By John Pottinger
[Photo above: Zohran Mamdani with NYC liberal Democrat Zionist Comptroller Brad Lander who cross endorsed with Mamdani during the NYC Democratic Party primary, assuring Mamdani’s victory]
On June 25 Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, came out of nowhere to beat Andrew Cuomo and several others in New York City’s Democratic primary. He ran a campaign that emphasized affordability, free buses, a rent freeze on rent stabilized housing, building affordable housing, city owned grocery stores, no cost childcare and a $30 minimum wage by 2030. In addition Mamdani has called Israel an apartheid state and has condemned Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Meanwhile, other leading candidates for mayor were offering sexual harassment (Former Governor Andrew Cuomo) and/or corruption (NYC Mayor Eric Adams). This and the support of numerous liberals and leftist explains Mamdani’s success.
Mamdani’s victory has shocked the bourgeoisie, mainstream Democrats, landlords, real estate developers, bankers, Republicans and Zionists, to name a few. Democrats are attempting to unite the right to defeat Mamdani by having all but one opponent drop out of the race, the same method that got Genocide Joe the Democratic nomination in 2020.
While many were shocked many more were thrilled. Mamdani is the talk of the left. But can the Democratic Party be reformed?
Malcolm X once said “A chicken can’t produce a duck egg. It has not the means nor the system within it to produce a duck egg.” The chicken is of course the Democratic Party and the duck in the context of 2025 is a revolutionary socialist party.
The Democratic Party has decades of experience in dealing with outliers. G. William Domhoff in his book “Who Rules America Now” (1983) stated “There are numerous examples where party leaders have preferred to lose with a candidate who shared their views rather than win with one who seemed to be more popular with the electorate… This was the fate of antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. McCarthy was brushed aside by party officials even though polls showed he would do much better against Nixon or Rockefeller than would Hubert Humphrey.”
In 1972 George McGovern did win the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. This led “southern Democrats and labor Democrats,” according to Domhoff, “to openly or tacitly support Nixon.” McGovern won only two states, Massachusetts and South Dakota.
To make sure there would be no more McGoverns the Democrats invented “Super Delegates.” This is where Democratic office holders and some old timers get to vote at the National Convention for the nominees in addition to the elected delegates. This method worked well against Bernie Sanders in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won the nomination. And again the Democrats thought it better to go with a loser like Clinton than to nominate Sanders who could have beaten Trump.
Like the Dixiecrats of yore Kathy Hochul, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have yet to endorse Mamdani.
The next step for the ruling class and their politicians is to try to “house train” Mamdani so he won’t ”jump on the couch” or “piss on the carpet,” metaphorically speaking. This method has worked well with AOC.
The first step in this process is to persuade Mamdani to keep the billionaire Jessica Tisch (the Lowe’s fortune) as the New York City Police Commissioner in office. Appointed by Mayor Eric Adams, Tisch is trying to bing back old style “broken windows” policing, now called “quality of life teams.” Her targets are people urinating in the street and homeless people sleeping in tents. (Those evil tents again) This kind of policing is an old-fashioned way of incarcerating poor and working class people of color. In addition, Tisch is the same person who took down the student encampments (more tents) last spring and arrested protesters on a frequent basis.
Next the Democrats, Republicans and the press are hounding Mamdani over the phase “Globalize the Intifada.”
So lets take a step back and see what these intifadas really are.
For the twenty years leading up to 1987, frustration among Palestinians had been growing. Illegal settlements had been growing in the Zionist-occupied West Bank and in Gaza. On December 8,1987, an Israeli truck crashed into a car with Palestinians inside; four were killed, all Palestinians.
An uprising soon started in Gaza and spread to the West Bank. This was met with extreme violence by the Zioinists. Palestinians threw rocks and Israelis fired bullets. Those detained were beaten and tortured.
The uprising lasted six years with 1,000 Palestinians dead and 100 Israelis killed.
The Oslo Accords ended the Intifada on September 13, 1993 when the PLO capitulated to Israel by recognizing Israel’s “right to exist” and renouncing armed struggle.
Edward Said said of the Oslo Accords: “Let us call the agreement by its real name: An instrument of Palestinian surrender. A Palestinian Versailles.”
As bad as the Oslo Accords were for Palestine, Israel did not abide by them. There was no Palestinian state and the number of settlements on the West Bank doubled.
The Camp David Peace talks, in July, 2000, were another disappointment. There was to be no right of return and no Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.
The second Intifada started when Ariel Sharon a former Israeli Prime Minister raided al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, in occupied East Jerusalem with a thousand soldiers and police on September 28, 2000. (Ariel Sharon was also responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon in September 1982.)
Mass protests followed that included civil disobedience and stone throwing. This was met with bullets, tanks and helicopters. In the first five days 47 Palestinians were killed and 1,885 were wounded while 5 Israelis were killed. This amount of Israeli violence made nonviolent protest impossible, so after a month, armed resistance started. Israel and the West complain about suicide bombings but it was Israeli violence that lead to this self sacrifice.
By the end of the second Intifada 4,973 Palestinians were killed, 11,500 homes destroyed and Israel erected the separation wall.
“Globalize the Intifada” is not an invitation for a second holocaust. The two intifadas were protests against Israeli oppression and it was Israel that dished out the violence. “Globalize the Intifada” means international solidarity like the recent demonstration of 300,000 in Sydney, Australia and the large protests in the UK.
Repudiating “Globalize the Intifada” is repudiating solidarity. This is a slippery slope and Mamdani is on his way down that hill.
On August 13 the New York Times reported that Barack Obama had called Mamdani in June. Jon Faureau, Obama’s speechwriter, has been in touch. Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Obama, has been in touch. David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategists during his 2008 and 2012 campaigns has been in touch. Patrick Gaspard, Obama’s national political director and later US ambassador to South Africa is an adviser to Mamdani. These contacts were not made just to say congratulations, they were calls to tell him, as New York Representative Becca Balint, a “progressive”, said out loud, to get rid of “all that crap about socialism and communism”.
Mamdani has been on a charm offensive trying to woo main stream Democrats and donors; for donors read the bourgeoisie. On July 16 Mamdani met with 150 “entrepreneurial leaders”, ie, capitalists, and presidents of five borough chambers of commerce where he praised Michael Bloomberg and said he understood why some families sent their children to charter schools. Michael Bloomberg is the 17th richest person in the world with $109.4 billion net worth. ( It would cost $20 billion to end homelessness in the United States according to HUD.)
But in the end it is not a question of if or when Mamdani sells out, but rather, can the Democratic Party be a vehicle for change or as I contend, the graveyard of social movements.
In the 1950’s and 60’s the civil right movement became a major force in the US. Though boycotts, sit-ins and mass protest marches it forced though a number of civil rights laws.
But by the mid 1960’s the civil rights movement and the Black Nationalist movement began to split apart. Some like Martin Luther King Jr., who came out against the Vietnam war, Malcolm X who never compromised, and Black Panther Party leaders like Fred Hampton, were assassinated. Many of the other leaders moved towards the Democratic Party, as in Oakland, where the central Panther leaders actively campaigned for it.
John Lewis got a job with the Field Foundation (of Marshall Field fame who helped put down the 1877 railroad strike) in 1966 and was elected to Congress as a Democrat in 1986; he was re-elected 17 times.
Andrew Young was elected to Congress in 1972 and later became Mayor of Atlanta in 1985.
Bobby Rush started as a leader of the Black Panther Party and ended as a 15 term Democratic Party congressman.
Since 1968 has the civil rights movement made gains?
Well most neighborhoods in Chicago, where I’m from, are still segregated. The Westside of Chicago that burned down in 1968 has yet to be rebuilt, except the ethnically cleansed near Westside. Affirmative Action, what’s that?
Nation wide, police still shoot one unarmed Black man per day. Black people are the most incarcerated, the most stopped by police and the most profiled.
The Black Lives Matter movement started in 2020 and approximately 15 million people protested. But it too was co-opted by the Democrats into its presidential election campaign, supporting Biden, once the unofficial Northern Democrats’ liaison to the racist, segregationist Southern Democrats, including Strom Thurmond and George Wallace.
By 1973 the abortion rights movement had put enough pressure on the Supreme Court that it legalized choice.
For 49 years the movement relied on the Democrats to protect Roe. But for 49 years they never enacted it into law! On June 24, 2022 the Supreme Court overturned Roe.
In the 1973 the Equal Rights Amendment was put to the vote of the states. Many large and small, regional and national demonstrations for the ERA ensued. Under pressure from supporters of woman’s rights, the National Organization of Women (NOW) sponsored many demonstrations. But NOW’s orientation was always to elect Democrats and it was this reliance on Democrats that lead to the defeat of the ERA even in blue states like Illinois.
The case of the Vietnam antiwar movement is another example of the counter productive strategy of electing Democrats. The antiwar demonstrations in 1968 and 1972 were noticeably smaller because many activists were busy trying to elect Democrats Eugene McCarthy or George McGovern. The Democratic Party president, Lyndon B. Johnson, had been thoroughly discredited at that time, seen by the vast majority as the leading perpetrators of an unjust war against an oppressed people. Johnson declined to continue his run for re-election, met everywhere he appeared in public with massive antiwar demonstrators shouting, “Hey, Hey LBJ, how many kids have you killed today.” But Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon, pressured by the massive rise of antiwar sentiment and the indomitable and massive Vietnamese resistance, included in his campaign promises to negotiate to end the war. Indeed, with polls at that time indicating that 78 percent of the population demanded the immediate and total U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, the Nixon administration did enter negotiations and eventually the 10-year war was ended, representing a profound victory for the Vietnamese national liberation movement and a historic defeat for U.S. imperialism. The Democrats, as with Genocide Joe Biden and Kamala Harris today, are and remain staunch supporters – better key enablers – of the mass slaughter of the Palestinian masses.
Capitalism is like the Gordian Knot. The ruling class, the richest 0.5%, own and/or control the leading corporations, the banks and think tanks like the Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation and the Hoover Institution. The same with the universities via family endowments, foundations, corporate grants and their boards of trustees. And again, the same with NGO’s and community organizations, via grants, foundations, like the Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford and Pew Memorial foundations. Associations like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Conference Board, the Business Council, and the mass media are similarly under ruling class control. For a longer list go to the PBS Newshour and look at their donors.
As G. William Domhoff said in Who Rules America? (1967 page 85), “We cannot overemphasize the falsity of the stereotype of the Democratic Party as the party of the common man.” To be in or support of the Democratic Party, or any of its candidates, is to support the capitalist system. Reformists have for more than a century tried to untangle this knot. It can not be untangled it must be chopped apart! That is the central task of today’s working class and its allies among the oppressed and exploited, organized democratically and independently of the capitalist class. The history of all critical social, political and economic change in the U.S, is the history of the class struggle – capitalism’s victims fighting via mass independent organizations for their basic rights and simultaneously challenging the basic institutions of ruling class rule to usher in the socialist future. Zohran Mamdani’s campaign is no “first” step in this direction. It follows in a long line of “lesser evil” efforts orchestrated by the Democrats and their supporters to foster the cruel illusion that we live in a democratic society, rather than in a billionaire and increasingly trillionaire-dominated capitalist-imperialist oligarchy.
John Pottinger
August 24, 2025
