Battenfeld: Is Boston ready to become another Cambridge?

Boston is about to find out whether the city has turned into just another Cambridge, the often insufferable little city on the other side of the Charles.

Michelle Wu, who won the preliminary on Tuesday, has a 12,000 vote head start and will run as the real “progressive” in the race due to her embrace of liberal darling Elizabeth Warren and positions like the Green New Deal and rent control.

The question that will be answered on Nov. 2 is whether Boston is ready to embrace Wu’s ambitious, far-left agenda.

It seems fitting that Warren, a former Harvard Law professor who lives in Cambridge, is Wu’s most prominent supporter. But Warren is also unpopular in parts of the state.

Wu backs rent control and a free MBTA — even though those things are beyond the control of a Boston mayor.

Oh, well. It doesn’t matter. Wu is rarely questioned about her pie-in-the-sky proposals. She’ll get more scrutiny in the fall election but certainly not in some media outlets.

Wu has embraced what she calls “bold” positions like on climate change and public transportation, and in many respects it’s why so many progressives backed her on Tuesday. But what she considers bold can be considered out of the mainstream by some voters.

Whether enough voters get turned off by her positions will likely determine the outcome of the Nov. 2 election.

Her opponent, Annissa Essaibi-George, has already started raising questions about how unrealistic some of Wu’s positions are — but it’s a delicate dance she has to perform. Many voters want to hear that taking the T will be free — it sounds great.

For Essaibi-George’s part, she has a narrow path to win but has to expand her base beyond the city’s white neighborhoods and attract voters who skipped Tuesday’s preliminary election.

Essaibi-George ran as the moderate in the field with her support of hiring more police — not defunding their budget — and can try to paint Wu as too far to the left for the city’s more moderate voters.

But she has to count on a significant percentage of the city’s voters, especially those in leafy enclaves like West Roxbury, getting turned off by some of Wu’s rhetoric and positions.

Essaibi-George also has to count on defending her positions because she certainly will be challenged in the fall election. Even things that are out of her control, like New Balance CEO Jim Davis’s half-million-dollar donation to a super PAC backing Essaibi-George, will be thrown against her.

Wu may act like she’s playing nice but her campaign will engage in some pretty tough tactics like trying to paint her opponent as a tool of conservative Republicans.