israeli Public Opinion,” by Isaac Chotiner
The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week.
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, Molly. |
| 0:07.3 | Thanks so much for being here. |
| 0:09.2 | Thank you for having me. |
| 0:10.8 | Since January, you have been writing this column for the New Yorker about Zoran |
| 0:14.6 | Mom Donnie's mayorship. |
| 0:16.5 | And last week you actually spoke with Mom Donnie, which I think was it was just before he |
| 0:20.4 | officially hit 100 days in office. Day 99, right under the wire. Perfect time to do an interview. |
| 0:26.6 | I'm wondering what surprised you or stood out to you from meeting him. Like after spending so much |
| 0:30.7 | time writing and talking about him from like a little bit of a distance, what was it like |
| 0:34.9 | actually chatting with him? The man is profoundly on message. |
| 0:38.5 | I mean, I was saying earlier, you know, if you remember the first time he met with Trump in the Oval Office, |
| 0:43.7 | he somehow took a question about how he got to D.C., like whether he took the plane or the train |
| 0:50.4 | or what, and managed to bring that back to the affordability agenda. |
| 0:53.9 | I think that is interesting because you see he has all these videos that are obviously very on message and then you kind of wonder how much of that is sort of scripted or programmed or part of it like a larger team, but it actually just seems like those are the things that he's interested in. He's like very media savvy and kind of knows how to keep the conversation on the things that he actually cares about as opposed to his personal life or the other things that his critics like to focus |
| 1:15.7 | on. I don't know. People will sometimes talk about, well, people will talk about many arenas of |
| 1:20.9 | life as being quote unquote like high school. And people will certainly say that about politics. |
| 1:24.6 | And what I found myself thinking about and writing about in the last installment of this column was the way in which the first 100 days of his Merrill T have really |
| 1:32.5 | felt like evocative of a high school experience, not in that they are about, you know, |
| 1:40.1 | cliques or social dynamics or any of the ways people typically use that language, but rather that |
| 1:44.7 | they are about this kind of artificial, brief, high stress, high pressure, like a series of |
| 1:52.6 | hurdles and tests and achievements that you have to clear in order to get where you are going. |
| 1:57.7 | I mean, I think that the idea of looking at Amar's first hundred days is |
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