Zohran Mamdani Won Because He Named the Crisis – Unlike the Democratic Party

Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old Muslim democratic socialist and sitting assembly member, has delivered one of the most consequential primary upsets, unseating Andrew Cuomo, the scandal-scarred former governor whose comeback bid was bolstered by $35.6 million in campaign funds drawn from political action committees, real estate developers, corporate executives, and pro-Israel lobbying groups.

With a campaign budget of less than one-third of Cuomo’s, raised in large part through public matching funds and small-dollar donations, Mamdani’s campaign was about coalition-building across lines: tenants and transit riders, undocumented immigrants and climate organisers, Muslims, Jews, and working-class youth. 

That Zohran Mamdani, a self-identified democratic socialist, the son of immigrants, and a sitting assembly member who openly advocates for taxing the rich, dismantling carceral logics, and investing in public infrastructure, could topple Andrew Cuomo, a man once regarded as the quintessential power broker of New York politics, is not merely a testament to effective campaigning. Mamdani’s victory speaks not only to the organisational sophistication of his field campaign or the reach of his social media strategy, but also to the deep and widening legitimacy crisis now confronting the Democratic party establishment.

The Democratic establishment defaulted to its most familiar playbook. They underestimated the young, working-class, multiracial voters. These voters are no longer satisfied with rhetorical progressivism or symbolic representation. They want material redistribution, structural change, and a political class that speaks to the lived conditions of their communities rather than the anxieties of wealthy donors.

Mamdani’s campaign articulated this shift. His platform reads as both a critique of neoliberal austerity and a blueprint for social-democratic governance: rent stabilisation and rent freezes to counteract the real estate market’s predation; fare-free public buses as a right; municipally owned grocery stores to disrupt food apartheid; universal childcare to relieve families of unpaid labor burdens; and a bold expansion of affordable housing under public ownership to restore the promise of dignified urban life. With its door-to-door organising, targeted digital presence, and relentless focus on affordability and dignity, the campaign set the terms of debate. 

 Cuomo, in contrast, wagered on the enduring power of capital-backed nostalgia. His campaign, drenched in funds from executives, hedge fund magnates, and pro-Israel lobbying organisations, rested on the assumption that dominance could substitute for legitimacy.

But what the Mamdani victory reveals is a generational dis-identification with these old coordinates of power. New Yorkers are  no longer content with representation that treats their suffering as a campaign talking point rather than a mandate for transformation. 

Mamdani’s campaign mobilised what he accurately described as “the largest volunteer operation in New York City history”- a sprawling, neighbourhood-rooted apparatus of canvassers, organisers, etc. His team mastered the use of digital platforms: concise policy explainers, community testimonials, translated infographics, and targeted appeals grounded in material realities.

Also read: Engage, Not Inform: Visual Lessons from Zohran Mamdani’s Campaign

Perhaps most significantly, Mamdani’s base was not confined to the typical circuits of progressive cosmopolitanism. While he did secure massive margins in historically left-liberal enclaves like Park Slope, Cobble Hill, and the East Village, his path ran directly through New York’s immigrant working class in Jackson Heights and Corona, Flushing and Sunset Park, Elmhurst and Woodside. Mamdani’s ascent cannot be disentangled from the broader tectonic shifts currently reshaping the American political landscape. The national Democratic losses in the 2024 cycle, particularly among working-class voters across racial lines, are symptomatic of a deeper crisis of legitimacy. Nowhere is this erosion more visible than in New York, where traditional Democratic strongholds have experienced pronounced rightward swings from disillusionment with a political class that has failed to materially improve people's lives. 

Cuomo’s camp, by contrast, turned to the oldest trick in the establishment playbook: fear. Not fear of economic collapse or mass displacement, but fear of socialism, fear of Muslims, and, tellingly, fear of Mamdani’s position on Palestine. His principled critique of Israeli state violence became the linchpin attacks, with character assassinations dressed up as concern for “security” and “stability.”  

It must be emphasised: Mamdani’s victory, while historic, was not achieved in isolation.

It was the product of a broad, if precarious, liberal-left alliance. New York City comptroller and mayoral hopeful Brad Lander chose not to punch left. While campaigning for his own aspirations, he understood the nature of ranked-choice voting and the imperative of coalition-building in the face of Cuomo’s reemergence. This capacity for what we might call strategic mutualism was essential. Of course, mutuality cuts both ways, but Mamdani’s campaign showed that when both sides abandon the zero-sum logic and recognise the necessity of strategic convergence, something transformative becomes possible. 

Voters are not drawn to candidates because they resemble party elites or repeat stale talking points; they are drawn to those who articulate, however imperfectly, the conditions of their suffering and the outline of a better future.

The Democratic party, long complacent in its mediocrity and protected by the inertia of institutional power, now faces a challenge it can neither co-opt nor suppress. For decades, Democratic leadership has relied on a delicate but cynical balancing act. That contradiction is no longer tenable. The party’s technocratic elite, is now being outflanked by candidates who refuse to play along, who understand that fighting for the “middle class” means little when you simultaneously preserve billionaire tax loopholes and greenlight austerity budgets.

Post-2024 studies reveal a deep erosion of Democratic support in precisely the constituencies the party once took for granted: young men, urban voters of colour, and working-class communities most acutely affected by the crisis of affordability. The party’s handling of Cuomo is a case in point. That the Democratic establishment so swiftly reassembled behind a man they had once publicly called to resign in disgrace speaks volumes, not only about its internal incoherence but about its complete lack of strategic imagination.

The consultant-industrial complex, which now serves as the de facto brain trust of the Democratic machine, continues to churn out poll-tested platitudes and “electability” narratives while haemorrhaging support across nearly every key demographic. Following the 2024 general election, liberal punditry embarked on its usual circular firing squad, diagnosing voter apathy, misinformation, and Republican extremism while refusing to confront the more proximate cause: the Democratic party’s inability to offer a compelling, materialist vision of the future.

At a time when the wealth gap widens, fascist politics reemerge, the party seems capable only of defensive crouches and nostalgia-soaked appeals to "norms." It is floundering, not for lack of resources, but for lack of imagination. Mamdani did not win by moderating his demands; he won by naming the crisis and pointing a way out.

The question is whether the party can evolve fast enough or whether it will continue clinging to a centrist delusion. The path forward seems, frankly, obvious. But whether the party’s current leadership is capable of learning that lesson is another matter entirely. Worse still, if you listen closely to the post-Mamdani discourse from Democratic operatives and liberal pundits, you’ll find them drawing all the wrong lessons. Many are obsessing over the surface-level optics of Mamdani’s win – his campaign’s mastery of social media – as if the triumph was a triumph of branding.

The idea that he won because of TikTok is more palatable to the party’s consultant-industrial complex than the more inconvenient truth: that people are responding to unapologetically redistributive politics. It is difficult to overstate just how unserious and frankly absurd the mainstream takeaway from Mamdani’s victory has been. In the aftermath of a grassroots upset powered by working-class organizing and a bold material program, much of the Democratic consultant class has chosen to focus on... engagement strategy. Democratic leaders would rather believe that they are losing because of poor communication than reckon with the far more discomforting possibility: that voters have stopped listening because the party has stopped offering them anything meaningful.

The truth is, the Democratic party has for years suffered from a profound policy vacuum. This form of elite deference has not only shaped democratic governance, it has actively repelled the very constituencies the party once claimed to represent. None of this is new. Mamdani’s primary has already redrawn the electoral map of New York City and deepened the ideological rift within the Democratic coalition. For a party mired in strategic confusion and moral drift, this is more than a warning. 

Ananya Singh is a writer. She posts on X @anannnya_s.

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