Zohran Mamdani Won the Battle—the Class War Ahead Will Be Harder

The socialist assemblymember's seismic victory won't mean much if the progressive movement doesn't learn from its mistakes over the Bernie years

Watching our own on-the-ground NYC mayoral primary election night coverage, helmed by Status Coup reporter Ashley Bishop, was exhilarating (watch her livestream from Zohran watch party below).

As a progressive journalist, wins have been in short supply over the Bernie movement decade (2015-2025), with soul-crushing defeats often flattening our collective spirts—and movements.

That’s why I, and millions of other progressives, felt downright euphoric Tuesday night after taking down establishment kingpin Andrew Cuomo—and the cabal of corporate media, Super PACS, AIPAC and Wall Street goons that bankrolled and lifted his anemic campaign (and in recent years, have successfully thwarted progressive candidates).

It’s been equally exhilarating, and comical, the day after, watching Wall-Street TV—eh hem, CNBC—suffer an epic meltdown, comparing Zohran to the Batman villain trying to take down…superhero Wall Street CEOS (nope, this is not The Onion). Hell, top Wall Street leech, Jim Cramer, even suggested a potential Mayor Mamdani will have Wall Street-ers…shot!

While we certainly should all take the day, or two, to soak in the victory—and the corrupt establishment meltdown—we will then have to turn our attention to an important fact.

It won’t be enough to merely elect a socialist as New York City’s Mayor.

Having reported on-the-ground for nearly a decade now through Bernie 1.0 and 2.0, AOC and “The Squad,” smaller-scale progressive campaigns, a recurring theme and pattern has developed.

The left is getting better, and stronger, at building grassroots, small-dollar, people-powered electoral movements. But after both wins and losses, those movements are stalling out—due to both the politicians and their supporters dropping the ball.

Some examples:

• 2008: What turned-out-to be phony progressive, Barack Obama built a historic grassroots presidential campaign—and digital organizing apparatus—only to leave his network of young activists’ untapped when he took office. Instead of leveraging millions of energized supporters to take on Wall Street after big banks criminally defrauded and tanked the global economy, fight for, at the very least, a public healthcare option, and mobilize emergency action to reverse the climate crisis, Obama left his organizing army hanging on the White House lawn.
  

• 2016: After Bernie Sanders historic, David vs 10 Goliaths presidential campaign, he endorsed Hillary Clinton and urged his supporters to support her in order to defeat Donald Trump. Yet, after Trump’s victory, Sanders didn’t tap into his massive army of digital, and in-person, volunteers—400,000 plus—to fight Trump’s agenda, further organize nationwide for Medicare For All, mass primary establishment Democratic members of Congress, etc.

  
  He merely endorsed progressive candidates, sent out fundraising emails, and gave his patented barnburner Senate, and rally, speeches railing against Trump. But his lack of leadership in continuing to mobilize his base of hundreds of thousands of volunteers against the Democratic establishment—allowed Trump and the Democratic establishment to return to business as usual politics. This left hundreds of thousands of progressive activists deflated and demobilized.
  

• 2018: Bartender-turned-political force Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won a historic upset over establishment toady Joseph Crowley, mobilizing her own mini-army of supporters and vowing to “bring the ruckus to the Democratic Party.” A las, the ruckus became a whimper; AOC fell in line, opting to work the “inside game” and not rock-the-boat against the Democratic establishment. As a result, her supporters—many of whom volunteered for the Justice Democrats organizing group—tuned out, once again deflating and demobilizing progressive activists.
  

• 2020: See the aforementioned 2016 Bernie bullet…expanded x 10. Sanders built an even bigger, and even more diverse, army of digital and in-person volunteers to, at one point, become the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. But like in 2016, after his defeat and endorsement, this time for Biden, Sanders left his army at the gates. “Enough is enough” morphed into “get rid of Trump and we’ll fight to move Biden left on Day one.”
  
  If he actually followed through, Sanders had a massive army waiting to join him. Four years after his first presidential run, Bernie’s digital and in-person organizing army was even larger than the first go-around (his 2020 campaign’s Slack channel was larger than the national membership of the surging Democratic Socialists of America). But instead of leveraging and deploying this organizing army, Bernie opted to play the “inside game”—working with the Biden administration to win what amounted to marginal crumbs for the working class (and provide very little emergency financial or healthcare relief during a once-in-a-century pandemic). Worse than post-2016, this radicalized many Bernie supporters to shift to the right politically—or tune out, and drop out, of political activism alltogether.

So how does this all connect to Zohran Mamdani and his impressive army of working-class volunteers throughout New York City?

Well, needless to say, the war is not over—he has simply won the first battle. He will not have a cakewalk to general election victory. Expect the national, and New York Democratic establishment, to put everything they have behind incumbent New York Mayor Eric Adams. Cuomo himself might throw out a monkey wrench and run as an independent.

And even if he is triumphant, a Mayor Mamdani will then face his toughest opponent yet: the wealthiest people in America, all encircled on a small island that serves as ground zero for corrupt capitalism.

Mamdani will also have to face the governor who represents those Wall Street tycoons.

Governor Kathy Hochul has already vowed she would not approve Mamdani’s proposed two percent tax hike on wealthy New Yorkers and a separate corporate tax increase for NYC companies. This means Mayor Mamdani will have a choice: play the inside game and compromise to achieve eventual crumbs or enlist the army of volunteers who got him elected to fight Hochul into submission (and Wall Street on a litany of other matters).

A Mayor Mamdani, and the movement behind him, won’t win every battle. But a general can’t win a class war if he or she heads into battle without enlisting—and energizing—the army behind him.

Which is the very mistake the progressive movement has made for the last decade.

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