Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
Zohran Mamdani: could a socialist win New York?

The prospect of the Democratic Socialists of America member’s victory in the mayoral race has terrified billionaires and outraged the centrist liberal Establishment by showing that listening to voters about class issues works, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY

OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE: Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, right, and Attorney General of New York Letitia James walk in the NYC Pride March last Sunday

IT SHOULD not surprise us that many US leftists are excited by the victory of Zohran Mamdani in last Wednesday’s New York City primary election. They should be buoyed by a rare victory in a bleak political landscape.

Mamdani defeated an Establishment candidate showered with money and endorsed by Democratic Party royalty. His chief opponent, Andrew Cuomo, enjoyed the support and the forecasts of all the major media, locally and nationally.

Cuomo fell back on every cheap, spineless trick: redbaiting (Mamdani is a member of Democratic Socialists of America), ethnic and religious baiting (Mamdani is a foreign-born Muslim,) and “unfriendliness” to business (Mamdani advocates taxing the rich, freezing rents, and fare-less transit). And still Mamdani won.

Admittedly, Cuomo is ethically challenged and tarnished by his prior resignation from New York’s governorship. One supposes that Democratic bigwigs could easily have seen an advantage in masculine sliminess after witnessing the king of vulgarity — Donald Trump — enjoy great electoral success.  

But for the left, the important fact was that Cuomo represented the strategy and tactics, the programme (such as it is), and the machinery of the Democratic Party leadership. The left needed a victory against the Clintons, Obamas, and Carvilles to demonstrate that another way was possible.

And more pointedly, the left needed to see that a programme embracing a class-war skirmish against developers, financial titans, and a motley assortment of other capitalists can win in the largest city in the US. 

Nearly every major policy domestically and internationally that the Democratic Party considers toxic was embraced by Mamdani’s campaign. And still Mamdani won.

And why shouldn’t he?

Democratic Party consultants methodically ignore the views of voters — views expressing economic hardship, a broken healthcare system, mounting debt, a housing crisis, etc — delivered by opinion polls. Mamdani listened. And he won.

Clearly, the seats of wealth and power were shaken, reacting violently and crudely to Mamdani’s victory. A major Cuomo backer, hedge fund exec Dan Loeb, captured the moment: “It’s officially hot commie summer.” We wish!

Wall Street quickly panicked, according to the Wall Street Journal: “Corporate leaders held a flurry of private phone calls to plot how to fight back against Mamdani and discussed backing an outside group with the goal of raising around $20 million to oppose him, according to people familiar with the matter.”

The WSJ quotes Anthony Pompliano, a skittish CEO of a bitcoin-focused financial company: “I can’t believe I even need to say this, but socialism doesn’t work… It has failed in every American city it was tried.”

Others, including hedge-fund manager Ricky Sandler, threaten to take their business outside New York City.

The Washington Post editorial board scolds readers with this ominous headline warning: “Mamdani’s victory is bad for New York and the Democratic Party.”

It gets even wackier in the right wing’s outer limits. My favourite libertarian site posted a near hysterical call for the application of the infamous 1954 Communist Control Act to remove him from office, even put Mamdani in prison. The never-disappointing notorious thug Erik D Prince calls for the Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to initiate deportation proceedings.

Yet not so shockingly, many fellow Democrats nearly matched the scorn and contempt heaped on Mamdani by wealth, power, and Trumpers. Senate and House minority leaders — Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries — refused to endorse the primary winner. New York Representative Laura Gillen declared that Mamdani is the “absolute wrong choice for New York.”

Her colleague Tom Suozzi had “serious concerns,” as reported by Axios under the banner: “Democratic establishment melts down over Mamdani’s win in New York.” 

Other Democrats ran away from discussing the victory and, of course, the overworked, overwrought, and abused charge of “anti-semitism” was tossed about promiscuously.

Where there is no fear and alarm, there is euphoria. Nearly every writer for The Nation enthused over the primary victory, with the capable Jeet Heer gleefully proclaiming that “Mamdani defeated a corrupt, weak Democratic Party Establishment.”

Similarly, David Sirota, former adviser and speechwriter for Bernie Sanders, wrote — with understandable gloating — on The Lever and in Rolling Stone: “Democratic Assemblyman Mamdani’s mayoral primary victory in New York City has prompted an elite panic, the likes of which we’ve rarely seen: billionaires are desperately seeking a general-election candidate to stop him, former Barack Obama aides are publicly melting down, corporate moguls are threatening a capital strike, and CNBC has become a television forum for nervous breakdowns. Meanwhile, Democratic elites who’ve spent a decade punching left are suddenly trying to align themselves with and take credit for Mamdani’s brand (though not necessarily his agenda).”

This breakthrough — he surmises — could lead to a “Democratic Party reckoning.”

But wait a minute.

We can’t let euphoria blind us to the track record of other Democratic Party insurgencies. We cannot forget how deeply opposed the Democratic Party’s bosses, consultants, and wealthy benefactors are to popular reforms and even modestly visionary candidates.

Party intellectuals fully understand — as hotshot consultant James Carville bluntly reminds us — that in a two-party system all the oppositional party has to do is wait for the other party to stumble and then take its turn. Why would the Democrats bother to construct a voter-friendly programme leaning towards social justice?

A glance at the crude sabotage of two Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns by the Democratic Party godfathers should dispel even the most gullible from any delusion that the party will change course.

Should Mamdani actually win the mayoral race — and we must work hard to see that he does — there is absolutely no reason to believe that the party of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama will draw even the most modest conclusion about the way forward. They are not interested in going forward, only in returning to power.

Of course, they will welcome — as they have in the past — idealistic foot soldiers who want to believe that the Democratic Party is the path to social justice. Generations of well-meaning, change-seeking youth have been ground up by this cynical process of bait-and-switch.

Though the party’s leadership will not acknowledge it, the Democrat brand is widely discredited. As Jarod Abbott and Les Leopold conclude: “Polling shows Americans are ready to support independent populists running on economic platforms. But what they don’t want is anything associated with the Democratic Party’s brand.”

Stopping short of calling for a new party, Abbott and Leopold asked poll respondents in key rust-belt states if they would support a worker-oriented association independent of both parties to support independent candidates. Fifty-seven percent of respondents would support or strongly support such an association.

This squares with recent polls that show strong disapproval of elected Democrats and the Democratic Party. The recent late-May Financial Times/YouGov poll shows that 57 per cent of respondents have an unfavourable view of Democrats in Congress. And a similar 57 per cent have an unfavourable view of the Democratic Party. Only 11 per cent have a very favourable view of the Democratic Party.

Whether an “association” or a party is necessary, Abbott and Leopold are correct in recognising that it must have a strong working-class base in order to break away from the corporate ownership of the Democratic Party.

As Charles Derber has perceptively noted on a recent podcast, the worse outcome of the current multi-faceted crisis is to revert to the earlier times that spawned the Trump phenomena. And that is exactly what the Democrats are offering.

With the Republican Party leadership facing a schism over Iran between war hawks and non-interventionists (Greene, Bannon, and Carlson) and with the growing split between cultural warriors and Silicon Valley libertarians (Musk’s threat to launch a third party), the Democrats may well slip back into power by default. Surely, we can do better.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Tents are set up along a freeway in a homeless encampment, May 12, 2025, in Los Angeles
Features / 27 May 2025
27 May 2025

In 2024, 19 households grew richer by $1 trillion while 66 million households shared 3 per cent of wealth in the US, validating Marx’s prediction that capitalism ‘establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with accumulation of capital,’ writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY

Confetti and flowers are dropped from a military helicopter
Opinion / 1 April 2025
1 April 2025
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
The AFL-CIO headquarters
Features / 9 January 2025
9 January 2025
ZOLTAN ZIGEDY reflects on the lessons from two books looking at the US labour movement and the recent history of spontaneous mass uprisings – and finds two pernicious ideologies working against the interests of the people
POPULIST MANIA: Supporters cheer for Trump at a primary elec
Features / 22 November 2024
22 November 2024
ZOLTAN ZIGEDY argues Trump’s victory shows the deep failure of liberal calculations that write off huge swathes of the electorate and mirrors the worldwide rise of right-wing populism amid Establishment collapse
Similar stories
Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani takes selfies with supporters after speaking at his primary election party, June 25, 2025, in New York
Men’s football / 27 June 2025
27 June 2025

JAMES NALTON writes how at the heart of the big apple, the beautiful game exists as something more community-oriented, which could benefit hugely under mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani

MORE THAN MEETS THE
EYE: While USAid does
provide humanitari
Features / 16 February 2025
16 February 2025
With its track record of leveraging cultural power for US gain and barely concealed promotion of coup attempts, the US Agency for International Development will not be mourned among the US’s southern neighbours, write JOHN PERRY and ROGER D HARRIS
A man walks past a poster of late Cuban President Fidel Cast
Features / 24 January 2025
24 January 2025
Outgoing president Joe Biden had removed Cuba from the list less than a week prior, a long-awaited move that he committed to in his final days in office