The Democratic Socialist Core to Zohran Mamdani’s Campaign

At a time when much of the left is in retreat or ducking for cover, Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign is championing democratic socialist politics and raising expectations.

A recent rally for Zohran Mamdani (Photo from campaign website)

What does it mean to run as a democratic socialist for mayor? And what sets a socialist candidate for mayor apart from progressive candidates? Those are the questions that many on the left are wrestling with as the momentum mounts for Democratic Socialists of America member Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor of New York City.

Is Zohran’s platform indistinguishable from a progressive platform? In two important senses the answer is clearly no. First, Mamdani is running on a platform that puts rebuilding the public sector at its fore: most prominently through a plan for free and better buses, a test program to build publicly owned grocery stores, and an aggressive attack on the city’s wasteful dependence on private sector consultants. Mamdani also supports expanding the city’s childcare program and renovating and expanding public housing. This platform breaks with the center-left’s current submission to the belief that the private sector is the best means to deliver public goods.

It’s also a smart reply to the recent “abundance” arguments made by many in the party’s establishment. Yes, we need to build out transit and increase housing development, but the public sector should do those things. A strong defense of the public sector against privatization, and a willingness to push for its expansion instead of opting for “market-based solutions,” is an essential part of what it means to be a democratic socialist, and it’s a cause that Zohran has joined with force.

Second, for generations, all Democratic politicians in New York (including progressives) have pledged their fealty to the state of Israel. This is a game that Zohran (alone in the field of candidates) has refused to play. Not only is he the only candidate to refuse to make a symbolic trip to Israel, but he has popularized a true and damning criticism: that Israel is an apartheid state without equal rights for all its citizens. This combination of a vigorous case for the public sector and a solid commitment to international solidarity against the US-Israel alliance is the democratic socialist core of his platform.¹

Raising Expectations

Those on the left who are primed to think that Zohran’s platform is “merely progressive” ignore the context in which that platform is being put forward. In a time of general retreat and demoralization, Mamdani’s campaign is reviving hope with a much more ambitious vision of left-wing politics. In a time when there is no precedent for left-wing governance in any major city in the country, his campaign is putting forward concrete pro-worker demands that are broadly popular, can test the bounds of what’s possible, and lay the groundwork for even bolder reforms to public transit, housing, and childcare, as well as the further expansion of the public sector.

Socialist platforms have historically followed the same logic. The Communist Manifesto includes demands that seem almost shockingly modest from our vantage point: the end of child labor, a progressive income tax, free public schools. The German Erfurt Program calls for the end of laws discriminating against women, universal suffrage, the separation of church and state, and free medical care (the last, alas, is still a radical demand in the United States). The socialist movement is “progressive” in this sense: it progresses as its power grows, moving from more modest to more radical reform fights. Zohran’s platform is the platform appropriate to a still very small and weak movement. Bigger reforms — say, a municipal version of single payer healthcare or a universally free public transit system — can be added to the agenda as our movement grows and our initial reforms are won.

None of this is to suggest that the pressure to adapt to mainstream politics and play by its rules isn’t a serious threat. If Zohran wins the Democratic nomination, and especially if he wins the general election in November, that pressure will become intense. Those on the left who scoff at these concerns as a “fear of power” or who exaggerate the power that a Mayor Mamdani would have are dangerously naive. Campaigns like Zohran’s are desperately needed — and if he won it would be an incredible opportunity — but the campaign and a potential administration will be much stronger if that threat is taken seriously.

Both the platform and the character of the campaign have had another beneficial and intended effect: both are raising expectations for what’s possible in electoral politics. The signs of this are clear. Zohran’s campaign has mobilized tens of thousands of people in a city where municipal politics are usually a dreary affair. The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America has grown by thousands of members. People are starting to believe again that left-wing politics can be about something more than playing defense against the onslaught from the far right. And for this reason, the campaign is starting to turn the screws on the centrist leadership of the party whose current strategy seems to be a return to Obama-era moderation.

When Progressives Echo Left-Wing Ideas

When left-wing activists and politicians raise people’s expectations, the effect is contagious. One reason I think a few of my friends and comrades on the left are skeptical of how radical Zohran’s platform really is is because key elements of it have been embraced in recent months by other progressives in the race. But months ago, the most prominent progressives running for mayor (including Brad Lander, who wanted to “see the data” first), refused to endorse the rent freeze Zohran first championed. As Zohran’s campaign took off and Lander’s straggled behind, Lander came on board. At last week’s debate, all except Andrew Cuomo and Whitney Tilson (the hedge fund manager who has served as Cuomo’s attack dog in the campaign while polling at 0 percent) endorsed the freeze.

That move is familiar. In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, many progressive (and faux-progressive) Democrats, hoping to catch up to the Bernie juggernaut, came out in favor of Medicare for All. Their support was conditional and in many cases more than a little duplicitous. The fact that they felt the need to endorse Medicare for All reflects the fact that progressive politicians and their staffers straddle the world of mainstream liberal politics on the one hand and the world of left-wing movement on the other. Torn between the two, they’re pulled in one direction or the other depending on where the energy is. The fact that progressive Democrats endorse left-wing demands in certain circumstances is a mark of progressives’ weakness; they do it only when the tide seems to be turning. It’s not a sign that the left is moderating its politics.

If nothing else, that makes progressives a good weathervane for knowing which way the wind is blowing. In 2025, those progressives are making a choice that ought to send us a clear signal: thanks to the work of the Zohran campaign and the New York chapter of DSA, the socialist left in the Big Apple has the wind at its back again.

1. For those wondering how a campaign like Zohran’s fits into the much longer struggle to build a socialist society, these two pieces of his campaign — expanding the public sector and international solidarity — are key. An economy in which the public sector plays the dominant role and a world order in which international solidarity replaces power blocs and inter-imperial struggles are two of the core building blocks of a socialist future.