Mamdani 's Rapid Capitulation to Big Capital

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED

2-20-26

It doesn’t take long does it! We have seen this so many times by now. Mamdani’s election was uplifting but this lesser evilism has finally lost any meaning and it’s experiences like this that has led over time to 100 million or more people opting out of the electoral process altogether. Many others moved right in the desperate hope that an angry con man might shake things up and we can see how that’s played out. Working people have no political voice in the US.

 

The US working class is disgusted with the two parties of capitalism and the political system in general. Workers often make the mistake of seeing the political crisis as a production of corruption or character flaws or greed in the abstract, and the Democratic Party and its allies atop organised labor do nothing of substance to alter this view. But that is not the issue. The Democratic party “aligns itself”’ with corporations a critic wrote recently, but it’s more than that. “We’re capitalist”, Nancy Pelosi reminded a rather naïve young DSA member at a Town Hall meeting. It’s not that this party aligns itself with big business, it is “their” party.

 

The election of Alexandria Ocasio-Ortez  (AOC) was an exciting event too as she defeated an incumbent Democratic Party machine member in a Congressional election but she’s crossed the line and is a rising star in the party.

 

It is not that Mamdani or AOC are rotten, or are misleading their constituents. They may or may not be. The reason they and so many others have betrayed working people is that they are reformers, they believe capitalism can be “made nice” but it can’t. “If only the bosses' would be less aggressive” many labor tops say in private, and more often than not in public; they just want the American Dream back. 

But the material base for that dream which was not a dream for everyone and a nightmare for millions has gone and is not returning. 

The DSA, which had about 6000 members, a left rump in the Democratic Party prior to Bernie Sanders and the 2016 election, had 90,000 at one point. But DSA and so many people calling themselves DSA members are simply left liberals, more like Social Democrats I would say and its leadership is still overwhelmingly linked to the Democratic Party and they brought in Labor Notes types to direct the approach to labor relations which was a major mistake.

 

The first major obstacle to Mamdani’s very mild reforms was and is the Democratic Party itself. It cannot change its spots. 

 

Political parties, like the state apparatus (government) have class content, they are not empty vessels. In the US, the Democrats, a political party that is a major global capitalist party that millions of workers have looked to to defend our rights and living standards, has failed to do so. This rhetoric can’t last forever in the face of material reality.

Mamdani had built a base of over 100,000 activists I understand. This is a significant starting point but what that base represented to Mandani was an electoral force. It was a base built to win elections and it succeeded. The gains for working people stopped there, trapped in the back hole. Like Sanders, describing themselves as socialists they have both been great recruiters for a Wall Street party that has failed working people time and time again. The Democratic Party, and its agents atop organized labor share a huge responsibility for the election of the degenerate gangster capitalist, paedophile and convicted felon that sits in the Oval Office.

The big split in the AFL-CIO back in 2005 when the Fight to Win Coalition was formed was not over any substantial economic issues, either. There was no throwing out of the Team Concept by the “radicals”  it was all about organizing new members to increase the bureaucracy’s clout with the Democratic Party providing increased support at election time.

 

So for many of us Mamdani’s experience is just another betrayal. This will lead to a split in Democratic Party at some point in the not so distant future I would think. It seems likely that voters will seek relief in the Mid-Terms and the Dems may win control of the house, after all, where else can folks go when it comes to elections. It's hard to tell, what will happen but either way, we'll be back at square one.

 

Sanders has betrayed the millions of young people that looked to him for change back in 2016 repeatedly herding them in to the Democratic Party, supporting the war criminal Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Jo Biden in 2020, the man that laid waste to Gaza and denied US workers the right to strike defending the rail bosses' profits. This left many in despair, some dropping out of politics altogether. Mamdani had the numbers too. In the past 10 years opportunity after opportunity has been wasted.

 

Sanders, AOC, Mamdani have had mass popular support. Mamdani’s hundreds of thousands of supporters could have been channeled in to building community committees throughout the districts that can take up community defense, crime, educating the young people and organizing direct action activity like occupations of slumlords property, fighting for squatters rights, for new housing, and against the capital management companies that are the biggest landlords in the country today. This rather than just numbers at the ballot box. 

Reaching out to other cities and generalising the struggle against the billionaires who used every tool in their arsenal to defeat Mamdani is a necessity if we are serious about changing the balance of class focus in society.

 

Winning elections is fine, but not in order to put Democrats in power. While we must defend the right to vote as we won it from them, we must also be clear that we have won precious little through the ballot box. The legislation workers won in the 1930’s was a result of the mass occupations of industry and the rise of industrial unionism (CIO), and in the period that followed, a response due to the Black Revolt that shook the US to its foundations and embarrassed it in the eyes of the people of the world. Politicians merely codified what US workers had already won in the streets, workplaces and education institutions of America.

The reality is and has been that the time is right for significant change in US society. How to combat the capitalist offensive, in its most brutal form through the state’s security apparatus was revealed in the heroic defense of their communities and their neighbors by the people of Minneapolis. Make no bones about it, the lull in the offensive there and the undermining of the Trump Administration over the past period is a direct result of that battle.

 

In the end days of the capitalist system and as US, capitalism, the world’s most powerful and violent nation, faces serious competition in the global stage particularly from China, there is no room for even the mild reform platform that put Zohran Mamdani  the mayor’s seat of one of the world’s most important citiy and major financial center. 

 

The struggle for a democratic socialist society means taking in to public ownership the dominant corporations that control the political and economic life of the nation. This has to include the financial industry, health care, transportation, the production of life’s necessities and electorally building a political party of our own based on our organizations, our communities and workers from outside our borders, our international allies.

These should be our goals and building a mass movement that can win them is the key.

Mamdani Reverses Campaign Promise to Expand Rental Assistance

A rental voucher program costs more than $1 billion. The mayor’s decision to curtail its expansion reflects the clash between his ideology and the realities of managing the city.

Reprinted from the New York Times

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who faces a budget deficit, said expanding a costly rental voucher program might not be feasible.Credit...Kent J. Edwards for The New York Times

By Sally Goldenberg and Mihir Zaveri

Feb. 12, 2026

Expanding a New York City program to help struggling tenants pay rent seemed like an obvious campaign promise for Zohran Mamdani, who staked his insurgent candidacy last year on making life more affordable in the five boroughs.

Now, confronting a grim fiscal picture in his second month as mayor, Mr. Mamdani no longer intends to back the growth of the $1 billion-plus initiative known as CityFHEPS, despite a plan passed by the City Council and upheld in court.

The reversal marks the clearest example yet of the clash between the ideology of his democratic socialist campaign and the tough realities of managing a sprawling, costly bureaucracy.

During a recent news conference, as the mayor lamented a looming budget deficit that on Wednesday he pegged at $7 billion over two years, he suggested the program’s full expansion may be too expensive.  Read the full NYT  article here.