Mamdani’s campaign took New York by force (Photo: X/Tish James)

Whatever happens, Zohran Mamdani’s smashing victory in the elections for Mayor of New York City shows the far right doesn’t own the future.

A young Muslim supporter of Palestine and trans+ rights has won in the capital of the global financial system. Mamdani ran on a platform addressing the cost of living crisis and the yawning gulf between rich and poor.

It’s too early to tell what the impact will be on the Democratic Party nationally. Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, which operates as a left wing ginger group within the party. But as a whole, the Democrats are still locked into the neoliberal alliance with big capital pioneered by Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

Barack Obama, another exponent of this strategy, has started to try to reel Mamdani in, placing a couple of calls with him before the election. Ben Rhodes, Obama’s ex-deputy national security adviser, called Mamdani’s rousing victory speech “the best speech of the Trump era”.

But Obama himself has focused more on supporting the mainstream Democratic candidates who were elected governors of New Jersey and Virginia.

Obama and other corporate Democrats drove many voters into Donald Trump’s arms by dashing any hope of change. Trump and Maga succeeded by presenting themselves as against the system. Mamdani also won as an anti-system candidate, but from the left.

However he’s a social democrat who’s committed to managing the system to achieve reforms. When Mamdani takes office in January, Trump will gun for him from Washington DC. The corporate giants of Wall Street will loom suspiciously over him. So he’s engaging in a balancing act, trying to present himself as both radical and responsible.

Thus Mamdani’s transition team is dominated by present or former City officials. It includes Lina Khan who, as Joe Biden’s chair of the Federal Trade Commission, was hated by Wall Street.

Much more negatively, Mamdani is keeping on Jessica Tisch as commissioner of the New York Police Department. The New York Times newspaper calls her a “billionaire heiress”, whose family fortune amounts to over £8 billion.