The New York mayoral race

An OK outcome, but one that will change nothing

It is indeed a good thing that New York City voters have chosen NY Assembly member Zohran Mamdani over former governor Andrew Cuomo to be their next mayor. And the left wing of the Democratic Party is pretty darned pleased with themselves, as perhaps they should be.

By all accounts Mamdani mounted an impressive ground offensive, with hundreds of canvassers, many from Mamdani’s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), deployed to every Borough. His reciprocal endorsement of Brad Lander was also novel, sending the message that at the end of the day it was more important to try something new than to prioritize personal victory.

Andrew Cuomo's typical Democratic campaign was bankrolled by billionaires Michael Bloomberg, First Amendment enemy and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and Alex Karp from Palantir, a company the Trump regime has chosen to spy on Americans. Cuomo was endorsed by Bill Clinton, Ritchie Torres, and Jim Clyburn. In contrast, Mamdani's funding was grass-roots and his best-known supporters included the United Autoworkers, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders.

In the general election this Fall, Mamdani will face the winner of the Republican mayoral primary, Curtis Sliwa, the Trump-loving vigilante who founded the Guardian Angels, a rightwing talk show host, xenophobe, and a Rudi Giuliani crony who lost in the 2021 race to outgoing mayor Eric Adams. As for Adams — who went to the MAGA revival tent and was cleansed of Federal Sin by Jesus, or at least the lard-assed grotesquerie impersonating Him — he's no longer running as a Democrat but will appear on the November ballot as an independent.

The choice before New York voters in November is fairly stark: a glimmer of hope from an essentially decent guy versus a double slice of deep-dish corruption. But never underestimate the abuse that the American voter is willing to inflict on himself. And never underestimate the treachery of the Democratic Party to its own left wing.

Pod Save America's Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama, was quick to dismiss Mamdani's campaign as one of mere style: “I do think it’s worth separating out the style of politics from the policy,” Favreau said. “Because we could have a whole debate about what policy positions can win... but if there’s a center-left candidate who campaigns like Mamdani, that person could be president.”

The Lever's David Sirota, a former speechwriter for Bernie Sanders, saw Mamdani's win as an "earthquake" in Democratic politics, and pushed back at Favreau: "This is not a new trick. When liberal elites feel threatened by a winning candidate whose politics could actually challenge capital, they seek to depoliticize the victory and attribute it to vibes, marketing savvy, and brand. It’s a containment strategy: Treat the insurgent’s style as admirable while ignoring — or quietly discrediting — their policy platform. That way, the establishment gets to appropriate the energy without having to endorse the demands."

But, sorry, Favreau has a point. Although both Mamdani and Lander campaigned openly as critics of Netanyahu, neither was willing to even question the ethno-supremacist Zionist state. This was crystal clear from an interview both gave on Steven Colbert's talk show where the host made a beeline to a question about Israel of great interest to his liberal audience. His guests’ answers were neither progressive nor socialist. You certainly wouldn’t find any real socialist treading lightly when asked whether Americans have the right to establish a Christian Dominionist state. Nor did Mamdani even utter the word “capital” much less challenge it, as Sirota maintains. Mamdani’s a decent guy but he’s just barely a progressive.

Mamdani, who campaigned with the slogan "Afford to Live & Afford to Dream," is primarily focused on economic reform, but his track record with such legislation in the state assembly has been consistently undermined by his own party: rent control (nope); free bus transportation (nope); taxing the rich (nope); subsidized childcare (nope); opposing nonprofits that support Israeli settlements (absolutely nope).

Glass-full optimists like Bhaskar Sunkara of the Guardian, who see Mamdani's win as a new mandate for progressive politics within the Democratic Party, are just fooling themselves.

The truth is: just as the German party Die Linke — which has a platform almost identical to Mamdani’s — has stepped into a social-democratic void created by the right turn of the German SPD, and just as the NDP has stepped into a void created by the right turn of the Canadian Liberals, so too has the DSA similarly stepped into the social-democratic void created by their own party’s war-mongering turn to the right. They think they can steer this militaristic and austerity-loving warship in another direction.

But this is as futile and delusional as a small tugboat trying to turn around an aircraft carrier in high seas. The best the left wing of the Democratic Party can hope for is to fend off attacks on themselves from a growing right wing.

Nevertheless, the Democratic Socialists of America, to which Mamdani belongs and which supported his campaign, still won’t make a "clean break" from the Democrats. Regardless of Mamdani's ties to a "DSA Caucus" of the Democratic Party, he will continue to face internal opposition from what is an unapologetically (and bare-knuckled) Capitalist party that values warmongers and hedge fund magnates far more than a relatively small minority of idealists who delusionally campaign for it.

So, aside from voters rejecting corruption, Mamdani's victory was primarily a win for ranked choice voting. The Democratic primary offered an easy choice between an affable 33 year-old who campaigned on "unity" against a politically and personally corrupt machine Democrat who wears the same stinking cologne as the outgoing mayor.