Last night in Queens, over 13,000 people packed Forest Hills Stadium to rally for Zohran Mamdani—a democratic socialist poised to become mayor of America’s largest city.

The crowd size, as even the New York Times acknowledged, was “more typical of a national race than a municipal one.”

Flanked by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mamdani declared: “My friends, the world is changing. It’s not a question of whether that change will come. It’s a question of who will change it.”

He’s right. If Mamdani wins on November 4, his victory will represent more than a local upset. It will mark a historic turning point for the American Left—a shift from serving as the nation’s conscience to leading the charge for its radical reimagining.

For the last century, the American Left has been lost at sea. Not since the enactment of the New Deal—when militant labor, communists, and socialists forced “centrist” Democrats like FDR to accept radical changes to the economy and the nature of government in this country—has the Left had any real power.

The New Deal was not born from Roosevelt’s benevolence. It was extracted through pressure from below thanks to an institutional left of mutual aid societies, labor halls, and a radical press. These institutions created the conditions that made the welfare state possible in America.

Then, those institutions were systematically destroyed. Capitalists went on a slash and burn campaign equating socialism with treason, making radical politics not just unpopular but literally dangerous. By the 1960s, what remained of the institutional left was a shadow of its former self.

We’ve come close to resurgence since then—but not for a long time. The American genocide in Vietnam destroyed The Great Society before it could fulfill its promise.

George McGovern’s 1972 campaign represented perhaps the high-water mark of postwar progressive ambition—he supported universal basic income and ran on ending the war—but lost in a true landslide to one of our most corrupt and racist presidents ever. That defeat didn’t just end one campaign. It rewired the Democratic Party’s political instincts for the next fifty years.

Capitalists then insisted McGovern was a cautionary tale, proof that the left was electoral poison. Every subsequent Democratic president—Carter, Clinton, Obama, Biden—governed within what came to be called the Washington Consensus: the bipartisan orthodoxy of free markets, deregulation, privatization, and shrinking government. Labor was treated as a legacy interest group to be managed, not empowered. Social justice became a talking point, not a core belief.

The left survived these decades in the wilderness as a moral force—a conscience reminding America of its failures—but never as a governing one.

Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition in the 1980s built a multiracial working-class movement but couldn’t translate it into policy. Occupy Wall Street in 2011 changed the national conversation about inequality but dissolved without capturing institutional power. Even Bernie Sanders’ campaigns, which electrified millions and mainstreamed democratic socialism, ended in accommodation with the party establishment.

Until now.

Zohran Mamdani’s impending victory represents something qualitatively different from these earlier moments.

For the first time in nearly a century, a democratic socialist—openly aligned with a mass movement encompassing the DSA, tenant unions, Palestine solidarity networks, and resurgent labor militancy—is about to win the mayoralty of America’s largest city.

This isn’t symbolic. It’s structural. The left is no longer knocking at the door of mainstream politics; it has breached it. What makes this a turning point is threefold.

First, there’s generational legitimacy. Mamdani is the first of the post-Bernie generation to seize real executive power.

The ideas that animated the Sanders campaigns—Medicare for All, housing as a human right, climate justice, solidarity with Palestine—are no longer outsider slogans shouted from the margins.

They are about to be governing platforms backed by the authority of the nation’s most prominent municipal office. An entire generation of young people who cut their teeth on those campaigns will watch one of their own lead a city of eight million.

Second, there’s new movement infrastructure. Mamdani didn’t rise through traditional Democratic patronage networks or by currying favor with real estate developers and Wall Street donors.

He was built by the most effective DSA chapter in the nation, tenant organizers who fought landlords building by building, and mutual aid networks that fed neighborhoods during the pandemic. His campaign was fueled by thousands of volunteers who saw organizing as inseparable from governing.

This suggests the left now has what it hasn’t possessed since the 1940s: a functioning pipeline that runs from organizers to candidates to executives. If Mamdani succeeds, he won’t be an anomaly. He’ll be a prototype.

Third, there’s ideological clarity. For decades, Democrats won (when they won) by blurring ideological lines, triangulating between left and right, speaking in the language of pragmatism and incremental change.

Mamdani is winning by sharpening the lines. He named capitalism as the source of the housing crisis. He named imperialism in his solidarity with Palestine. He named class war when he stood with striking workers.

This represents a profound cultural break from the Clinton-Obama technocratic liberalism that defined the party for a generation. Mamdani’s victory proves that voters, especially young and working-class voters, are hungry for politicians who will tell them the truth about power.

But winning is only the beginning. The real question is whether Mamdani can govern without being crushed.

History offers sobering lessons. Every left resurgence in America eventually hits the same wall: the threat of so-called “capital flight,” hostile corporate media, sabotage from within the party establishment, and the structural constraints of governing within a capitalist system designed to thwart redistribution.

If Mamdani tries to raise taxes on the wealthy, corporations will threaten to leave. If he empowers tenants against landlords, real estate will wage a propaganda war. If he diverts police funding toward social services, tabloids will blame every crime on his radicalism.

The Democratic establishment, which has spent fifty years proving its moderation to Wall Street, will be deeply uncomfortable with a socialist in City Hall.

This moment rhymes less with FDR than with something more precarious: Salvador Allende’s Chile in miniature—a democratic socialist trying to govern within capitalist constraints, backed by a mobilized base but surrounded by hostile forces.

Whether Mamdani’s mayoralty becomes a model or a cautionary tale depends not just on what happens in City Hall, but on what happens in the streets, in the unions, in the tenant associations, and in every workplace where his supporters organize.

The left has reemerged before, always as a moral witness, never as a governing force.

If Mamdani can survive even partially, if he can demonstrate that socialist governance isn’t just idealistic but functional, we may be witnessing the birth of the first true post-neoliberal era in American politics.

The real story of the next four years will be whether the American left can do what it failed to do after the New Deal: build durable institutions that outlast any single election. Unions that can shut down the city if necessary. Cooperatives that prove democratic ownership works. Media outlets that don’t rely on billionaire funding. Electoral blocs that can primary corporate Democrats and win.

Mamdani’s administration cannot be a fluke. It must be a foundation.

If he wins on November 4, the American Left will reach a historic turning point. We will no longer be merely the conscience of a nation—we will be leading the charge for its radical reimagining.

As Mamdani said last night, the question isn’t whether the world is changing. It’s whether we’re ready to change it.

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