Mamdani’s win, an about turn in US politics

Salience of Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the may oral race for New York will not be missed by any observer of the politics in the United States. Given his Muslim identity, a staunchly vocal stand against genocide being perpetrated by the Netanyahu’s regime in Gaza and support for diversity and immigrants, the odds wouldn’t have been favourable for a young Zohran.

More significantly, he won on a socialist plank in a city conventionally hostile to the concept of equality, welfare and public good. Thirdly, he has been assigned the management of a city which witnessed the collapse of twin towers of the World Trade Center in a terrorist attack for which Islamic fundamentalism was blamed.

Finally, he scrupulously eschewed the appeasement of billionaires who ruled the roost when it came to mobilizing the public opinion. His was a campaign solely built up by social media, public funding and mobilization of volunteers drawn from a huge variety of ethnic origins, Jews, Muslims, Indians and Arabs included.

That they would trump the money and influence, the traditional pedestals of support for the NY politicians, was hard to imagine. Mamdani’s victory signals an about turn in the US politics in several ways. Mamdani prevailed against the hostility of his own party’s senior elites who were wary of Zionist lobby.

He had won the nomination of the Democratic Party against entrenched lobbies who were skeptical of his victory due to his anti-Zionist image, abhorred his open espousal of public funding of child-care homes, freezing rents, introducing free ride of public transport and taxing the filthy rich. His main rival Andrew Cuomo was himself a Democrat and a former Governor of New York for a decade.

He had spared no method in tarnishing the young man’s image after having lost the primaries. Not known for mincing words, not afraid of money bags, Mamdani combined candour and content, navigated the complexities of perhaps the world’s most ethnically diverse populace with great aplomb and bearded many a lion in their own dens.

The issues he posed struck the positive cords with most denizens: why not publicly fund the housing for people? Should the owners alone be the ones to decide rents? Why people be denied the access to essential goods at reasonable rates? His answers were simple and straight: a freeze on rents, free public transport, reforms in police force, no licence to franchisee supermarkets to profit on public hunger, and childcare to be funded from the public exchequer.

The man who was seen as the lonesome campaigner of his cause till June this year, rode the crest of the wave of public support in the span of just four months. Trickle turned into tor rent. He knocked at a million homes seeking support and mobilized around 50,000 volunteers willing to give their services free.

Defying the Zionist stranglehold over the popular media, he didn’t hesitate at calling a spade a spade. While his rivals were competing with one another in committing Israel to be their first port of call after elections, Mamdani was adamant on showing his back to a nation engaged in century’s first genocide.

It is where the New York voters found him authentic, credible and clear-headed against the ones pandering to Zionists, appeasing the billionaires and in sync with Trump despite being in the opposite camp. Zohran Mamdani’s triumph in New York undeniably inaugurates a new chapter in the narrative defining the politics in the United States.