Zohran Mamdani’s election this week as New York City’s Mayor is a story that has travelled far beyond the city’s five boroughs. Noted political theorist Corey Robin — Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center — unpacks what Mamdani’s victory means for the Democratic Party establishment, U.S. politics in the Trump era, and progressive movements beyond America.
What is the most striking aspect of Mamdani’s victory?
The most significant aspect is that it has been built for over a decade, going back to the early 2010s, with the rise of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which had been a moribund organisation, but got a new lease of life after Occupy [Wall Street] and the [2008] financial crisis. There has been a tremendous amount of grassroots organising, and Mamdani comes out of that group — a small group that by poll day, had over 1,00,000 volunteers canvassing door-to-door for him. So, it is a real triumph of a kind of democratic action that we have not seen in this country for a long time.
You called Mamdani’s victory a continuation of the Nevada moment, referring to the time Bernie Sanders won in 2020 in the Democratic primaries there. Could you elaborate?
People have forgotten the Nevada moment, because it was obscured by what immediately followed — the nomination and election of Joe Biden, and then COVID shutting everything down. What you saw in Nevada was a coalition of much younger voters, working-class, who rallied behind this old white, Jewish socialist guy who was originally from New York City. That connection forged there showed that democratic socialism could speak beyond the boundaries of identity, the boundaries of native-born versus immigrant, and lastly, beyond generations. We saw an extremely similar phenomenon here, with younger South Asian voters, who make up a large part of the population. We saw them rally behind Mamdani. That cross-generational, cross-class, cross-immigrant, and cross-cultural alliance is something that the left has really been working on for about 10 years, and it is amazing to see how it moves from city to city and gets larger every time.
Although the party denied candidacy to Sanders twice, he didn’t let it become a setback. The move continued its work, didn’t it?
Absolutely! Bernie Sanders has been in this fight for the long haul. He started as the Mayor of Burlington. Even before that, he was an activist. Far from being focused on himself or his campaigns, he has always clearly understood his role — to be seeding something for the future. We saw it in Nevada, in the election of AOC, and now with Mamdani. Sanders comes out of the 1960s. He was born in Brooklyn, the son of working-class immigrants. With Mamdani now, you see the torch of American progressive history being passed to a new generation. It is hard not to get emotional and excited about the fact that this new generation is made up of immigrants.
With the rise of the DSA, the mobilisations around Sanders, AOC and Mamdani, there seems to be ample logic for the party to move away from centrism and make a considered shift to the left. Then, why isn’t the party willing or able to do that?
It has to do with two reasons. One is for the last 30 to 40 years, the party has been run by a group of elite people who see their first task to be to satisfy donors. The other is coming out of the 1970s, and the rise of right-wing populism; there was a certain section of the party that felt the way to win polls was to tack to the centre — that liberalism and progressivism on the left were liabilities. So, you ended up with a politics that was extraordinarily centrist.
But many on the left contend that embracing centrism is inevitable in the fight against fascism or authoritarianism.
I was never persuaded by that argument, but we gave it a try with Hillary Clinton, who lost, and then we gave it a try with Joe Biden. Even though what enabled Joe Biden to win that election was that he, in fact, did tack to the left, it was the centrist votes and voices within the party that pulled it back. Far from keeping Trump out of power, [we see that] he gets stronger. Mamdani put this very well on election night. He said, “We are not just fighting Donald Trump. We are fighting the next Donald Trump.” And that is really important. What he has made very clear is that the fight against authoritarianism and the fight for affordability are two sides of the same coin.
To deliver on promises, Mamdani will have to confront structural challenges, institutional limits, while contending with a party whose establishment is at best lukewarm about his victory. How can the movement behind him sustain the momentum?
The only way to confront a party establishment that is lukewarm, the only way to confront the infrastructure, the institutional intransigence, and the opposition of money and power, is precisely for people to stay mobilised.
Published – November 10, 2025 03:45 am IST
