What the Left Must Learn from Mamdani
Our role on the Left is to set aside our cynicism and push through the specter of electoral losses to help set the table for our political future.
Alex Han
New York City’s municipal elections aren’t normally the hinge that defines national politics.
We’ve been primed to limit our focus, every four years, to a handful of swing states that decide presidential outcomes. We generally consider anything else a sideshow, including the race to lead the largest city in the country.
This year is different — and unexpectedly so. Those who claim that they knew that 33-year-old open socialist and advocate for Palestinian liberation Zohran Mamdani would far surpass favored candidate Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City are likely lying. Mamdani’s campaign was widely considered well-run, and his field operation — which boasted some 50,000 volunteers — had received significant press for its size and effectiveness. But even on the eve of the election, many believed the race would end predictably, with centrist Cuomo ahead.
Our role on the Left, meanwhile, is to set aside our persistent cynicism and push through the specter of consistent electoral losses, including Donald Trump’s sound defeat of Kamala Harris and, in New York, the ascent of Eric Adams to Gracie Mansion.
Winning or losing, our role is to help set the table for our political future.
This posture has never come easy for the Left. We often have difficulty balancing the contradictions inherent in an electoral process explicitly designed to stop anyone like Mamdani from entering the halls of political power.
The question, then, is how to build on Mamdani’s momentum so he can again topple Cuomo — this time, in the general election on November 4 — and also defeat Adams, the incumbent mayor. Both are running as independents.
A win for Mamdani at the head of a Left-led Democratic coalition would help shift what is possible for the midterm election cycle, in 2026 and beyond.
In this issue, we are providing an entire package of analysis on the various parts of Mamdani’s New York campaign, along with their crucial significance for the bigger moment we are in. Chicago-based organizer Asha Ransby-Sporn (“Zohran Mamdani, Black Voters and the Left”), for example, explores Mamdani’s success with young Black voters and how the campaign must orient itself around all Black voters going into the general election.
We also have Hamilton Nolan on the aftermath of Mamdani’s win, Miles Kampf-Lassin with an overview of the political scene, Thomas Birmingham and Rebecca Burns on the game-changing push from those advocating for cheaper housing, and Dania Rajendra and Rebecca Vilkomerson with a savvy analysis of how another candidate, Brad Lander, threw his support to Mamdani (“Zohran’s Political Revolution”).
One of the most prominent lessons to take away is along the lines of something Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor said during a Haymarket Books roundtable after the election: “In some ways, [the Left has] self-neutered to stay out of the crosshairs of the Trump administration.”
“That strategy,” Taylor added, “has failed miserably.”
Brandon Johnson’s victory in Chicago’s 2023 mayoral election stands as one of the few relevant examples of a Left/progressive-led coalition winning high office. The now-mayor went from polling at 3% just three months before election day to overtaking Paul Vallas, the Cuomo/Adams equivalent candidate.
The morning of that election, few confidently believed Johnson would take the day.
The Johnson administration has now faced numerous critiques, including from the Left. What is important to remember, at least right now, is that viewing any progressive’s rise to office through rose-colored glasses — and responding vehemently when predictably let down by a system designed not to work for the Left — is, at best, simplistic.
At worst, these critiques lead to a misunderstanding of the types of coalitional politics — like the coalition between Lander and Mamdani — that can be successful models for the future.
In April 2024, while forecasting Trump’s eventual victory in Georgia, I wrote about what we might learn from the durability of his right-wing coalition, which is now running roughshod over the country — “not from its authoritarian and anti-democratic nature, but from its flexibility and constant construction.” The clearest lessons are not just about the most correct policy positions.
Assata Shakur famously said, in part, “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win.”
The time is now for the Left to rise to its duty.
Alex Han is Executive Director of In These Times. He has organized with unions, in the community, and in progressive politics for two decades. In addition to serving as Midwest Political Director for Bernie 2020, he’s worked to amplify the power of community and labor organizations at Bargaining for the Common Good, served as a Vice President of SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana for over a decade, and helped to found United Working Families, an independent political organization in Illinois that has elected dozens of working-class leaders to city, state and federal office. Most recently he was executive editor of Convergence Magazine.
