By Rajan Philips –

Rajan Philips

New York, New York … City that doesn’t sleep … king of the hill, top of the heap … where if  you make it, you can make it anywhere … – made the most sensational news this week, but not for anything in the paean of a song that John Kander wrote and Frank Sinatra immortalized. It made news by electing Zohran Mamdani, a 34 year American citizen of colour without borders, as its new Mayor and giving more than a little jolt to every scaffolding of all the political, cultural and economic structures of the American establishment. The jolt may not come to mean anything in any final outcome, but it is impossible to miss the moment of its occurrence.

Mamdani’s election on Tuesday, October 4^th, was the most dramatic rebuke to Trump, but it was not the only one. In multiple elections in New Jersey, Virjinia, Pennsylvania, Georgia and California, the voters decisively turned against Trump and his executive overreaches. It is not the numbers of votes that matter but the restive vibes that are finally permeating America’s body politic. It certainly builds on and extends the momentum created by the No Kings protests held across America in June, July and October.

Dick Cheney’s Legacy

On Monday, the day before the vote, former Vice President Dick Cheney passed away. Cheney is considered to be the most powerful Vice President in modern American history and was the architect of the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq that marred the presidency of Bush the younger and precipitated the presidency first of Barak Obama a progressive centrist and later that of Donald Trump a crass opportunist who has been hugging the extreme right.

Although he vigorously opposed Trump and his methods and publicly supported Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, Cheney was the original champion of the concept of unitary president that Trump is now stretching to ridiculous and dangerous limits through his executive orders. There is an esoteric debate among online pundits as to who has done greater damage to the American political system – Cheney or Trump?

The answer is that there are different levels of bad and evil and Marx lays it out in The Eighteenth Brumaire! History alternates between farce and tragedy and the traditions of the dead weigh down on the brains of the living. But then, as Mayor elect Mamdani gallantly quoted Jawaharlal Nehru in his victory speech in New York: “A moment comes, but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.”

The quote is from Nehru’s celebrated midnight independence speech in 1947 made impromptu without text, notes or teleprompter, and immediately following the more memorable line: “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” Quoting Nehru in New York may not go down well in today’s New Delhi, and ‘that is how things are’ today. But fellow Indian American and Democratic Congressman from California, Ro Khanna, has welcomed it as a sign of Mamdani’s authenticity. Khanna, a respected Congressman, identifies himself as a Progressive Capitalist, but wholeheartedly supports the New York exploits of Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist.

Quoting Nehru is also indicative of the new Mayor’s home schooling and the influence of his parents Mahmood Mamdani and Mira Nair, respectively, of Gujarati Muslim and Punjabi Hindu origins. His father is an academic in postcolonial studies, who gave Zoran his middle name, Kwame, after Africa’s first postcolonial leader, the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. Zoran’s mother is the celebrated filmmaker of Mississippi Masala.

Born in Kampala, Uganda, lived in Johannesburg, South Africa and finally settled in New York, Zoran Nkrumah Mamdani is the quintessential millennial without borders. An activist from his Bronx school days in New York, and Bowden University days in Maine, Zoran is a talented communicator, writer musician, rap singer and filmmaker. He is the consummate activist artist than the ideal philosopher politician. But his artistic talents and media skills have served him well in making the biggest political splash on the world’s biggest city stage.

Trump and Mamdani

The Economist (November 1^st) is touting it as “The battle for New York”, between Mayor elect Mamdani and the City’s enfant terrible of a son, now US President, Donald Trump – “two skillful politicians with radical plans.” Trump’s plans are coming home to roost much sooner than anyone may have thought. To wit, the longest federal government shutdown in history and a rather rough day at Supreme Court hearing on the legality of Trump’s tariffs. On the other hand, there are scores of highly placed personas who doubte as to whether any of Mamdani’s socialist plans will ever pass in the citadel of capitalism.   

The Mamdani manifesto – promising free daycare, free transit, affordable groceries, $30 minimum wage, and moratorium on rent, all paid by taxing wealthy, has resonated resoundingly with New York voters, giving him over 50% of the vote, and good margin wins in four of New York’s five boroughs, with over 70% of New Yorkers younger than 45 voting for him. But the establishment powers and voters over 65 are skeptical about him, about his promises and his ability to deliver them. There is no underestimating the challenges facing him, although Mamdani’s policies are not infeasible or impractical. They have been implemented in many European countries, and Mamdani himself has alluded to a form of Scandinavian socialism as appropriate for New York.

And many in the New York city administration support him and he has reached out to those with municipal experience to lead the transition to office before he is sworn in as Mayor on January 1. The transition team is all women with impressive background and credentials and includes the widely known and respected former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan in the Biden Administration. She would bring heft to the legal and fiscal side of the new administration when it comes to taxation and in pushing back on President Trump’s illegal threat to stop the flow of federal funds to the City.

But for all his haranguing about Mamdani’s candidacy and mayorship, Trump may not have the time or the means to take the fight to Mamdani. He already has too many other fires to worry about, all of them he created and which are now coming back to burn him. He and the Republican Party will of course try to use Mamdani and his brand of democratic socialism as the new face of the Democratic Party to scare away the American voters. They already tried in Tuesday’s elections but got beaten anyway.

The Democratic Party is also divided at the top in spite of the experiential unity and solidarity among the people at every layer below the establishment. The brahmins of the party have generally kept a safe distance from Mamdani. But the progressive socialists who have mostly been a back-bench force in the party, except during presidential primaries, openly embraced Mamdani and have now become a national force that the party establishment has to reckon with. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) have been supporting Mamdani from the beginning and his victory in New York opens a new chapter for American progressivism. Rather than Mamdani becoming Trump’s political whipping boy, it is Trump who is making himself to be the galvanizer of all Americans who want America to be inclusive in its promises to everyone who chooses to live there.