First of all, credit where credit is due: Zohran Mamdani, a self-claimed democratic socialist, a naturalized citizen, a Muslim, a man in his early 30s, just won the New York City mayoral election against Andrew Cuomo who is backed by the president Trump and billionaires. This is not something that happens a lot in American politics. Without a doubt, it is a major victory, a historical milestone. However, is it really the start of a new chapter, is it really igniting the spark for something revolutionary; we might want to hold our horses before jumping the gun in claiming so.

Mamdani ran on a platform of distributive justice. What he promised was to generate some extra public revenue by implementing additional taxes on the extremely wealthy and use those resources to fund public services that would provide material relief for the working people for their everyday struggles, like free buses, affordable groceries and child care, freezing rent, etc. Now, for Americans, this can be considered socialism. Hell, it can even be seen as communism, as we’ve heard from Mamdani’s opponents throughout his campaign. However, as someone who’s been actively involved in European leftist movements, and, of course, being a scholar of political theory, I can confidently say that Mamdani is a textbook social democrat. What is wrong with social democracy is a big discussion that I cannot cover here, but for those who are interested, Rosa Luxemburg had already done an amazing job spelling it out. In the case of Mamdani, though, I would say every concern about the social democrats we had throughout history will be valid for a figure like him. Of course, time will tell if he’ll succumb to the pitfalls of this social democrat ideology or start painting a different picture once he assumes the office.

Another worry I have about Mamdani is the fact that, even though his political agenda appears to be fighting for the betterment of the underprivileged class, he himself was privileged enough to even get the platform to do so, just like his alikes such as AOC or Bernie Sanders. Although I still find it a step forward to elect someone who is explicitly campaigning for the interests of the working class as the mayor of the largest and the wealthiest city in the world, I still hope we’ll live in a world where the political fight for the interests of the working class is fought by the working class people. Of course, this doesn’t make Mamdani an enemy of the working people automatically; but he needs to acknowledge that even though he is the current champion of the working people, he is not, and never has been, a true representative of the working people, and he has a political duty to use his office to make it more claimable for the real representatives of the class.

Finally, a few words about some other key races, like the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey or the referendum on Prop 50: The analysts have already interpreted tonight’s results as a warning message sent to the Trump administration. They claim that the people are not happy with Trump’s failure to deliver his promise on bringing down the everyday cost of living. Even though this might have some truth to it, I don’t think tonight’s elections could provide a good sample size to make such inferences. It seems like, what happened is, the numbers went back to their normals before the 2024 election, in which the Republicans just simply outperformed their historical averages. I don’t think tonight’s results show any significant shift of voters from red to blue. Nor, I don’t think, unlike the general discourse, it signifies a demand for a new way of doing politics for the Democratic Party. I think a better way to interpret these results would be acknowledging that the people, especially young people, do want an entirely new way of politics. It would be political suicide to assume that this duty befalls on the shoulders of AOC and the Democratic Party. I think it is time to something actually new.