Despite a desperate last-ditch attempt to sink his campaign culminating in an intervention by former President Bill Clinton, New York State Representative and Democratic Socialist has Zohran Mamdani has won the Democratic Primary race for Mayor of New York.
The win puts Mamdani within striking distance of winning what would be the most powerful executive office ever held by a socialist in the United States.
Mamdani’s victory will inevitably be spun as a win “for change,” “for progressives,” “for populists,” “against the establishment,” “for young people,” and so on, but none of this gets at its real historical significance. This was a win for a man who ran as a socialist, who was attacked as a socialist, who was given high-profile endorsements by socialists, and who was relentlessly campaigned for by socialists. This is a victory for socialism.
Despite the fever-dreams and agonized fearmongering of right-wing Democrats, this is hardly a communist revolution. If Mamdani hopes to pass even a fraction of the modest items on his agenda — like city-owned grocery stores and baby boxes, two policies developed by People’s Policy Project founder Matt Bruenig — his biggest fights are still ahead of him, and he will require ongoing mass support from the NYC working class to get there.
And given the magnitude of opposition he encountered within his own party en route to the nomination, including over $24m in spending from groups allied with Cuomo, one can hardly take those victories for granted. Indeed, opposition to his campaign has already become so serious that earlier this week I proposed the incoming socialist administration seriously consider leveling an exit tax to deter threats of capital flight.
But whatever happens, this is a political earthquake. What Mamdani has proven tonight is that contrary to the persistent conventional wisdom circulated by liberals and elite pundits that socialist candidates are “unelectable” in the United States, a socialist candidate just won in the most powerful city in the country. And that brings to mind another line of conventional wisdom: if you can make it in New York City, you can make it anywhere.
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