The Case for Zohran Mamdani

The liberal establishment claims to protect democracy—but fears what it would actually take to renew it.

The New York City Democratic primary is more than a campaign. It’s a rupture point in a larger crisis. At a time when American democracy is visibly faltering, Zohran Mamdani’s run for New York City mayor represents a rare attempt to rebuild legitimacy from the ground up—not through patriotic slogans or elite commissions, but through material commitments that speak to the despair and disillusionment defining this era. His candidacy is what the moment demands—and the fact that it’s treated as reckless, unserious, or naïve by the liberal establishment only proves how little that class is willing to risk to save the democracy it claims to cherish.

Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblymember and former housing advocate, is proposing policies that center working-class life: rent freezes, public ownership, reinvestment in care infrastructure, fare-free transit. He is not promising to restore normalcy—he is naming the conditions that made “normal” intolerable. That makes him dangerous to the professional class that claims to oppose Trump’s authoritarianism while fiercely protecting the status quo that produced it.

The backlash has been telling. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo, once forced to resign over sexual harassment allegations and a pandemic nursing home scandal, is now positioning himself for a comeback. He’s been endorsed by a chorus of liberal institutions and figures that once distanced themselves from him—including Congressmembers Ritchie Torres, Adriano Espaillat, and Gregory Meeks, all of whom called for his resignation in 2021. In addition, a host of labor unions and political interest groups, including the powerful 1199SEIU have backed Cuomo. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg has offered his support and millions in campaign contributions. The New York Times editorial board wrote “New Yorkers deserve better than the status quo” in the subheading of their editorial on the race, and then went so far as to say: “We have serious objections to [Cuomo’s] ethics and conduct, even if he would be better for New York’s future than Mr. Mamdani.” Instead of giving Mamdani’s policies any serious consideration, the Times wrote him off as inexperienced and made the lazy comparison to former mayor Bill de Blasio.

The Times piece says the quiet part out loud. The issue isn’t Mamdani’s inexperience. It’s that his politics are incompatible with the bipartisan neoliberal order that dominates urban governance. He doesn’t flatter institutional power—he threatens it. His platform would upend the cozy arrangements between developers, lobbyists, and city hall. And in doing so, it exposes the liberal establishment’s hollow vision of democracy: one in which the system is protected, even as it fails, and anyone who demands more is painted as extreme.

This dynamic is clearest in who the liberal class is willing to embrace instead of Mamdani. The New York City New Liberals, for example, have endorsed Whitney Tilson—a former hedge fund manager with no political experience and no base among working-class voters. That choice says everything. For a faction that claims to protect democracy, they consistently back candidates whose primary qualification is alignment with capital, not with public need. In their eyes, a former financier is a safer steward of democracy than a democratic socialist—because he protects the structure, not the people.

Photo credit: Madison Stewart

But that structure is the crisis. Public goods have been privatized. Working-class neighborhoods displaced. Decisions outsourced to consultants, developers, and donor-class interests. The political class offers representation without redistribution—and then acts surprised when voters lose faith. Rallying behind Cuomo or Tilson won’t reverse that collapse. It will accelerate it.

Critics call Mamdani too radical, too young, too far left. But these are not arguments. They are projections—defenses of a political order unable to imagine transformation. Mamdani doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. What he offers is more honest: a theory of change grounded in solidarity, investment, and the redistribution of power. He understands that legitimacy cannot be restored through branding or performance. It has to be rebuilt from below.

And that puts the liberal class in a bind. Their messaging insists we are in a democratic emergency. But their actions reveal how little they are willing to risk to actually preserve democracy’s substance. For them, “protecting democracy” means guarding the institutions as they are—even when those institutions serve capital more than the public. It means preserving the rituals of voting and the symbolism of inclusion, while blocking any candidate who suggests democracy might also require redistribution, public ownership, or class power from below.

Mamdani’s vision, by contrast, is far more democratic. It doesn’t treat democracy as a brand to manage or a myth to defend. It sees democracy as something lived and shared—rooted in housing, transit, care, and the right to shape the material world together. If democracy means rule by the people, then Mamdani is one of the few candidates proposing to make that real. His campaign asks: how can people govern themselves if they can’t afford to live in the city? If their public goods are controlled by private actors? If every political decision is filtered through donors, consultants, and elite consensus?

This is why the response to Mamdani has been so revealing. Liberal leaders warn that his campaign is irresponsible or poorly timed. Some suggest the left should have chosen a different figure. Others hand-wring over budget math. But these are ideological reflexes—designed to protect a political class that’s fine with democracy in theory, so long as it doesn’t disrupt the economic arrangements that keep them in power.

It’s not Cuomo’s endorsements alone that make him viable. It’s the deeper belief—shared across media, donor circles, and even many voters—that someone like Cuomo is the “responsible” choice. That belief is the operating ideology of the professional class: technocratic, hierarchical, and allergic to redistributive politics. It is an idea of democracy that values expertise over lived experience, optics over agency, and continuity over justice.

This isn’t just a primary. It’s a test. Not of Mamdani’s readiness, but of whether our political class is willing to face the reality it claims to fear. The liberal establishment says it wants to stop Trump, to defend democracy, to protect the vulnerable. But Mamdani is one of the few candidates actually proposing to change the conditions that gave Trump his power: economic despair, political disillusionment, and a democracy that has become hollowed out by capital.

To reject Mamdani is to admit they don’t actually want a different future. They want a more respectable version of the same order. One that speaks the language of equality while preserving hierarchy. One that condemns strongmen while clinging to the systems that make them inevitable.

The question, then, is not whether Mamdani is too far left. The question is whether anyone else is willing to do what democracy now demands. Because if our political class won’t even tolerate a candidate who proposes redistributing power peacefully—through housing, care, and public control—then what are they really defending? Not democracy, but the machinery that has managed its decline. Mamdani’s candidacy doesn’t threaten democracy. It threatens the illusion that democracy can survive without transformation. And that’s precisely why it must be taken seriously.

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Some notes for readers:

If you found this piece meaningful, I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber. I’ll be sharing my weekend reading notes, reflections, and recommendations for paid readers on Sunday—including more on the themes of legitimacy, class power, and what we’re really defending when we talk about democracy.

Yesterday, I posted a piece in collaboration with Grace Blakeley who is an excellent journalist, author, and activist covering similar issues. You can read it below!

The Myth of “No Kings” in America