Mamdani’s first 107.5 Days
Sewer Socialist Sellout or Subtle Strategy Savant?
Shit, man, I really wanted to write more regularly about the Zohran experiment, especially given how much importance I (like everyone) have attached to it. Oh well, let’s start with some inane punditry that at least contains useful links about THE FIRST ONE HUNDRED DAYS.
Universal Child Care: Got the governor to pledge money for the start of an expansion that is scheduled to become universal 2K by 2029 (barring unforeseeable factors like a severe global recession triggered by a global oil shortage that then pops a massive AI bubble.)
Danny’s grade: Three stars
Freeze the Rent: Appointed a new majority to the Rent Guidelines Board that is expected to halt increases on rent stabilized apartments later this year.
Danny’s grade: Two thumbs up
Fast and Free Buses: Fast? Hopefully soon. Free? Don’t hold your breath.
Danny’s grade: B-
Serious police reform: The promised new Department of Community Safety has, for now at least, been stripped down to a Mayor’s Office of Community Safety; the NYPD is still headed by a conservative billion-heiress who swats away her boss’s proposals for even modest reform. No, in other words.
Danny’s grade: I’m not mad; I’m disappointed
Being a Proud Muslim mayor in an Islamophobic society: Check.
Danny’s grade: Ahssanta
The Right to Protest. In response to demonstrations outside synagogues that are hosting Israeli real estate auctions on illegally occupied land, the City Council has passed two awful bills that will severely limit the ability to demonstrate outside of religious sites and educational buildings. It’s up to the mayor to sign or veto the bills.
Danny’s Grade: Incomplete
Showing that a Socialist Mayor can be Politically Successful: One poll has his approval vs disapproval rating at 48 to 30 – with 58% trusting that he’ll act “in the best interests of the city.”. Another has approval/disapproval at 43 to 27, with most voters saying the city is on the wrong track, but that Mamdani is focusing on the issues that matter to them.
Danny’s Grade: I’ve run out of gimmicks for this bit
Overall, it’s fair to say that Mamdani can point to at least some progress on many of his campaign promises, while avoiding scandals (despite the thoughtful efforts of the local conservative intelligentsia).
With that summary out of the way, let’s talk about strategy, trajectory, and messaging, because there has been quite the vibes shift from candidate Zohran to Mayor Mandani. We’ve gone from Eugene Debs to Victor Berger. Don’t like the century old socialist references? How about from pitchforks to potholes? Hand grenades to handyman?
I’m getting carried away. Zohran’s campaign was always marked by his infectious positivity, an ability to bring liberals comfortable enough to choose his socialism and Palestine solidarity over Andrew Cuomo. But consider the following contrast:
Last October, on the eve of his historic election victory, Zohran held a jubilant rally in Queens, where one of the speakers was New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a consummate corporate Democrat who had recently and belatedly endorsed Zohran through gritted teeth because he was popular and she was not. When Hochul came out and tried to deliver her flat speech, she was repeatedly interrupted by thousands of people chanting “Tax the Rich”, which would have continued through her whole speech had Zohran not graciously come on stage to call off the dogs.
Last week, to mark his first 100 days in office, Zohran held another rally in Queens. This time supporters waved signs for “Pothole Politics”, a reference not only to the mayor’s widely hailed response to the street damage caused by two massive winter storms, but to his own personal rebrand of “sewer socialism”, a once-pejoritive left wing term for the socialist mayors in Milwaukee and other cities a century ago who stressed delivering effective government services and modest expansions of social programs. Mamdani, and his still-impressive social media team, has been all over the city for the past three months highlighting street repairs, small service expansions, and lawsuits against landlords and wage-stealing corporations.
It’s likely that Zohran’s focus on focus has helped Zohran start to make inroads to constituents who didn’t vote for him - as evidenced by the polls showing a layer of voters who respect the job he’s doing even if they don’t yet support him. Socialist writer Nathan Robinson makes a strong defense for Mamdani’s initial approach.
“You can see this as the “compromise” of a radical who has run into reality, but as a socialist (and the author of a book literally called Why You Should Be a Socialist) I think Mamdani is extremely smart to focus early on on delivering small things that people can see and feel. This was the approach taken by the “sewer socialists” in the early 20th century, and by Bernie Sanders when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont in the 1980s, and it resulted in popular mayoral administrations that served as living disproof of propaganda about socialist politicians bringing “disaster” and “ruin.’”
Alas, this is only part of the story. At Zohran’s 100 Days rally was another prominent guest – Bernie Sanders instead of Kathy Hochul. You might think this indicates tension between the two wings of the New York Democrats, but it’s more likely the opposite: The governor no longer needs Mamadani’s shine because two months ago, he endorsed Hochul’s re-election bid – even as many other elected DSA members did not.
Zohran made this endorsement after Hochul had pledged money for his child care initiative, and in the months since she has been almost immovable on the demand to raise taxes on the rich, which is the foundation for all significant continuations of his agenda. The only thing the mayor seems to have gotten in return for his endorsement is Hochul’s recent agreement to pass a welcome but woefully insufficient tax on luxury second homes in the city.
Somewhat shockingly, Mamdani made this endorsement in the middle of a major local nurses strike in which Hochul was tipping the scales in favor of the bosses. A few weeks later, DSA and other groups mobilized for a long-planned mass rally at the state capitol, but Zohran didn’t come, stripping the long-planned event of most of its sizzle. Meanwhile, Hochul is very much enjoying a Zohran bump: her primary opponent dropped out and her approval ratings are up, even as she has only budged on
Is this strategy or sellout? David Dayen and Whitney Curry Wimbish argue for the former in The American Prospect. They correctly frame Mamdani’s first three months as geared around efforts to show “supporters meaningful progress on their concerns, and expand participation in New York City democracy even more.” Their second argument, which I think is also true at this point, is that Mamdani’s activist supports are “waiting in the wings… ready and eager to act” if governor Hochol and NYC City Council speaker Julie Menin (another centrist Democrat) continue to stall on any form of economic redistribution.
On the flip side, former AOC staffer Corbin Trent warns that Mamdani’s alliance with Hochul (like his earlier opposition to a primary challenge to Hakeem Jeffries) is a repetition of left wing Democrats’ continued reluctance to wage a serious fight for the party’s direction:
“The trap is not charm and it is not strategy. Both are tools and you need them. The trap is believing they are enough on their own, that if you are careful enough about managing your relationships with the people who currently have power, you can eventually get them to share it. That is not how power works. Power does not get shared. It gets built or it gets taken. A real supermajority, the kind that actually passes something, has never been built through accommodation. It gets built through aggressive political infighting, through primarying the members of your own party who are blocking your agenda, through making it more dangerous for someone to oppose you than to support you.”
I used the word “sellout” adobe to be provocatively alliterative. I remain hopeful but wary about this Mamdani experiment. But I’m dubious that avoiding a fight with centrist Democrats is good strategy – and I don’t see what it has to do with good government. With the admittedly important exception of the child care funding, most of Zohran’s initiatives that have endeared him to New Yorkers have not depended on Hochul. He could be combining pothole politics with a little more class war; imagine the videos his social media team could have put out about the better staffing levels nurses had won thanks to him forcing Hochul to back the strike.
Looking ahead to the next few hundred days, if there isn’t a serious fight to tax the rich, and mobilize Zohran’s real popularity against those who stand against it, there’s a danger that pothole politics becomes just another euphemism for managing austerity – particularly in the dark economic times to come. That will breed demoralization, cynicism, and the awful feeling that we were fooled by another false messiah. Activist armies don’t just wait in the wings. At some point they demobilize.
We’re not at that point yet, and it’s possible we’re nowhere near it, given the reservoir of good will Zohran has among his supporters (along with our desperate need for this thing to work out.) But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to anticipate how quickly things may change.
What we do know, however, is that for Zohran to succeed, he will at some point need to fully fight most of the Democratic Party that stands in his way (plus the Republicans, the cops, and the billionaires). That fight will be difficult and we might lose, but the terrain is likely more favorable while his popularity is high and his city is not yet being crushed by an economic downturn.
I don’t underestimate the importance of Mamdani’s sewer socialism initiatives, or his hopeful initial polling.Socialists desperately need to broaden our bases of support past the stronghold of while college educated leftward moving progressives. So his good government initiatives are very important, as is the ongoing impressive publicity work. So is the way he conveys his Muslim and immigrant identities in ways that are both proud and inviting. All of this shows the potential for expanding the socialist base.
But we’re trying to win people to socialism not just as an idea but as a fight. There’s a common misperception that socialism alienates many potential supporters because its ideas are foreign or radical. No, it frightens them because they know it will incur the wrath of those who already oppress us but can do so much more.
The reason our movement is currently based among white people with college degrees is that working class people of color have less confidence that it’s possible to take on the moneyed elite than. This is something most people in the media willfully misunderstands, preferring to posit universal health care and taxing the rich as things only privileged people care about, when in fact many less privileged people are simply worried that these “radical” ideas will elicit a backlash that they or their loved ones won’t survive.
That’s why Mamdani will have to demonstrate not only that he can govern but that he can conquer. The real viability of socialists in office is not just good government, but being able to use office to mobilize a base of support that allows you to fight corporate democrats to tax the rich.
To truly expand the base of active socialists in America, it won’t be enough to show people that socialism is safe. We have to convince them that it’s worth the risk.