More stories

  • in

    Zohran Mamdani has the Palestinian protest movement to thank for his win | Heba Gowayed

    In a tremendous upset of politics as usual, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old brown, Muslim, Democratic socialist who had little name recognition in February beat the poster boy of the Democratic party establishment, Andrew Cuomo, by a plurality of votes in the first round of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City.What makes this win even more remarkable is that Mamdani has refused to back down from his vocal support for Palestinian liberation, a position that has long been a death knell for candidates within a party whose establishment is unabashedly pro-Israel.Mamdani’s victory shows that his support for Palestine is not a liability, nor irrelevant to his mayoral campaign. In fact, Palestine has moved to the heart of domestic politics thanks to an organized, grassroots movement of Palestinians and allies, students and activists, that paved the way for this mayoral win.Over the course of the last two years of genocide, protests and social media activism has shifted the national discourse around Palestine. A Quinnipiac poll has found that sympathy for Israel has reached an all-time low, with Pew showing that over 71% of Democrats aged 18-49 have a negative view.On Tuesday, the day of the Democratic primary (as well as the hottest day New York has seen in over 13 years), I stood on the corner of 146th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, trying to convince New Yorkers to rank Mamdani on their ballot. One of the leaders of our canvass was a student who was doxed for fighting for her university’s divestment from Israel alongside Mahmoud Khalil. Later that evening, after Cuomo’s concession, Mamdani’s campaign manager thanked Jewish Voice for Peace, whose chapters are integral in organizing against Israel’s genocide and apartheid, for its early endorsement of his campaign.While Cuomo was rich in money, receiving $26m in Super Pac funds as opposed to Mamdani’s $1.8m, Mamdani’s wealth was in the people already organized on issues of progressive politics, including Palestine.The Mamdani campaign’s “joyous” ground game, tens of thousands of people who volunteered to knock on over 1.6m doors, is not simply a story of individuals being organically moved to action by progressive politics or a charismatic candidate. It is instead a story of people who have for years been organizing to oppose an electoral system that marginalized them, who saw Mamdani as an alternative to “elected officials [who] endorse or overlook genocide” whether they organized through ethnic organizations like Desis Rising Up and Moving (Drum) or the Democratic Socialists of American (DSA).This is not a campaign that can be recreated with any fresh face, or just any economically progressive platform. Bernie Sanders is wrong to say that Kamala Harris would “be president of the United States today” had she simply had a platform geared towards the working class, and focused on knocking on doors.People came out for Mamdani because he rejected a party machinery whose establishment candidate, Cuomo, was literally part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal team. It mattered that Mamdani started his college’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. It mattered that Mamdani said he would arrest Netanyahu, that he’d disband the Strategic Response Group of the NYPD, which I’d watched brutalize my Cuny college students as they protested. People came out to campaign for him, rain or shine, because he refused to decry the phrase “Globalize the Intifada” even as he endured vile smears and a death threat for it.If the mayoral race is a referendum on Israel, there was a record turnout for Mamdani. People who had not voted in prior elections showed up to the polls, with Mamdani winning in deeply Hispanic and Asian areas, and doing extraordinarily well among young people of all races. Polling showed him second among Jewish voters.Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic primary, however, is just one big step in what will continue to be a tough mayoral race. Perhaps the largest threat this campaign will face is the pressure placed on it by the pro-Israel machinery of the Democratic party. The senator Kirsten Gillibrand suggested he may be a threat to Jewish New Yorkers, Laura Gillen, a congressperson, called him “too extreme” and Tom Suozzi, another congressperson, said he had “serious concerns” about his campaign. Mamdani is reportedly scheduled to sit down for meetings with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who have so far declined to endorse him.Mamdani is also being targeted by the right. In a grossly racist action, the Tennessee Republican Andy Ogles called for Mamdani to be denaturalized and deported, posting on X “Zohran ‘little muhammad’ Mamdani is an antisemitic, socialist, communist who will destroy the great City of New York.” And even as she called his campaign “unique” and “smart”, Marjorie Taylor Green retweeted an AI-generated image of the Statue of Liberty covered head-to-toe in a black burqa saying, “This hits hard.”Mamdani’s very identity is a challenge to a two-party system that has normalized anti-Muslim hate, and through its prism anti-Palestinian repression and genocide. Trump began testing his mass deportation policy on the Palestinian students who led the movements that made the Mamdani campaign possible, including by kidnapping and imprisoning Khalil, the negotiator for the Columbia encampment. Trump justified his travel ban, which Mamdani’s home country Uganda may be added to in the coming months, as part of fighting antisemitism.What his pathway to victory in the primary shows is that his continued strength, and that of any other candidate hoping to secure a similar victory, will not rely on political endorsements. Instead, it will rely on him staying true to the authenticity that made this campaign resonate with millions of people in New York and around the world. More

  • in

    Wall Street shivers over ‘hot commie summer’ after Mamdani’s success

    When Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old self-described socialist, won New York’s mayoral Democratic nomination last week over a seasoned but scandal-scarred veteran, the city’s financial elite had a meltdown.This was the start of “hot commie summer” in the city, New York hedgevfund billionaire Daniel Loeb posted to X. John Catsimatidis, billionaire CEO of grocery chain Gristedes and friend of Donald Trump, warned on Fox Business: “If the city of New York is going socialist, I will definitely close, or sell, or move.”CNBC financial news channel anchor Joe Kernen compared New York to Batman’s crime-riddled Gotham. “ They’re taking Wall Streeters and making them walk out onto the ice in the East River, And, and then they fall through. I mean there is a class warfare that’s going on.”With five months until the mayoral election proper, the 1% are revolting, led by loquacious billionaire hedge funder Bill Ackman, who said he and others in the finance industry are ready to commit “hundreds of millions of dollars” into an opposing campaign. “The risk/reward of running for mayor over the next 132 days is extremely compelling as the cost in time and energy is small and the upside is enormous.”Ackman said he was “gravely concerned” because he believed the leftwing candidate’s policies would trigger an exodus of the wealth that would destroy the tax base and undermine New York’s public services. The city under Mamdani, he posted on Wedneday, “is about to become much more dangerous and economically unviable.”In 2021, the top 1% of New York City taxpayers paid 48% of taxes – up from 40% in 2019, according to a report from the city’s finance department. But at the same time, New York has become an increasingly unaffordable city for those outside the 1% – especially for people of color.In a post a day later, Ackman said: “The ability for New York City to offer services for the poor and needy, let alone the average New Yorker, is entirely dependent on New York City being a business-friendly environment and a place where wealthy residents are willing to spend 183 days and assume the associated tax burden. Unfortunately, both have already started making arrangements for the exits.”“Terror is the feeling,” Kathryn Wylde, the chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, which represents top business leaders, told CNBC on Tuesday.Gerard Filitti, senior legal counsel at the Lawfare Project, a pro-Israel thinktank, non-profit and litigation fund, and a New Yorker with strong ties to the finance industry, said Mamdani’s nomination “marked a dangerous turning point for the city”.“There’s big concern that businesses and the economy will be hurt. There’s already a move by business leaders and entrepreneurs to consider a move outside of the city, taking jobs and tax dollars with them, at time when the front-running candidate promises to make even more change that could destroy the economy,” Filitti said.The anger was not necessarily purely economic. Wall Street’s decision makers have been shaken after seeing their preferred candidate, Andrew Cuomo, pushed aside despite the millions they poured into his campaign.Fix the City, Cuomo’s political action committee (Pac), raised a record $25m to help see off Mamdani. Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg alone gave $8.3m to the Pac.“These are billionaires who are giving hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars to Andrew Cuomo precisely because they know we are going to tax them to make life a little bit more affordable here, in the most expensive city in the United States,” Mamdani told the New York Times before the election. “They know they can count on Cuomo because Cuomo has a track record of rewarding the political donors.”View image in fullscreenNew York’s moneyed class argues it’s not about them but the future of the city. “When you look at what New York City is and has been historically – a bastion of trading and the center of world capitalism, the engine of economic growth and prosperity, the stock market, an the inspiration for other world economies to develop their markets and economies in line with New York – and now what were seeing is an economy and quality of life that is slowly deteriorating,” said Filitti.“Now we have a front-running Democrat candidate who is promising even more radical change and that change is a threat to the structure of New York and the way people identify with New York City,” Filitti added.It’s an argument the rich have made many times before. Many of the 1% threatened to leave after former mayor Bill de Blasio called for raising their taxes to pay for the losses the city experienced after the Covid pandemic. Wall Street poured millions into mayor Eric Adam’s 2021 campaign for office to see off more progressive candidates. They won those fights; this time, they lost.A former Wall Street CEO told Politico: “These titans of Wall Street and titans of finance are used to getting their way. They didn’t get their way. They got the opposite of their way. They got a guy who couldn’t be more disliked by them – and vice versa.”Wall Street’s vision for the city is probably far from that shared by many other residents of a sprawling metropolis that traditionally has played host to vibrant immigrant communities from all over the world, many of them poor. It is of course, host to the Statue of Liberty on whose base is written the famous lines: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”Manhattan was also the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street protests in the US back in 2011, which occupied the downtown Zucotti Square – blocks from Wall Street – and eventually saw protests spread across the rest of the country and the world.Democratic progressives were quick to celebrate Mamdani’s victory. “Your dedication to an affordable, welcoming, and safe New York City where working families can have a shot has inspired people across the city. Billionaires and lobbyists poured millions against you and our public finance system. And you won,” wrote representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another progressive who won out against a more establishment candidate.Another longtime critic of Wall Street and the billionaire class also saw a change in politics as usual. “The American people are beginning to stand up and fight back. We have seen that in the many Fighting Oligarchy events that we’ve done around the country that have drawn huge turnouts. We have seen that in the millions of people who came out for the No Kings rallies that took place this month in almost every state. And yesterday, we saw that in the Democratic primary in New York City,” senator Bernie Sanders wrote in The Guardian.Millions will now be spent attacking Mamdani. But he has seen off one well-funded attempt to derail his campaign. Whether or not his campaign has the momentum to last until November, remains to be seen. But Wall Streeters have been put on notice that New York, and the changing nature of the Democratic party, may no longer be as amenable to their interests, or their vision for New York. More

  • in

    A socialist underdog makes history in New York – podcast

    Archive: CBS News, CBS New York, PBS Newshour, Eyewitness News ABC7NY, Fox 5 New York, MSNBC, NBC News, CNN, Newsweek, PIX11 News
    Here’s a link to Carter Sherman’s new book The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future
    Subscribe to the Guardian’s new narrative series Missing in the Amazon
    Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian.com
    Help support the Guardian. Go to theguardian.com/politcspodus More

  • in

    Mamdani stood firm in his support of Gaza. The Democratic party could learn from him | Yousef Munayyer

    As the ballots were counted on Wednesday in the Democratic primary election for mayor in New York City, a young candidate with little national name recognition, Zohran Mamdani, stood atop a slate of candidates including the runner-up, and favorite, Andrew Cuomo. There are several reasons why Mamdani was able to pull off this remarkable victory, putting him on track to compete favorably in the mayoral election in November, and many of them have implications for elections outside New York City.But one area where the contrast between the candidates could not be clearer was on the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Mamdani, for his part, stood with protesters, demanded the release of Mahmoud Khalil, and called out Israel’s war crimes. Mamdani even pledged he’d have the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, an indicted war criminal, arrested if he came to New York City while he was mayor. Cuomo, on the other hand, volunteered to be part of Netanyahu’s legal defense team before the international criminal court.Israel’s genocide in Gaza has tanked already waning support for Israel in the US, particularly among Democrats. Polls show that for the first time, fewer than 50% of Americans have a favorable view of Israel. And while there is some movement among Republicans in this direction, the biggest driver of this trend is among independents and, especially, Democrats. Democrats sympathize with Palestinians over Israelis by a 3-to-1 margin. That is a massive gap and it also speaks to one of the most important ways a candidate’s politics on Gaza affects the way they are perceived by the electorate.Democrats increasingly feel their party leaders are old and out of touch with where Democratic voters are. About 62% of Democrats say their party needs new leaders. Few issues highlight how out of touch with their party leaders are than the issue of Palestine. While opinion polls are clear and consistent about Democratic voters’ disgust with Israeli policies toward Palestinians, Democratic party leaders like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are stalwart defenders of Israel. Increasingly, a candidate’s politics on Gaza is a litmus test for authenticity and whether the candidate actually cares to represent the voters. Cuomo was not interested in representing voters on this issue, he was content instead to accept major contributions from billionaire backers of Donald Trump and Israel like Bill Ackman.Cuomo was the favorite in this race precisely because he had the name recognition and came from a New York political dynasty. His father, Mario, was the governor of New York for three terms from 1983 to 1994 and Andrew was governor himself for a decade before resigning in disgrace in 2021 after numerous credible sexual assault allegations. If you were of voting age in New York, you associated the name Cuomo with political office.Cuomo probably thought that name recognition alone was enough to overcome any votes he’d lose from people who were angered by his disastrous decisions during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic or his sexual assault scandals as governor. This showed the total lack of effort in his campaign which seemed more geared for coronation than contestation. He failed to raise enough individual contributions to gain public matching funds and relied instead on big-money donors to fill his coffers through Pac contributions.Mamdani’s campaign was, almost in every possible way, the inverse of Cuomo’s. While Cuomo relied on billionaire backing, Mamdani raised the highest number of small-dollar contributions. While Cuomo’s campaign was barely noticeable in the streets of New York, Mamdani’s campaign knocked on one million doors. While Cuomo’s campaign message was muted and muddled, Mamdani’s was clear, bold and consistent.Mamdani’s projected primary election victory in New York also proved once again that voters will come out and vote in large numbers for candidates that they believe in even if their politics are characterized as well left of center. The conventional wisdom after Trump’s victory in 2024, especially in New York, was that the electorate had shifted right. But that was never the case, mostly this was due to disaffected Democrats staying home because they were tired of what they saw as the same washed-up, inauthentic politics.Anyone can run for office financed by billionaire backers while spouting talking points produced by expensive consultants. But what Mamdani, Bernie Sanders and, yes, Trump figured out is that there is a huge and growing swath of the American electorate so disaffected by empty and corrupt politics that they are hungry for someone who feels authentic.Mamdani’s apparent victory is just the latest proof that for Democrats especially, if there is ever any doubt about a candidate’s authenticity, their politics on Palestine will be an easy way to separate the real ones from those just trying to fake it til they make it. More

  • in

    Zohran Mamdani has unleashed a political earthquake | Ben Davis

    The surprise electoral success of Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist running to be mayor of New York, the most prominent city on earth, is a political earthquake. The breadth and scope of his performance were predicted by no polls, no prognosticators, none of the wise men. The ramifications of this upset will be felt for years, across the US and the developed world.In the end, it wasn’t even close. Mamdani’s widespread appeal represents the total collapse of a Democratic party establishment that had weathered Donald Trump’s first term with rhetorical resistance, and fumbled the beginning of the second with triangulating appeasement. This year, the favorability of the Democratic party has collapsed to record lows, not because of the popularity of the Trump administration or the Republican party, but because of its unpopularity with its own voters. Chuck Schumer caving to the president on an unpopular and devastating Republican spending bill was the last straw for many. The Democratic party and the resistance to Trump had been severed for the first time.There’s anger across the country with its leadership, Democratic and Republican, in cities, suburbs and rural areas. According to Americans, things are not going well. Prices are up, wages are down and instability is at an all-time high. Nowhere is this more true than in our biggest city, New York, where the moderate Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, made a quid pro quo deal to keep himself out of prison on corruption charges in exchange for enforcing Trump’s policies in a city where Trump had minimal political support.Enter Mamdani. Many major cities in the US, in recent years, had a two-party system, not between Democrats and Republicans, but between centrist Democrats and their progressive flank. The US, like all polities, has many organized political groupings, but due to byzantine electoral laws, only two official ones exist – the state-administered ballot lines. Nowhere is this more true than in New York, the crown jewel of the electoral socialist left in the United States for more than a century.Mamdani is the progeny of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the US’s largest socialist organization in a century. He is among the many young people inspired by Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. The staying power of that campaign has asserted itself over the years. Most of the talented organizers and thinkers whom it shaped were in college or their early 20s. They were never going to stop being socialists. They just needed seasoning.Mamdani got involved in the DSA as a young man and honed his skills leading campaigns in the nearly all-volunteer organization. He has spent most of his adult life as a DSA organizer. After the New York City DSA had built sufficient infrastructure and he had learned the necessary skills, he was able to win election to the state assembly in 2020. But to Mamdani, democratic socialism isn’t an identity or a set of principles. It is being part of and accountable to a democratic organization, the sort of working-class civil society that has atrophied in this country, but at one time built the backbone of the welfare state across western society and lent the muscle to the New Deal.Mamdani and the DSA cannot be separated. It’s a different, and for many Americans new, but a deeply old way of thinking about politics. Political organizations represent different classes, which are necessarily in conflict. To win for your class, you must be a representative of working-class democracy.Mamdani was built by the DSA and the young leftwing milieu that emerged after the Sanders campaign. They cannot be separated. Not his charisma or campaign style. He is a product of the movement.His victory and its comprehensive level are shocking to nearly all. How did he do it? Combining new and old tactics. Mamdani had perhaps the most innovative social media campaign in American political history. Not jumping on tired memes, but showcasing his authenticity. He also borrowed old tactics. Mamdani harnessed the sort of retail diaspora politics that have always won in the world’s most diverse city. He campaigned in dozens of languages, met leaders from ethnic groups from around the world and sold his vision in the style of Fiorello LaGuardia. This way, he was able to harness both the insurgent left, often caricatured as downwardly mobile, overly educated and overwhelmingly white, and the worldwide working-class diaspora that shapes the neighborhoods of New York.As he climbed the polls through steady mass organization, almost linearly, he began to face ever-increasing, and horrifying, attacks from capital and the powers that be, to the tune of a record $25m in outside spending. The one they homed in on was one that had been proven to take down leftwing leaders across the world, such as Jeremy Corbyn: antisemitism. All social justice-minded people are horrified by antisemitism, an ancient hatred. It’s an accusation that would make anyone on the left, anyone of conscience, take notice. For this reason, used in a spurious way, it was an insidious attack that could break the left. However, in this election, the baseless smear backfired.There are several reasons for this. The first is overuse. It’s quite blatant to continually accuse obviously deeply compassionate and humanistic people of an evil hatred without evidence. No one believes friendly and understanding social democrats in a secular urban milieu are pogromists or jihadists (despite nasty Islamophobic baiting about Mamdani’s background), for obvious reasons.The second is the actual circumstances. Most accusations of antisemitism on the left have little or nothing to do with actual overt discrimination or hatred; they are almost entirely based on opinion of the state of Israel. As Israel continues its genocide of Palestinians and long-term eliminationist and revanchist ambitions, and ties itself closer to the far right in the US, Democratic voters in the US have made the rapid and historic transition to sympathizing with Palestinians over Israel by a nearly 3-1 margin. Even last year, this issue and money could win Democratic primaries. No longer.Lastly, Mamdani is in many ways a continuation of the Jewish left tradition in the United States. New York has long been the home of the most powerful electoral socialist left in the United States. The base for the Socialist party of America (SPA) or the American Labor party, many-time electoral winners, was the Jewish community. Jews in New York voted in the hundreds of thousands for socialists for decades. These are the same policies of so-called “sewer socialism” (in which socialists ran cities like Milwaukee and boasted of excellent sewer systems), the same parties (DSA being the direct inheritor of the SPA), the same tradition and even the same neighborhoods as a century ago. The foundation of the American left. An unbroken line. Mamdani is the inheritor of the tradition of Baruch Vladeck, and of the socialists and trade unions that built New York. Even the membership of DSA and the staff of his campaign reflect this.So, how did Mamdani win support? He brought back class as the defining issue of politics. Class as a political divide has declined across the industrialized world for decades, beginning in the US. While Sanders reinjected a class message and a degree of class polarization back within the Democratic coalition, there were still shortcomings. Bernie did worse among Black voters across class. And Bernie and other democratic socialists relied heavily on the good graces of socially progressive upper-middle-class professionals, rendering socialists subordinate to or in coalition with their interests and organizations. After nearly a decade of work by the left, this class polarization seemed uncrackable. Until now.Mamdani underachieved compared with prior leftwing candidates in professional progressive areas like the Upper West Side. But he smashed through the racial barrier that had divided the working class. Few expected this before the votes rolled in. His base would be downwardly mobile white professionals, of course. But his clear message and innovative campaign brought back real class politics, of the kind that seemed a myth in the contemporary age.According to the New York Times, Mamdani did better with voters of color than with white voters. While he shed reliably progressive votes among the Times-reading, machine-hating liberals of Manhattan, he won them back many times over among working-class people of color who had never taken a second look at leftist candidates before. In this, he reversed nearly 30 years of anti-materialist political science theories.This may seem like something confined to New York City, a progressive bastion in a deep blue state. But it points a path forward for the left and for advocates of social justice and liberatory politics. Donald Trump’s most shocking and profound gains in 2024 came among young voters, particularly men, Latino voters, Asian voters and urban voters in general. These are the exact demographics that came out in droves for Mamdani.The left has long shirked its responsibility to fight the far right, leaving it to the center as if the political spectrum were a rigorously enforced line rather than a fluid concept. But the center failed. And they sacrificed these demographics to Trump because these masses were fed up with the status quo. The center could never win them back. But the radical left actually could, through a targeted, economic, anti-establishment message. Mamdani’s campaign did it, and brought people back from the far right on a massive scale, more than any anti-Trump rally could. In this way, campaigns like Mamdani’s are actively practicing anti-fascism in a real way, by winning the targets of the right back to the left.The left needs to study this shocking election and take thorough notes. The first is that Mamdani was a product of real, organic, working-class organization in the DSA. The kind that has been dying out in this country for half a century and is disregarded by most. This lack of organization is the defining feature of our political time. The only way to the future is more people in the DSA, more people in unions, more people in civic organizations and the rebuilding of working-class community. Our institutions are hollow, but Mamdani and his 50,000 youthful volunteers are proof that they can be rebuilt, and that people yearn to do so.In 2017, a DSA organizer and philosopher named Michael Kinnucan said: “US civic culture is so hollowed out at the grassroots level that in any city in the US if your organization can get 40 to 50 committed people in a room occasionally you’re probably operating one of the five or six most potentially powerful grassroots organizations in your city.”This idea was foundational to DSA, especially in New York City, and shaped Mamdani. For many, it seemed a fantasy. Five hundred thousand votes later, across nearly every language and nationality in the world, it’s a warning. To defeat the right, the left must learn from Mamdani and the DSA and rebuild mass working-class organization. Sure, charisma helps, but at its core, this win was an eight-year project that must be replicated everywhere if we are to defeat fascism and stop the worst horrors of the climate crisis. Mamdani is an Obama-level political talent, but most of all he is a call to return to real working-class organization. This is something the hollow entities of the Democratic or Republican parties could never defeat, and something they learned on Tuesday night.

    Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign More

  • in

    Will the Democrats learn from Zohran Mamdani’s victory? | Bernie Sanders

    The Democratic party is at a crossroads.It can continue to push policies that maintain a broken and rigged economic and political system and ignore the pain of the 60% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. It can turn its back on the dreams of a younger generation which, if we don’t change that system, will likely be worse off than their parents.It can continue to depend upon billionaire donors and out-of-touch campaign consultants and spend huge amounts of money on dumb 30-second ads that fewer and fewer people respond to.It can ignore the tragic reality that tens of millions of Americans are giving up on democracy because they don’t see their government understanding their struggles and the realities of their lives or doing anything about it.Or it can learn the lesson that the Zohran Mamdani campaign taught us on Tuesday.And that is:Have the courage to address the real economic and moral issues that face the majority of our people, take on the greed and power of the oligarchy and fight for an agenda that can improve life for working families.Some may claim that Mamdani’s victory was just about style and the fact that he is a charismatic candidate. Yes. He is. But you don’t get a Mamdani victory without the extraordinary grassroots movement that rallied around him. And you don’t get that movement and thousands of enthusiastic people knocking on doors without an economic agenda that speaks to the needs of working people. The people of New York and all Americans understand that, in the richest country on earth, they should not have to struggle every day just to put food on the table, pay their rent or pay their medical bills. These are the people the Democratic consultants don’t know exist.Mamdani has been criticized for his “radical” and “unrealistic” economic policies:Demanding that, at a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, the rich and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.Demanding that, when many New Yorkers are no longer able to find affordable housing, there should be a freeze on rent hikes.Demanding that, when commuting to a job takes a big toll out of a worker’s paycheck, public transportation should be free.Demanding that, when many low-income and working people are unable to access good-quality food for themselves and their kids, publicly owned neighborhood grocery stores should be created.These ideas, and more, are not radical. They may not be what billionaires, wealthy campaign contributors and real estate speculators want, but they are what working people want. And maybe, just maybe, it’s time to listen to them.Mamdani’s victory was not about “star power”. It was very much about people power, about revitalizing democracy and opening the door for ordinary people to gain control over the decisions that impact their lives.Importantly, he did not run away from the moral issue that is troubling millions in New York and around the country: the need to end US military support for a rightwing extremist Benjamin Netanyahu government in Israel that is obliterating the people of Gaza and starving their children. Mamdani understands that antisemitism is a disgusting and dangerous ideology, but that it is not antisemitic to be critical of the inhumane policies of the Netanyahu government.The lesson of Mamdani’s campaign is that it is not good enough just to be critical of Trump and his destructive policies. We have to bring forth a positive vision and an analysis of why things are the way they are. It is not good enough to maintain a status quo that is failing most Americans. At a time when hope is in increasingly short supply, people must have the sense that if we work together, if we have the courage to take on powerful special interests, we can create a better world – a world of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.Will the current Democratic party leadership learn the lessons of the Mamdani campaign? Probably not. Too many of them would rather be the captains on a sinking Titanic, rather than change course.Then again, it doesn’t matter what they think. The establishment threw everything they had against Mamdani – millions in Super Pac money, endorsements from “important people”, a hostile media – and they still lost.The future of the Democratic party will not be determined by its current leadership. It will be decided by the working class of this country. Increasingly, people understand that our political system is corrupt and that billionaires should not be able to buy elections. They understand that we should not have an unprecedented level of income and wealth inequality; that we should not be the only wealthy country not to guarantee healthcare for all; that we should not deny young people the right to a higher education because of their income; that we should not have a major crisis in affordable housing; that we should not have a minimum wage that is a starvation wage; that we should not allow corporations to illegally prevent union organization – and much, much more.The American people are beginning to stand up and fight back. We have seen that in the many Fighting Oligarchy events that we’ve done around the country that have drawn huge turnouts. We have seen that in the millions of people who came out for the No Kings rallies that took place this month in almost every state. And yesterday, we saw that in the Democratic primary in New York City.We’re going forward. And no one is going to stop us.

    Bernie Sanders is a US senator, and ranking member of the health, education, labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress More

  • in

    Mamdani’s defeat of Cuomo offers Democrats a path out of the wilderness

    The party was on its knees. It failed to beat Donald Trump, a twice impeached convicted felon, and lost both chambers of Congress. Since November, Democrats have been searching for a path out of the wilderness. On Tuesday, they found one.But instead of celebrating Zohran Mamdani’s apparent victory in the New York mayoral primary election, the first major Democratic contest since Trump’s win, many in the party establishment went into panic mode.Mamdani, 33, a self-described democratic socialist who would be the first Muslim mayor of America’s biggest city, represents a unique threat to the entitled elites, gerontocrats and consultants who have helped take Democrats’ approval rating to a record low of 29%.His defeat of Andrew Cuomo, a 67-year-old from a political dynasty vying to come back from a sexual harassment scandal, could hardly have been better scripted as a pivot point for Democrats who ruined their brand by closing ranks to cover up concerns over former president Joe Biden’s decline.View image in fullscreenCuomo, bankrolled by corporate donors and endorsed by former president Bill Clinton and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, personified the twitching tail of a dying animal. Mamdani, an aspiring rapper turned state politician backed by congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fellow New Yorker, represented a dare to imagine what a post-Trump future might look like.“What’s happening in NYC is a blaringly loud message to those in the Dem establishment who still cling to old politics, recite focus-grouped talking points, and are too afraid to say what needs to be said,” tweeted Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to former president Barack Obama.It was a campaign that triangulated ground game, digital style and policy substance. Mamdani was a shoe leather candidate who put himself all over the city, talked to countless voters, projected optimism without sounding preachy and had thousands of volunteers knocking on doors multiple times.He also learned from Ocasio-Cortez’s mastery of the attention economy. Where other Democrats seem contrived and cringy on social media, Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez are of a generation that swims naturally in such waters, proving that you cannot fake authenticity.Born in Uganda to a family of Indian descent, he is a cosmopolitan and charismatic New Yorker. In November, a week after Trump’s victory, he went to Queens and the Bronx with a microphone and interviewed working class New Yorkers about why they voted for Trump or did not vote at all. A video of the exchanges has 2.7m views on the X social media platform.View image in fullscreenOn New Year’s Day, dressed in full suit and tie save for bare feet, he ran into freezing waters off Coney Island then strolled along the beach talking policy and tweeted some pleasingly bad puns: “I’m freezing … your rent as the next mayor of New York City. Let’s plunge into the details.”For all Democrats’ angst over messaging, none if it matters if the policies fail to resonate. The Democratic party has come to be seen as the party of the college-educated elites, something that Trump, with no sense of self-irony as a millionaire New Yorker, has exploited to maximum effect with blue-collar voters.But Mamdani evidently struck a chord in a city feeling the pinch of the affordability crisis. The average Manhattan rent now stands at $5,000 a month. His proposals include freezing rent for many New Yorkers, free bus service and universal childcare paid for by new taxes on the rich.When Trump identified some of the frustrations and offered fake populism, he was twice rewarded with the White House. When Mamdani offers solutions that would be regarded as mainstream in many European countries, he is demonised as an extremist. On Wednesday, the New York Times newspaper characterised him as “running on a far-left agenda” while the front page of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post declared: “NYC SOS. Who will save city after radical socialist batters Cuomo in Dem mayoral primary?”Mamdani showed the value of fearlessness. A staunch supporter of Palestinian rights, he has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide”, joined a hunger strike outside the White House calling for a ceasefire and championed the cause of Mahmoud Khalil, a student activist at Columbia University who spent more than three months in detention on the orders of a federal judge.View image in fullscreenCuomo and his allies’ efforts to portray Mamdani as antisemitic fell flat. There is a lesson for Democrats who denied a Palestinian American a speaking slot at their national convention last year and saw Kamala Harris lose to Trump in the Arab-majority suburb of Dearborn in Michigan, potentially costing her the crucial swing state of Michigan.Expect the Democratic establishment to fight back, just as Hillary Clinton did against senator Bernie Sanders’s insurgent candidacy in 2016 (Sanders endorsed Mamdani). They fear the loss of the control they have long enjoyed. They also fear that Republicans and rightwing media will cast Mamdani, Ocasio-Cortez and the rest as radical Marxists, as sure to lose elections as Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn.Matt Bennett, a cofounder of the centrist thinktank Third Way, wrote on social media that it is “dangerous to believe a NYC Dem primary offers a roadmap for winning” in swing or conservative places and urged Democrats to follow moderates, “not the siren call” of socialism. He added: “Mamdani diagnosed the right problem: the affordability crisis facing the working class. But he has the wrong solutions: his ideas can’t work and would make matters worse.”View image in fullscreenThere will certainly be much debate over whether New York City, a Democratic stronghold with many distinct characteristics, is a useful template for candidates in cities, towns and rural areas the length and breadth of the country. “As New York goes, so goes the nation,” is not really a thing.Even so, after six months of anguished soul searching, Democrats now have one answer. Some don’t like it. Mamdani – likely be the favourite in November’s general election for mayor – signifies a generational change and rebuke to a party establishment grown complacent and hypocritical in its deference to figures such as the Clintons, Biden and Cuomo despite their obvious flaws.The odds of Ocasio-Cortez, currently 35, running for and winning the Democratic nomination in 2028 just got shorter. It is a leap of political imagination for America that progressives would savour – but so, too, would the Republican election machine. More