What should we make of Mamdani’s stunning victory? Much of the commentary —regardless of vantage point— is grandiose, highly speculative, and without context. So let’s ground ourselves in the broader politics, available evidence, and, above all, history. Then maybe we can figure out what to do.
To The Organizers Go The Victories
Mamdani won the NYC primary because his campaign put together an impressive ground game. This is the first, most important takeaway. The credit goes to the DSA, Working Families Party, and many others who knocked on doors and lit up the phone lines. There are no victories of any kind — electoral or movement-building — without basic organizing.
The ground game was all the more important because unions — who have run and staffed the Democrats’ GOTV operation for decades — split between Cuomo and Mamdani, but gave the lion’s share of support to Cuomo.
UAW Region 9A and IATSE Local 161 ranked Mamdani No. 1. District Council 37, Unite HERE Local 100, and Teamster 804 ranked him No. 2. The influential Professional Staff Congress made the kind of endorsements only possible through Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). They advised their members to rank Mamdani as 1, 2, or 3 alongside Landers and Adrienne Adams as they saw fit. They understood that their members would benefit from economic reforms and recognized how RCV was altering the political landscape.
Among the unions for Cuomo were: 32BJ SEIU, 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, Teamsters Local 237, IBEW Local 3, NYC Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, NYC Coalition of the International Union of the Operating Engineers, FDNY EMS Local 2507 and Uniformed EMS Officers Union Local 3621, NYS Iron Workers District Council, Teamsters Joint Council 16, Uniformed Firefighters Association, Uniformed Firefighters Officers Association, Uniformed Fire Alarm Dispatchers Benevolent Association, the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York.
Mamdani’s working-class-oriented “affordability” platform certainly won many votes. Why wasn’t it enough to win the unions? 32BJ SEIU has already moved to Mamdani. Will the rest follow?
Ranked Choice Voting Makes A Difference.
RCV allowed a different electoral landscape to emerge, where candidates more easily formed alliances. “Cross endorsement” cannot exist under the dominant winner-takes-all, plurality system. Yes, Brad Landon was a real mensch to cross-endorse Mamdani, but that would have been impossible without electoral reform. RCV allowed voters to act more in accordance with their values by undermining the lesser evil voting strategy.
Now, will the Mamdani campaign or DSA advocate for RCV or other reforms, such as proportional representation, in every election?
The Peace Movement Prepared The Way For Mamdani
Mamdani did not win the election despite being Muslim and pro-Palestine, but because of it. Public attitudes have shifted. Zionism and the Democratic machine are on the wrong side of history.
While Jewish Voice for Peace endorsed Mamdani, the influence of the peace movement ran much deeper. With an urgency and militancy far exceeding the glacial pace of electoral compromise, peace activists plowed the field that Mamdani harvested.
All those students and protesters who were arrested, surveilled, punished, beaten, even kidnapped, changed the climate of opinion and cleared the way for voting against genocide. Their “outside” position made this “inside’ victory possible.
Consider this perceptive appeal by Miriam Markowitz:
“To all the people who are anti-genocide but remain too afraid to say it: Signaling support for the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, even if you don’t live there, is a good way to pop into the conversation without having to say the word “Gaza” or issue a mea culpa….[T]his is your very easy onboarding to the ethical issue of our time as well as the locus of the fight for democracy, such that it exists.”
Risky activism for some made “easy onboarding” for others. It’s ok: welcome aboard! In organizing, we look for an easy first step.
The question is: what is the next step? Palestinian solidarity cannot afford to wait for elections, because the answer can only be found somewhere in the wild weeds of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial resistance, in the building of mass movements, and in forcing actual constraints — political and material — on the war machine.
Mamdani and the Burden of History
He ain’t the mayor yet. The hits are already coming on hot and heavy from both ruling parties. They are about to prove again that the top priority for ruling parties is to maintain control here on the home front. The Democrats specialize in stopping threats from the left, but this time they will get plenty of help from the Republicans. Mamdani’s economic proposals are seen as a challenge to Big Money.
Consider what happened when India Walton, a Black working-class socialist, won the 2021 Democratic mayoral nomination in Buffalo. The city’s Democrats and Republicans joined forces against her. India’s defeat in the general is a cautionary tale that the ruling class doesn’t just roll over and play dead.
Even if Mamdani prevails, he will still face an ambush not unlike the one Sanders might have faced in 2016 and 2020 had he won. Sanders dared not defy the big guns of empire, capital, and the Democratic machine. He chose surrender and appeasement.
The machine will do everything to box Mamdani in. Will he disappoint the soaring expectations of the “hot takes?” Can he resist the forces of assimilation that drew in Sanders and the Squad? Tlaib remains an outlier on Palestine; maybe Mamdani will be one too. Time will tell.
History offers us a real solution to Mamdani’s power paradox, but we have yet to build it.
Mayor La Guardia and the New Deal
Mayor Fiorello La Guardia (1934-1946) could well be seen as a forerunner to Mamdani, but the history of his reign contains the seeds of either victory or defeat.
La Guardia was a product of the New Deal, which was driven by the activism of millions of workers, farmers, and Blacks, often led by socialists and communists. Third parties held seats in Congress, and populists found a broad audience. Without similar deep roots and varied branches, Mamdani is, and will remain, out on a limb. Evidence? Mamdani’s weak showing among sectors of Black voters and the poorest New Yorkers shows that, without a powerful opposition movement, the Democratic machine is able to dominate politics just as it did with many labor unions.
His maverick campaign benefited from an electoral reform called “fusion,” which allowed candidates to run on multiple party tickets. We don’t hear much about fusion today; the Democrats largely dismantled it. La Guardia took refuge from the Democratic machine in the Republican Party, but he was a New Deal Republican.
The beating heart of the New Deal was the “United Front.” Even though La Guardia ultimately betrayed the United Front, he could never have come to power without it; with it, Mamdani has a chance at greatness.
The Rise and Fall of the New Deal: From United Front to Popular Front
The New Deal rose and fell in stages. The “United Front” strategy of the early years showed us the way forward, while the later “Popular Front” led to defeat. The final deathblow was delivered by Cold War/Anticommunism, through purges within and beyond the labor movement. The defeat was codified in law and still sets limits on our “common sense” of what is politically possible.[1 ]
But, for a time, militant class and racial struggles, political independence, the emergence of third parties, union organizing, and efforts among the unemployed made the United Front a force to be reckoned with. Issues of race were inseparable from class. Support for the Scottsboro Boys was a pivotal move in the making of the United Front.[2]
The United Front is one of the most underappreciated developments in 20th-century US history — everyday people actually built an effective opposition of mass movements and revolutionary political parties. Hundreds of thousands came to see their self-interest and class interests as contrary to those of the bosses and bankers. United Front leadership was a quarrelsome but functioning counter-hegemonic bloc of radicals, anarchists, unionists, activists, and socialists, with the Communist Party its largest and most coherent force.
The United Front is the history that proves the oppositional politics we so desperately need today are possible.
But, the “United Front” was abandoned for the “Popular Front” in the late 1930s and 1940s. The Communists made a pragmatic alliance with the US ruling class in the hopes of defending the Soviet Union and defeating Fascism.
Crucially, the Communist Party, politicians, and union leaders sought to maintain the class peace they thought necessary for the war by enforcing a deeply divisive “no-strike pledge.”[3]
They sacrificed hard-won solidarity with the workers who were the grassroots leaders of the United Front — just as workers were leading a historic strike wave. La Guardia, it must be remembered, joined with the Communist Party and union officials in punishing and smearing striking workers.
As John Munro summarized it: “The Popular Front…meant quieting critiques of state repression, capitalist exploitation, and racial oppression.”[4]
The no-strike pledge was one-sided political surrender.
As World War II quickly morphed into the Cold War, the Communist Party, like the Soviet Union, became the new existential threat. Big money, anticommunist unions, and the ruling parties turned against their now-weakened former allies. They were purged from labor and smeared as political pariahs. Unions were also punished — despite their enforcement of the no-strike pledge — with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which has hobbled unions ever since.
The Popular Front was a disaster that the working class and the left have never recovered from.
So forgotten is this history that what is often presented as a united front against fascism or Trump is little more than “fall in line” behind the Democrats and a return to the failed Popular Front of the 1940s.
Social Movements Save The Day
But all is not lost. The brightest lights found a way forward out of the dark days of Cold War. The social movements led by the Civil Rights and Black Power struggles reclaimed and legitimized dissent after the purges. The Peace movement, Women’s movement, Environmental Movement, LGBT movement, Community Organizing, rank-and-file union caucuses, and all their many descendants continue to be the “left” we actually have and the one that matters most.
The Burden of History We All Bear
Most of the self-described left still hold the position bequeathed to them by the Cold War. When they support Democrats based on “pragmatism” or “reality,” the Popular Front is the reality they have internalized and repeat.
The DSA has engaged in a lengthy debate about whether to break with the Democrats. The debate remains unresolved, and it’s too early to tell how Mamdani’s victory will impact it. On the other hand, the oppositional left is showing signs of revival, but remains small and scattered, without a significant national role in the unions or the community. But, no part of the left — or even the sum of all its parts — has roots in the working class anywhere near the scale of the United Front of the 30’s.
Mamdani and the DSA have the potential to start building a united front, and we desperately need that.
History is a guide, but current models do exist. Kshama Sawant and Workers Strike Back’s campaign for Congress — with its fusion of electoral and social movement activism, political independence, opposition to genocide, as well as its crystal-clear socialist politics — is the best example that truly aligns with the history of the United Front.
We lack massive movements, but the day will surely come when many millions take to the streets again, as they did during Occupy or the George Floyd protests. Right now, the present-day civil rights movement confronting ICE and the burgeoning police state, and today’s peace movement in solidarity with Palestine, are the best steps forward. Any party or political formation that can join them, serve them, lead them, become their architect, or electoral wing, will be well-positioned to help us — Mamdani and all — shoulder the burdens of history and build the United Front we need.
Notes.
1. In his article “The Popular Front Didn’t Work” Charlie Post sets out the history of the United Front and Popular Front with far more detail than my short summary. It’s an indispensable read.
2. In his insightful new book, Class War in America, Jon Jeter demonstrates how the campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys served as a catalyst for working-class resistance.
3. See Martin Glaberman, “Wartime strikes: The struggle against the no-strike pledge in the UAW during World War II.”
4. John Munro, ” A Tool for Our Times: Legacies of Black Radicalism and Communism” in Black Perspectives.
The post Lessons From the Mamdani Campaign appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.