As usually happens, the hot takes by the losers following a bad election loss like what Trump and the Republicans suffered on Tuesday tend to be somewhat extreme. Although they lost everywhere, it is Mamdani’s win that seems to have struck a real nerve and it is not hard to see why. The defeats in the governors races in Virginia and New Jersey, though by much larger margins than anyone expected, were to largely centrist candidates who did, however, lean into the fact that running against Trump was a good idea, something that Mamdani demonstrated throughout his surprising race that took him from 1% in the polls a year ago to winning over 50% of the vote on Tuesday. For example, 71% of people who voted for Mikie Sherrill for governor of New York said that it was a vote against Trump.

What must bother them is that Mamdani did not at all shy away from all the attempts to ‘other’ him, to make him look like ‘not one of us’. Instead he embraced it. As he said defiantly in his victory speech, “I am young … I am Muslim. I am a Democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.” Republicans are making a big mistake if they think that Mamdani won because of those qualities. New Yorkers may be more progressive than the nation as a whole but they are not that progressive. I think he won despite those things being a handicap and if Republicans focus on those things and don’t look closely at what made Mamdani’s message such a winning one that it neutralized all those deficits, they will be making a big mistake. Mamdani’s achievement was in seizing upon the issues that New Yorkers cared about and refusing to be sidetracked by attacks on his biography. Others could have done what he did but he was the one who saw the opening and seized it. The fact that he is charismatic and energetic and presents a vision of youthful energy and change undoubtedly helped.

Following his election, Mamdani clearly felt that he had a mandate to take aggressive steps.

In a shift from the mollifying tone he had used for months, Mr. Mamdani made clear that while he would govern for all New Yorkers, he was determined to deliver for those who had been agitating for structural change.

“I’m also looking to be clear about the mandate that we won over the course of this election, and it is a mandate to deliver on the agenda that we ran on,” he said in a phone interview on Wednesday afternoon after a celebratory lunch with his progressive ally Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

The shift in tone was most striking when it came to his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy. In recent weeks, Mr. Mamdani had conveyed an openness to finding creative ways to pay for his signature policy initiative, universal child care, indicating that he was not necessarily set on raising taxes. There was plenty of revenue in the existing budget, he suggested.

On Wednesday, Mr. Mamdani said his call to tax the wealthy was also about fairness. He said that New Yorkers who had voted for him were eager for billionaires to pay more taxes. On Monday, the day before the election, droves of Mr. Mamdani’s supporters marched with him over the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise, chanting, “Tax the rich!”
…

The interview on Wednesday echoed Mr. Mamdani’s fiery victory speech on Tuesday evening, which took a more confrontational and at times boastful tone. The address was criticized by some observers as a “character switch” from his more congenial attitude during the campaign.
Mr. Mamdani said his tone was intentional. He was seeking to be “bold,” he said, and to show that the status quo was not acceptable.
…

Mr. Mamdani said he would move quickly to fortify the city against threats from the White House, strategizing with advisers and moving to hire 200 city lawyers to be ready to fight the Trump administration in court.

“I’m looking forward to the work that we will do over these next 57 days, to not only deliver on our agenda, but also to start to protect New Yorkers with the least from the man with the most power in this country,” he said.

However Republicans seem determined to take down Mamdani the person, thinking that he is the problem, not the things he was speaking about. For example, Trump supporter Steve Bannon, among others, is demanding an investigation into how Mamdani obtained his US citizenship. He is convinced that there were irregularities and that this should be used to strip it away and he should be deported to Uganda. There is no doubt that Pam Bondi, Trump’s poodle as attorney general, will open such an investigation. They will also pull out all the stops to try and make it hard for him to implement his policies.

But for now, it is hard not to enjoy the spectacle of the MAGA world turning in on itself, using apocalyptic rhetoric.

Within hours of Mamdani’s decisive win Tuesday night, far-right influencers and Republican officials cast the democratic socialist as an existential threat, their reactions filled with anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Congressman Randy Fine, R-Fla., who has previously called for Mamdani to be investigated, denaturalized and deported, declared that “Legal immigrants who hate America elected a Communist Muslim Jihadist.”

“New York City has fallen,” he wrote on X. “America is next if we don’t stop it.”

“Under Kathy Hochul’s weak catastrophic leadership, New York City has now fallen to a pro-Hamas, Defund the Police, Tax Hiking, Antisemite Jihadist Communist,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who is reportedly planning to challenge Hochul, the Democratic governor next year.
…

The outrage extended into MAGA media circles.

“We have a major Islam problem in America,” declared Trump ally Laura Loomer, calling Mamdani’s victory part of an “Islamic takeover of America.”

“A third world communist just won in New York because New York is a third world city now,” wrote far-right commentator Matt Walsh. “This is mass migration working exactly as intended. It isn’t anymore complicated than that.”

One excuse that the MAGA world are giving for the widespread losses is that it was because Trump was not on the ballot to bring out his cult followers. But that surely should be a cause for worry for them. Even Trump acolyte Megyn Kelly is dubious about that effort at consoling themselves, saying “Republicans can’t win without ‘big daddy’? Well, guess what? Then you’re going to lose forever because he can’t run again.” 

Despite the bluster of Trump running for a third term, that is simply not going to happen so Trump is never going to be on a ballot again. He and some of his most rabid followers may harbor a fantasy of his declaring an emergency just before the next election and trying to stay in power but that is just that, a fantasy.

Others were taking a more serious view.

“We got our a**es handed to us,” Vivek Ramaswamy admitted in a video posted on X late Tuesday. A top Trump booster now running for governor in Ohio, Ramaswamy said the election results are not just a setback but a trigger for reflection. “There’s two key lessons for Republicans, listen carefully,” he said, calling affordability the top priority. “Number two, cut out the identity politics, it doesn’t suit Republicans, it’s not for us, that’s the woke left’s game, not ours. We don’t care about the color of your skin or your religion. We care about the content of your character, that’s who we are.” 

That is somewhat disingenuous. Trump and Republicans have unequivocally shown that identity politics is their main weapon and that they do not give a damn about character (Trump himself and his pardoning of George Santos are just two of the many examples) and care a lot about color and religion, promoting white Christians (extending even to those in South Africa) over everyone else. What must be bothering Ramaswamy is that now the attacks are on Asians like him.

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s elections, Republicans faced a series of events that exposed how deep the rot of racism and bigotry has grown in the GOP, including a cascade of anti-Indian hate directed at prominent Indian-American conservatives like Ramaswamy. Conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza claimed the rhetoric had an effect on the election results. “A very loud group on the Right said, ‘Indians go home,’ and so many of them did—to the Democratic Party.” 

And then there is the rampant misogyny.

“The Republican Party is gonna have to learn how to close the gender gap,” Fox contributor Tomi Lahren said on X, “Stop lecturing women on how they should stay home and be wives and mothers. It’s not your business.” Across the board on Tuesday, young women overwhelmingly broke in favor of Democrats, a development Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum called “frightening.”

Many Asians and women have in the past seemed to be willing to overlook the bigotry and misogyny in the Republican party, thinking that it was always aimed at other people.

Seth Meyers had a good time rubbing Trump’s and Republican noses in the results.

The Daily Show‘s Jordan Klepper also weighed in.