A New Kind of Party
The Democrats’ centrist wing suffered its latest humiliation with Andrew Cuomo’s defeat in New York City. It’s time for something new—and the victory of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani points the way.
Miles Kampf-Lassin
Days before being trounced (for a second time) by newly minted New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo prophesied that, if “this socialist wing wins, the Democratic Party dies.” When it comes to the corporate-dominated wing of the party Cuomo embodies, Mamdani’s triumph could indeed represent a death knell — but we should shed no tears.
As Mamdani proclaimed in his election night victory speech: “Too many working people cannot recognize themselves in our party, and too many among us have turned to the right for answers to why they’ve been left behind. We will leave mediocrity in our past. No longer will we have to open a history book for proof that Democrats can dare to be great.”
Mamdani, the first Muslim democratic socialist to be elected New York’s mayor, was speaking of the failed vision of Democratic leaders who, for decades, have cozied up to billionaire donors and drifted away from the working-class base that once stood at its core.
A week prior, Mamdani held a massive, 13,000-person rally in Queens, alongside fellow democratic socialists Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders. In a stadium that usually hosts artists like Neil Young and Chappell Roan, Sanders asked: “In the year 2025, when the people on top have never, ever had so much economic and political power, is it possible for ordinary people, for working-class people, to come together and defeat those oligarchs?”
Then, he answered: “You’re damn right we can.”
Sanders’ presidential runs, in 2016 and 2020, took direct aim at the Democrats’ neoliberal wing, marking a new front in the long battle for control of the lone national opposition party to the GOP. Intent on maintaining power, Democratic elites pulled out all the stops to block both of Sanders’ insurgent challenges. But they couldn’t extinguish the flame of inspiration his campaigns lit in the hearts of millions of followers, one of whom is now set to take office as leader of the nation’s largest city. Indeed, at a joint town hall in September, Mamdani told Sanders that his first presidential run “gave me the language of democratic socialism to describe my politics.”
As I wrote after Mamdani’s shock primary win in June, he activated legions of new voters, a strategy Sanders also pursued (though with more mixed results). On Election Day, Mamdani repeated this feat as turnout nearly doubled from the prior mayoral election and his support among working-class voters and voters of color increased.
More than 1 million people voted for an open and proud democratic socialist. Roughly the same number of people, in 1920, backed Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Debs. Mamdani quoted Debs in the opening lines of his victory speech, forecasting, “I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.”
Mamdani pledged to improve life for working-class residents, and the public has shown they believe he can deliver on his agenda. His charisma and genuine love for the city he will soon lead propelled him out of obscurity to overcome a more than 7-to-1 spending disadvantage, which funded Islamophobic attack ads in the election season’s waning days.
So there’s real reason to think Cuomo’s warning may prove correct — that the ascendance of Mamdani’s economic populist program means the end of the old Democratic Party, which now boasts a lower favorability rating than Republicans under President Donald Trump — even as the the administration carries out mass abductions and denies food and healthcare to millions of families on the brink.
Meanwhile, Mamdani and the left-wing electoral movement he’s part of have been unafraid to name these authoritarian attacks for what they are: billionaire-led rule hell-bent on immiserating working people to swell the profits of the wealthy.
This movement also has no qualms about calling out Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, the routine dehumanization of immigrants, and the cynical attempts to scapegoat trans people and vulnerable communities. For too long, many Democrats have been unwilling to take such full-throated positions, more concerned with the interests of tech oligarchs and free-market fundamentalists.
Any political party hoping to effectively resist Trump’s multi-pronged assault must take lessons from the movement around Mamdani’s decisive win. At an election watch party in Brooklyn, organized by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, I saw hundreds of energetic supporters and volunteers erupt in unimpeded glee when the race was called. Soon after, a number of people had tears in their eyes as the next mayor counseled: “New York City, breathe this moment in. We have held our breath for longer than we know.”
The Mamdani administration has its challenges set out for it — a president promising to withhold federal funding, a governor resistant to raising taxes on the rich, a financial class rooting for the failure of the democratic socialist’s political project. But Mamdani has also been handed a mandate and raised the political expectations of those he’ll need to help fight for it. A new generation has learned that we don’t have to accept an intolerable system that rewards greed and punishes those on the margins.
According to a poll by Data for Progress, Democratic voters say they prefer democratic socialists like Mamdani over establishment moderates by a 20-point margin. And nearly two-thirds of Democrats presently disapprove of their party’s leadership.
Conditions are ripe for a new approach. That means casting the obsolete brand of the party represented by Cuomo into the abyss.
Miles Kampf-Lassin is Senior Editor at In These Times. Follow him at @MilesKLassin
