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By Blake Fleetwood / Original to ScheerPost
Is Andrew Cuomo experiencing a dead cat bounce? That’s the opinion of statistician Nate Silver after seeing Kalshi betting odds this week. New York City mayoral candidate Zorhan Mamdani is at 92% and Cuomo is at 7%.
After Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani convincingly won the NYC Democratic mayoral primary last June, the Democratic establishment and the wealthy business elite were shocked and mildly hysterical by Mamdani’s miraculous rise from a 1% approval rating to a convincing victory. They scrambled to amass a $100 million war chest against Mamdani.
Former Governor Andrew Cuomo was lured back into the race as an independent candidate.
National Democrats and powerful insiders were especially concerned about what a Mamdani victory would mean for the Democratic Party’s future. The election is widely regarded as a bellwether, possibly emboldening a new era of progressive candidates.
But despite the lopsided betting odds, Cuomo has recently picked up substantial support, halving a 20-point early polling deficit in the closing days. But the polls, with Mamdani up by 15+ points, still favor the reformer and his army of 50,000 volunteers.
The Wall Street Journal equated Mamdani to Stalinism and ran 30 articles fearmongering about a dystopian future. There are currently six mayors in America who are members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and none of them have implemented purges or rounded up billionaires into gulags, according to the Fair Opinion website.
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Mamdani answers that “New York is not for Sale” and promises to oust the oligarchs who have traditionally run the city.
Chase’s Jamie Dimon called Mamdani “more a Marxist than a socialist.”
“It’s officially a hot commie summer,” said Dan Loeb, a hedge fund manager.
The financial fat cats, especially the real estate moguls and the pro-Israel lobby, were determined to demolish the 33-year-old muslim Mamdani.
But don’t count the fat cats out. Mamdani is not a shoo-in even in heavily Democratic New York City.
In the spring of 2021, India Walton, a socialist, beat four-term incumbent mayor Byron Brown in the Democratic primary in deep-blue Buffalo, NY. However, despite an overwhelming Democratic majority, Brown teamed up with Republicans, who were powered by large infusions of cash, and ran a write-in Republican campaign that ultimately beat Walton in the general election.
I am a serial capitalist entrepreneur. I have owned real estate in NYC, started a successful internet travel agency, and am working on a couple of startups.
It is precisely because I believe in capitalism (and want it to be preserved and thrive) that I can easily support the pragmatic reforms of a Democratic Socialist like Zohran Mamdani.
Donald Trump and the Republicans have already labeled Mamdani “a communist lunatic.” Republicans already call many Democratic candidates “socialists.” No getting around that label in any election. But they are worried.
Charismatic Mamdani adopted Trump’s No. 1 issue — affordability and the cost of living — and turned it into a winning “change” campaign for Democrats.
Interestingly, many wealthy and educated voters support Mamdani. He won among voters making more than $50,000 per year and slaughtered his rivals among voters with advanced degrees. It turns out, young Americans prefer socialism to capitalism, according to a recent Gallup poll.
But overall, the word “socialism” has been toxic in American politics since the turn of the last century.
However, in recent years, Sen. Bernie Sanders has made a significant contribution to legitimizing and destigmatizing “Democratic Socialism.”
Sanders describes it as an extension of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s vision “to go forward in the wealthiest country in the history of the world and guarantee a decent economic standard of living for all of our people. And to do that, obviously, we have to combat oligarchy and the incredibly unfair and unequal distribution of wealth and income.”
Most of the mainstream media considers Mamdani’s reforms to be loony. But, many of Mamdani’s proposed reforms — such as free bus rides, rent freezes, and city-owned grocery stores — aren’t very socialist in nature. Numerous cities across the U.S. provide free bus service, promoting public transit, energizing economic activity, and reducing congestion. A 2% ($20,000) tax on individuals earning over $1 million per year is neither particularly burdensome nor anti-capitalist.
Michael Bloomberg, who many consider New York’s most successful mayor, proposed some programs similar to what Mamdani is asking for. Bloomberg supported free crosstown buses and implemented the Fresh program, using public-private partnerships to increase access to fresh produce in poor neighborhoods known as “food deserts.”
Mamdani called Fiorello L Guardia, who once ran on the Socialist Party line, the greatest mayor in NY history. Former Mayor David Dinkins also ran for NYC mayor as a Democratic Socialist in 1989.
Mandami says his favorite political leaders are Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Fiorello LaGuardia.
After his primary win, Mamdani quoted FDR’s fireside chat from 1938:
“Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not because the people dislike democracy but because they have grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and weakness…. In desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat. New York, if we have made one thing clear over these past months, it is that we need not choose between the two.”
Ironically, real Socialists strongly denounce the progressive policies of Mamdani (and Sanders) as a faux attempt to co-opt the coming revolution, just as during the 1930s crisis, Socialists and Communists actively opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal social welfare programs that ultimately preserved the free markets of today.
Today, the capitalist system is under its greatest stress since the 1930s. There have been seismic economic changes; exponential technological advancements and globalization have produced unfathomable riches for a minuscule elite. However, this new wealth has not “trickled down.” It has resulted in gross inequality for the many, creating a dangerous time bomb that has broken the social pact of upward mobility and growing prosperity for all that endured from 1933 to 1979.
This latest reengineering of America is not working for the majority. Upward mobility for the lower and middle classes has stalled. Median wages have been stagnant for 40 years. Middle-class wages will no longer support home buying, a college education or decent healthcare. Life expectancy in the U.S. is declining, and our healthcare system ranks 37th in the world, despite the U.S. spending more per capita than any other country.
This increasing inequality has persisted under both Democratic and Republican presidents, including Clinton and Obama, as well as Bush and Trump.
Businessmen and politicians are just doing what they have always done. It’s just that rules and the game changed rapidly — an elite got very rich, very quickly, and the middle class found itself increasingly ignored, irrelevant, and forgotten.
Average citizens are angry and left out. They can’t afford the lifestyle they grew up with and are increasingly willing to blow up the system to see what happens.
No political or economic system can survive for very long that does not improve the wealth and health of its ordinary citizens.
Disgruntled Americans voted left for change in 2008 (with Obama) and then made a 180-degree turn, moving right for change in 2016 (with Trump). Then they voted for Joe Biden as a “change” candidate. Every time, middle-class Americans were bitterly disappointed with the little they got: more politics of platitudes, while inequalities continued to mushroom.
Mamdani is the change candidate in New York City.
To Europeans, the American understanding of socialism is absurd.
Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France are profoundly capitalist democracies, and the progressive social democratic policies they adopted were not enacted to replace the capitalist market system, but to prevent the middle classes from turning against capitalism altogether.
Capitalists and Wall Street should embrace the mild reforms proposed by Mamdani as a quick and simple way to defuse explosive venting and solidify long-term support for free markets.
This is what Otto Von Bismarck did in 1883. With the German economy in free fall, Bismarck adopted a masterful plan for universal health care and a social security system to counter the threatening demands of a growing Socialist party. His tactic was simple: Beat the Marxists at their own game. After his reforms, the German economy prospered for decades to come.
The “socialism” of Mamdani is a pragmatic belief that the government should deliver a slightly broader range of basic, public services — such as transportation, housing, healthcare, and education — at a significantly reduced cost or for free. Not very different from FDR’s reforms in the 1930s.
Polls show 70 percent of Americans support Medicare-for-all, and 74 percent support a wealth tax.
These are not such radical ideas. The government already provides many services to the public, including roads, schools, fire departments, police, courts, libraries, and the legal system. The Democratic Socialism of Mamdani just carries these public services a bit further.
To confront charges that he is inexperienced and anti-police, Mamdani is expected to appoint experienced bureaucrat Controller Brad Lander as Deputy Mayor and retain widely respected and experienced Jessica Tisch as Police Commissioner.
Moderate tempering of the excesses of unfettered capitalism is not a new phenomenon. It has happened in regular cycles in American history. It has created, for the majority, the American Dream — a widely shared prosperity and the most vibrant economy the world has ever known.
At the turn of the last century (1870–1890), during a similar period of economic transformation — from agricultural to industrial — the excesses of the Gilded Age, and the growing inequality gave rise to populist, anarchist, and socialist insurgencies.
Republican President Teddy Roosevelt realized that tinkering continually with capitalism is the best way to preserve it. Roosevelt came up with the “Square Deal” to break up the monopolistic trusts and create decent living conditions for millions of new factory workers. He also proposed a ban on corporate political contributions, an income tax, and an inheritance tax.
Likewise, during the Great Depression of the 1930s — a period of economic misery — Franklin D. Roosevelt funded millions of government jobs and numerous social programs by raising the top income tax rate to 75 percent. Roosevelt, called a traitor to his capitalist class, defended his actions as a pragmatic response to the widespread wretchedness and hardship of the times. “Reform to Preserve” is the slogan he borrowed from British politician Thomas Macaulay.
If we continue as we have been, the relentless self-reinforcing arc of unfettered capitalism, globalization, transformative technologies, and excess wealth will continue to explode exponentially, and inevitably prolong downward mobility for the middle class.
Democracy and free market capitalism cannot survive such inequality. Every dominant civilization believes in hubris that it is the last and best stage of human development and that it will endure forever. This is a fantasy. Advanced societies collapse with bewildering speed: the Mongols, the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, the Mayans, the Incas, and the Soviet Communists.
Our democratic, free-market system, lasting a mere 300 years, is a blip in human history, an anomaly. It will not survive if it does not deliver the goods to the majority of people. Most people don’t care all that much about the niceties of political ideology — they care about what’s in it for them.
The “Occupy Wall Street” protestors of a few years ago and the middle-class blue-collar workers who delivered Trump the presidency are strikingly similar. Both groups feel they are getting shafted.
Strongman populism all too often replaces democracies and free markets in times of extreme inequality, as FDR told us. Authoritarian rulers justify their contempt for liberal niceties by claiming they represent the people against corrupt and out-of-touch economic and political elites, when fairness about who gets what breaks down.
So, free-market capitalists who want the system to survive should welcome a touch of democratic socialism and greater economic equality — it’s the inclusive, pragmatic bargain — a necessary step at a relatively low price to keep the core values of capitalism thriving.
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Blake Fleetwood
Blake Fleetwood was formerly a reporter on the staff of The New York Times and has written for The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, The New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Village Voice, Atlantic, and the Washington Monthly on a number of issues. He was born in Santiago, Chile and moved to New York City at the age of four. He graduated from Bard College and did graduate work in political science and comparative politics at Columbia University. He has also taught politics at New York University.