How do we go below the surface level and think carefully about our society, holding leaders to account and ensuring the elusive "better life for all", when the majority of our population has not been educated sufficiently to forge a way out of poverty and also to weigh the words of exploitative politicians and seek depth and context in everything? Every generation's inattention is a threat to democracy.

'To live in the world of creation--to get into it and stay in it--to frequent it and haunt it--to think intently and fruitfully--to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation--this is the only thing--and I neglect it, far and away too much; from indolence, from vagueness, from inattention, and from a strange nervous fear of letting myself go. If I can vanquish that nervousness, the world is mine." Henry James

While watching Zohran Mamdani groove to JZ and Alicia Keys's Empire State of Mind in a crowded New York City club, Barack Obama probably thought, "I was young and hip once".

It was almost 17 years to the day that Obama had swept to victory with his "Yes, we can!" campaign which combined door-to-door, digital and online campaigning in an unprecedented way.

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A youthful black president. A first. Bill Clinton was cool once too, playing the saxophone, dark glasses and all on the Arsenio Hall Show. Obama and Clinton; two very different men but both with an instinctive ability to connect with people.

Mamdani at 34 certainly knows how to connect with people and he understands the zeitgeist; the campaign was on...