“It always seems impossible until it is done,” Mamdani quoted Nelson Mandela at his last victory rally in Long Island City. For a candidate who started from 1% support in the polls, his triumph was impossible, until it wasn’t.
The democrats in NYC decided to give a “communist lunatic,” in the words of Trump, a chance at running the citadel of capitalism. They decided to entrust the Big Apple to a Muslim immigrant born in Uganda.
Zohran Kwame Mamdani is a Shia, Gujrati Indian from his father’s side while his mother is of Hindu, Punjabi descent. Zohran’s mother, Mira Nair, is a renowned filmmaker, who produced notable films like Mississippi Masala, while his father, a Professor at Columbia, is regarded as one of the foremost scholars of African studies and postcolonial theory, with a plethora of books under his belt, such as: Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.
If we were to focus on his family history, it seems like Zohran got his intellectual chops from his father, while his mother bequeathed him a filmmaker’s tact of displaying magnetism on the screen. And boy, magnetic and charismatic, he is. He has a veneer of polish and sophistication dressed up in a workers’ leader’s overalls, a la Harold Wilson – two-time British Prime Minister in the 1960s and 70s or the other Labour stalwart in the UK: Tony Benn, who went from being denigrated as the most dangerous man in Britain to being applauded as a national radical treasure.
It is the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty
Both these British politicians were self-described democratic socialists. Mr. Mamdani proudly embraces the label of a democratic socialist too. However, there is a lot more derision and contempt for this word in the US than there ever was in the UK. It was only in the waning years of Britain’s imperial power and during her steady economic decline after World War II that her politicians’ tilt to the left, their notions of a welfare state, was understood and embraced by a large chunk of the country.
The extollers of Pax-Americana who often compare the incoming decline of the United States with Roman Civilisation’s would be well-advised to purview history a little closer in time. Superpowers, at least in the modern world, don’t go into cataclysmic decline suddenly and have hordes of barbarians invade them. They adjust slowly to their new economic reality of reduced relative income and increased debt, much as Great Britain did after the Second World War.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd and longest serving President of the United States, was a progressive democrat who saved capitalism from itself. The Great Depression, followed by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, is often touted as the worst period in American history. FDR went against all established precedents and involved the government in all manners of private enterprise to provide employment to the distraught millions in a bid to resuscitate the economy. Yet, he avoided the label of socialist, because the highly capitalist American psyche would never have accepted a socialist in the highest office.
In periods of great economic turmoil where earning a living wage becomes the rallying cry of citizens come demagogues who promise the people a roadmap out of their misery. People hearken for change when their economic prospects are dismal. One of Bill Clinton’s advisors coined a legendary phrase, “It’s the economy stupid.” It always is the economy. Donald Trump blames the average American's economic woes on the migrants and factories in other countries stealing their jobs while Mamdani blames the billionaires for short-changing the average New Yorker.
Zohran Mamdani echoed the economic worries and anxieties of New Yorkers in all five boroughs when he said to an NBC reporter, “It’s the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty, and the rest are seemingly trapped in a state of anxiety.” His campaign slogan is, “A City We Can Afford”. This is a tough slogan to beat, because what do you say to counter it… that you want a city no one can afford? The only attacks thus on Zohran are either on his background by racist right-wingers or by thoughtful elites who question how a 33-year-old New York state assemblyman with no administrative experience can execute these socialist ideals.
“You campaign in poetry, govern in prose”, is a famous quote by former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, father of Andrew Cuomo, who was Zohran’s main challenger in the Democratic primary. The vast majority of businesspeople and Wall Streeters in NYC hope that Zohran will change his tone once he assumes power because it is one thing to win votes on the basis of radical sloganeering and quite another to execute those radical ideas – which are unfathomable to the established business elite in the City.
Zohran, meanwhile, has not dithered from his position by a single inch. This lends him more credibility because he is not seen as a two-faced hypocrite like most politicians are but as a straightforward man. He espouses the same economic ideas in every interview he does and explains them in a very eloquent way. Voters vote not just for ideas but for the person articulating them.
The major reason that the Zohran has been successful so far in a city where Muslims have been derided and vilified for more than two decades is because he oozes charisma. His demeanour while explaining concepts which are an anathema to the American mainstream mollifies even his strongest critics.
He has campaigned in Spanish, Urdu and Arabic. His videos exemplifying the everyman in this new age of social media enthralled his supporters while his old-fashioned walk through the length of Manhattan galvanised his support base like nothing else.
Yes, he advocates for rent-control, free buses, a $30 minimum wage, free child-care but the voters saw more than that: they saw a scrappy, independent-minded millennial in an era of boomer politicians who kowtow to hidden powers. Netizens on every platform contend that compared to established politicians, this man is a “breath of fresh air.”
Lest we miss the forest for the trees, the democratic establishment in the United States should know that behind this pretty face is a message which is as clear as day: while America’s economic might declines, the country would we well-served to look after the interest of her downtrodden before strife becomes the norm in the country’s streets. “Democratic socialist” might almost be an expletive in the United States of America but its principles should not be. The man who has chosen to embrace both the label and the ideas behind it, Zohran Kwame Mamdani, truly is a breath of fresh air.