Mamdani’s Big Bet

Emancipatory movements around the world rightly rejoiced at Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral race. Clearly, today’s populist right has no monopoly on the ability to mobilize crowds and attract new or disillusioned voters. Democratic socialists can do it, too.

But as Mamdani well knows, his victory will be met by attempts at economic and financial sabotage. The US political establishment – both the Republican and Democratic “deep state” – has a fundamental interest in seeing his mayoralty become a fiasco. US President Donald Trump himself appealed to New Yorkers to vote for Mamdani’s leading challenger, the former Democratic governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo. With Mamdani in power, Trumpian populists and mainstream Democrats will suddenly be speaking the same language. They will do everything they can to make Mamdani appear a failure. In Trump’s case, that may even involve another “emergency” declaration to justify sending in the National Guard.

For the left, then, this is not only a moment to act, but also a time to think about the bigger picture. The United States is transforming from a two-party political system into one comprising establishment Republicans, establishment Democrats, alt-right populists, and democratic socialists. One can already see the makings of new coalitions stretching across the old party lines. Back in 2020, Joe Biden hinted that he might nominate a moderate Republican as vice president, while Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, urged supporters of Bernie Sanders, the independent democratic socialist US senator from Vermont, to vote for Trump after the Democratic Party nominated Biden.

The big difference is that while Trump’s brand of populism easily achieved hegemony over the Republican establishment (clear proof, if any were needed, that his concern for ordinary workers was a sham), the split within the Democratic party is getting stronger and stronger. Indeed, the struggle between the Democratic establishment and the Sanders wing is the only true political battle in the United States today. As The Guardian’s Emma Brockes put it: “Mamdani’s biggest threat is not Donald Trump, it’s the Democratic old guard.”

We are dealing with two antagonisms (“contradictions”): one between Trump and the liberal establishment, and the other between the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party and all other political forces. The impeachment proceedings against Trump during his first term were desperate attempts by the establishment to reclaim moral leadership and credibility; but it all amounted to a comic exercise in hypocrisy, since the establishment’s own deficiencies have also been laid bare. Trump’s open obscenity simply brought out what was already there.

The Sanders camp sees this clearly. It knows there is no way back, that American political life must be radically reinvented. Mamdani won because he did for the left what Trump did for the right. He clearly articulated his radical position without worrying about losing the center.

But the four forces that now exist within US politics are not at the same level. The two dying parties (the old mainstream Republicans and the Democrats) are trapped by inertia, lacking any serious vision for the country, while the Trumpian populists and the democratic socialists represent actual political movements. In this context, the only truly meaningful election would be one between Trump and a democratic socialist.

So, should democratic socialists officially split from the Democratic Party? I would advise a principled pragmatism: focus on the central goals that concern your survival, and then permit everything that shows promise in advancing those goals. That means embracing electoral democracy when electoral democracy works, but also popular mobilization or even more radical methods when circumstances demand.

To see what I mean, consider a recent example. In July, after dramatically falling out with Trump, Elon Musk announced that he would be launching the “America Party.” Musk, who was not born in the US and thus cannot run for president, tried to outperform Trump, prioritizing techno-feudalism over populism. Ultimately, the project never got off the ground.

By contrast, Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn’s new leftist party in the United Kingdom does show promise, with some polls showing that around one-third of young people and Labour voters are ready to transfer their allegiance to it. Uncertainty remains, though, and as befits a leftist party, the two leaders immediately ended up in a public feud.

A truly meaningful election in the UK, then, would be between Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK and the new left, with an inert Labour Party joining the eccentrically moribund Conservatives on the margins. True, one could safely predict that in such a direct confrontation, Farage would win, just as Boris Johnson prevailed over Corbyn in 2019. Nonetheless, Corbyn did succeed in taking control of Labour for a time, making the entire establishment tremble.

Ultimately, there is no principled answer when it comes to deciding on the best strategy. Sometimes, one should try to take over a big leading party; sometimes, a split is necessary. I think Mamdani was right to remain within the Democratic Party for the time being, since that allowed him to mobilize its popular base against the establishment. Had he tried taking on the three other political forces alone, he would have lost.

Now that he has won, Mamdani should move firmly and deliberately to take over the New York State Democratic Party, while also establishing a network of links with democratic socialists around the US and – following Sanders’s advice – subtly appealing to disappointed lower-income workers and farmers who voted for Trump. The future of the project Mamdani embodies lies in peeling away disappointed Trump voters, not winning the inert center. Only a radical leftist can win over working-class Trumpians – a constituency whose distrust of the establishment remains entirely justified.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2025. www.project-syndicate.org