The Mamdani effect
If socialist Zohran Mamdani defeats Andrew Cuomo in this month's New York Democratic mayoral primary, prepare for an establishment crackup of epic proportions
Zohran Mamdani may not ultimately win this month’s New York Democratic mayoral primary. But that the prospect of winning seems possible to imagine at all is itself an incredible achievement.
Mamdani, a 33-year old state assemblyman and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, entered the race last October polling in the single digits. He is an Ugandan-born Muslim with a background in campus organizing for Palestine who supports the BDS movement — which is no easy thing to be in American politics at the best of times.
When former Governor Andrew Cuomo declared his own candidacy in March, moreover, he was widely viewed as unstoppable. Notwithstanding his many disgraces, Cuomo was, until very recently at least, one of the most powerful Democrats in America. His campaign is backed by the likes of former mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Governor David Paterson, and a lengthy roster of slimy oligarchs with bottomless pockets including Bill Ackman and Republican billionaire Ken Langone.
In taking on a machine this powerful, especially from the left, the goal is most typically to run and hope for the best. Maybe your presence in the race compels the establishment frontrunner to strike a slightly less bad posture in office. Maybe the campaign can be an opportunity to put particular issues onto the civic agenda, or an opportunity to organize that will pay other dividends later. I don’t know exactly what Mamdani and his team were thinking when they launched their campaign last fall, but it’s become palpably clear that they are very much running to win.
Among other political strengths, Mamdani possesses that ineffable ability to communicate social democratic policies in a manner that makes them sound like practical common sense. He is running on rent freezes, universal childcare, free bus service, the creation of a city-owned discount grocery store, and the new taxes on wealthy New Yorkers that will be necessary to finance them. Like Bernie Sanders, from whom Mamdani is clearly drawing inspiration, he is able to stay laser-focused on affordability issues without coming across as purely transactional or lacking in social vision.
I’m certainly no media determinist and think politics today is often too communications focused. But watching Mamdani’s much-discussed videos you can really see a deeper subtext of joy and possibility operating alongside a slickly-delivered message about better governance. I think one of the under-discussed elements of Sanders’ presidential campaigns was the extent to which they allowed people to glimpse the possibility of a better, less barren future while making it seem genuinely within reach. My own passionate support for Sanders was partly about the policies he was campaigning on. But it had as much to do with the democratic horizons he seemed able to open up, and the same can be said of Mamdani.
His campaign clearly grasps the fact that many liberal voters feel demoralized and hopeless, and understands that one of the biggest reasons is the culture of the modern Democratic Party itself. “Trump has shown us that on one side of politics, there’s a limitless imagination,” the candidate recently said to Dave Weigel, “and on the other, we are constantly constructing an ever-lowering ceiling.”
When I was growing up, there was a kind of world-weary received wisdom about democracy to the effect it encourages politicians to pander and make lavish promises they can’t keep. In my lifetime anyway, the reality has almost always been the opposite, particularly when it comes to liberal politicians in the United States. One of the principle lines of attack against Sanders was that he was offering people too much good and free stuff. The responsible thing, as billionaire-financed elite politicians like Hillary Clinton so relentlessly instructed us, was instead to emphasize the minimalism of your political promises. Far from pandering or courting voters with a social vision that matches their broad-self interest, many Democratic politicians instead see it as their job to discipline the electorate and lower people’s expectations.
Mamdani, whose campaign has reportedly attracted over 35,000 volunteers, clearly sees things differently. And what’s incredible is how well it all seems to be working. At time of writing, several polls have put him in striking distance of Cuomo and, as of last week, at least one has now given him a narrow lead on the first ballot. This is the kind of momentum one rarely ever sees in politics, and it’s occurring in the midst of political moment that is otherwise quite bleak and demoralizing.
Can Mamdani actually win? I really don’t know, but if victory were impossible I don’t think Cuomo and other figures in the New York political establishment would be resorting to the kinds of things we're now seeing.
Mamdani has been ceaselessly bombarded with bogus charges of anti-Semitism, and I only expect things to get uglier as the primary draws closer. Beyond the inevitable smears and mudslinging, his campaign must also overcome another familiar challenge and consolidate the kind of electoral coalition that will be necessary to win. As Bhaskar Sunkara noted in a recent piece for In These Times:
Among college-educated voters, by the final round [in recent polls], Mamdani outpaces Cuomo (64% to 36%). He’s strong with voters under 45, where he garners 78% support. Among white voters, he takes 61% to Cuomo’s 39%. This is a familiar pattern: progressive candidates dominating among younger and more educated constituencies. But Mamdani falls short in some of the demographics that matter most if our project is to root itself firmly in the working class, especially among minorities.
Cuomo takes 72% among African American voters and 55% among Latinos. These numbers are driven, in part, by name recognition. Cuomo has been a leading figure in New York politics for decades, and many voters still associate him — despite his dismal record — with stability and experience. Mamdani has a +43 net favorability but isn’t known by 28% of likely primary voters, while Cuomo has -1 favorability but is universally known. Yet name ID doesn’t explain everything. If our movement is to grow, we can’t settle for dominance among the politically engaged few. We need to convince the politically alienated, the skeptics, the ones whose lives are shaped most by the failures of neoliberal governance but who aren’t yet convinced that we’re offering something different enough — or real enough — to bet on.
New York City is the centre of global finance, and its mayor is effectively a world leader. If Mamdani somehow does win the primary, we can therefore expect no less than a full-blown crackup across the entire US political establishment to follow (to say nothing of organized and well-financed effort to stop him winning November’s general election). A socialist mayor in the country’s largest city isn’t something its bipartisan elite will be prepared to contemplate, and the leaderships of both parties will be apoplectic at the prospect.
Perhaps Mamdani will win the primary and go on to be elected New York’s mayor. Maybe he will win the primary but lose the general, or perhaps he will simply manage a strong second against the repulsive Cuomo. In any event, what Mamdani’s campaign has achieved brings to mind the eloquent words of the late Mark Fisher, who reminds us that — even amidst the suffocating gloom of the early 21st century — new possibilities can abruptly burst forth and allow us to glimpse the future once again:
“The long, dark night of the end of history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity. The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.”