A political earthquake just happened in New York City last night. Zohran Mamdani seems to have won the Democratic primary in the mayoral election, defeating former governor Andrew Cuomo. The results won't be final for another week, and the margin of victory will change (since the voting was by ranked-choice ballot), but last night Cuomo conceded defeat. This morning, there is plenty of buzz about what this all means to the bigger Democratic Party picture, but while it was a stunning upset for New York City it may not be a harbinger of much of anything in the rest of the country. I say this because the circumstances were so unique, and because New York City is not the rest of America.

Mamdani is on the far left of the Democratic spectrum. Cuomo was seen as more of a centrist. But you cannot judge this election on purely ideological terms, because there are a lot of other factors in play here. Mamdani is young (33 years old) while Cuomo is not (67). Mamdani is a Muslim -- if elected, he will be the first Muslim to run New York City. But the biggest factor of all might just have been how much baggage Cuomo has, after he was forced to resign as the state's governor due to being accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. Cuomo is, to be blunt, a jerk. His personality is that of a bully. This might have been the decisive factor for many voters, rather than any policy position. If this is true, it means that Mamdani winning is likely not going to be repeated by other candidates elsewhere (who don't have an opponent with so much horrific baggage to run against).

There are so many factors at play here that it's easy to pick one lens and view the entire election through it. Mamdani exhibited youthful energy and social media savvy in his campaign, while Cuomo reportedly just went through the motions. Cuomo, true to form, launched an ad campaign that demonized Mamdani and tried to paint him as antisemitic and too radical for New York. Cuomo had the weight of the Democratic establishment behind him -- he was endorsed by Bill Clinton and Michael Bloomberg and James Clyburn -- but in the end it didn't do him much good. Mamdani was seen as something new and fresh and outside the party establishment, which these days is a good thing (seeing as how the party is so widely unpopular right now).

The party establishment is now engaging in a round of hand-wringing, as it worries about other Democrats being painted with the same brush Republicans will use against Mamdani. Mamdani calls himself a Democratic Socialist, and championed progressive ideas such as: making public transit free, making child care free, freezing rent in rent-stabilized apartments, raising the minimum wage, creating publicly-run grocery stores, and raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for it all. He leaned in to economic issues in a big way, with innovative ideas for change. In his victory speech he explained what he wants the Democratic Party to be: "A party where we fight for working people with no apology. A life of dignity should not be reserved for a fortunate few. It should be one that city government guarantees for each and every New Yorker." His campaign messages against Cuomo were even more blunt: "Oligarchy is on the ballot. Andrew Cuomo is the candidate of a billionaire class that is suffocating our democracy and forcing the working class out of our city."

The Democratic Party establishment has been caught in an ideological bind. They know they need to appeal to working-class voters more, but they recoil in horror whenever any of their own candidates actually does so -- because of their fear of being seen as "too far left" or "too progressive." But progressivism is all about making life better for working-class voters -- just listen to any random clip from any Bernie Sanders speech. The Democratic Party establishment seems to think that just tweaking the party's messaging -- creating better talking points that focus groups approve of -- is enough. But it isn't. People want to hear what Democrats are going to change, and how it will make their lives better. Progressives have the answer, but the party establishment is terrified of fully embracing any of their solutions.

The Democratic Party establishment lives in fear of the progressive wing. They close ranks whenever a progressive candidate seems to be gaining steam. But this time around, that wasn't enough. Even Bloomberg pumping millions of dollars into Cuomo's campaign didn't convince the voters. As one Washington Post article put it:

It was the best version of the Democratic Party: a political upstart with fresh ideas coming out of nowhere and building a base of super-enthusiastic supporters. It was also the worst version of the Democratic Party: old guard politicians and the super-wealthy joining forces to try to block the newcomer in favor of a veteran insider best known for his pettiness and poor treatment of women.

The more youthful, optimistic version won.

The old guard lost this round. And now they seem poised to throw their weight behind either the same abuser of women who lost in the primary or the current corrupt mayor, all to avoid seeing a young progressive win. This is not the way to revitalize the party as a whole, since it just doubles down on the things that voters hate most -- trying to buy elections for flawed candidates.

But once again, it's easy to read too much into what happened in the Big Apple last night. What works in New York City isn't necessarily going to work everywhere else (or even anywhere else). It's impossible to say with any degree of confidence what exactly the voters were thinking. They could have been supportive of Mamdani's agenda, or they could have just been voting to protest Cuomo's attempt at a political comeback. Cuomo has been called "the closest thing Democrats have to Donald Trump," which might be an overstatement, but his personality traits are incredibly off-putting, that's for sure. If Mamdani had been running against some other well-known Democrat without Cuomo's baggage, he might not have won. Mamdani may have won just on his youthful energy alone, and his willingness to campaign everywhere he could think of (while Cuomo phoned his campaign in and relied mostly on television attack ads). A combination of all these things worked for Mamdani, much to Cuomo's surprise (and much to the Democratic establishment's surprise).

Mamdani is not assured of victory in the general election, even though Democratic voters vastly outnumber Republicans in New York City. It will be a race with multiple candidates, and the general election will not use ranked-choice voting, so whichever candidate gets the most votes will win, even if they get far less than 50 percent of the total vote. There will be a Republican candidate (Curtis Sliwa) and at least one prominent independent -- the current mayor, Eric Adams, who has been tainted by corruption charges (even though Donald Trump's Justice Department dropped their prosecution of Adams for purely political reasons). And Cuomo himself could be on the general election ballot as well, which would mean a four-way race (there will technically be other independent candidates on the ballot, but none with any chance of actually winning). So there will be a Republican candidate and either one or two ex-Democrats who could split the anti-Mamdani vote. Cuomo is reportedly being urged to sit the race out to give Adams a better shot, by the same party establishment people who backed him in the primary, but it's anyone's guess what he'll actually do.

It would be nice to see the Democratic Party establishment just accept their defeat and rally around their fresh young mayoral candidate. They could join with Mamdani in denouncing ex-Democrats with obvious flaws and concentrating instead on some bright new ideas to make people's lives better. This wouldn't have to mean the party as a whole adopted Mamdani's full agenda -- again, what works in New York City might not be welcome elsewhere. But that's the way American politics is supposed to work -- cites or even whole states try out new ideas to see how they work (the whole "laboratories of democracy" concept). Maybe they'll succeed and maybe they'll fail. But squelching all such innovation is definitely not the way to go. Maybe free child care and free bus service will radically change New Yorkers' lives for the better, and maybe it'll wind up being too expensive to implement. Either way, it certainly would be interesting to see someone make the attempt. New York City seems like a good place to try a few progressive experiments to see which ones are truly feasible. And last night's political earthquake means this is now a real possibility.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant