Zohran Mamdani Must Build Power, Not Bridges

The Democratic establishment won't endorse their own nominee. That tells you everything about what he needs to do next.

I'll be breaking down this power-building strategy in shorter videos this week. Find me on YouTube and TikTok…

Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City in June. It wasn't close. It was decisive. General election polls now have him at 50% against the combined field of Andrew Cuomo, Eric Adams, and the Republican candidate. But here we are at the beginning of August, and the only big-name Democrats in New York that have endorsed him are AOC and Espaillat. Not Chuck Schumer. Not Hakeem Jeffries. Not Kathy Hochul. Not Ritchie Torres. He is the nominee of their own party with a commanding lead, and they're sitting on the sidelines while Andrew Cuomo flirts with Trump.

Elizabeth Warren campaigned with Mamdani this week, attacking Cuomo and defending progressive taxation on CNBC. That's what real allies do. They fight for you in hostile territory. But even Warren, an ally, is focused on "the billionaires" without acknowledging that establishment Democrats are the billionaires' political infrastructure. That's exactly the kind of thinking that lets the real power structure hide behind partisan theater.

This isn't confusion or political caution from the Democratic establishment. It's coordination. They see exactly what Mamdani represents, and they're mobilizing every tool they have to stop him. Not just campaign cash, but the New York Times editorial board, New York Post headlines, and the entire media apparatus that will soon be telling us that progressive policies will "destroy the city" or that we need to move slowly and that the wealthy will flee en masse.

None of this is true. Change is more easily accomplished rapidly. Making NYC more livable won't destroy it but will improve it for all. The wealthy won't flee. They'll stay fighting tooth and nail to keep their stranglehold on both the city and the state.

That's why just winning elections isn't enough. We have to deliver. To do so, Zohran and his allies must dominate the conversation, frame every fight, and make the obstructionists defend themselves every single day instead of letting them set the terms. Political primaries are critical for this. They are red meat for the media. They force conversations and debates that the establishment wants to avoid. And successful or not, they build power. Social, political, and media power.

To reshape NYC into a place that's affordable, safe, and welcoming for all who live there will require a fight. To win that fight and deliver on his promises, Zohran will need a permanent operation that rewards allies, punishes opponents, raises money, wins elections, and shapes what people think is possible. The kind of machine that makes phone calls get returned and makes people think twice before fucking with you.

I learned this lesson with AOC. You can't get small enough to become acceptable to the people you're threatening. I used to tell her she couldn't moderate enough, compromise enough, or slow-walk enough to make her election palatable to powerful interests whose entire business model she opposed.

The same is true for Zohran. There's no version of public housing that private equity landlords will embrace. There's no speed of transformation slow enough that Wall Street signs off on. You cannot negotiate your way to just enough change that everyone's comfortable. Any real change threatens their returns. They already see Zohran as an economic threat. Not because he's too radical, but because he exists at all. The only way to fight their cash and position-backed power is with people power that makes them fear the alternative more than they fear change. That's what 50,000 volunteers knocking on a million doors represents. Not just votes, but a force they can't buy off or ignore.

The conventional wisdom says don't rock the boat. Reach out to would-be allies like Hochul, Jeffries, and Schumer to build consensus. Work with City Council leadership and Albany power brokers to get things done. The lessons I learned from my tenure with AOC prove you can do no such thing without real power.

Bluntly, you cannot negotiate with people who think they can crush you. That approach guarantees governing failure.

Look at the reality. Speaker Adrienne Adams controls what gets voted on in the City Council. Finance Chair Justin Brannan decides which budget priorities live or die. Up in Albany, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie determine whether progressive legislation even sees daylight. These aren't backbench politicians. They're institutional power brokers who can kill your agenda with a phone call.

The fight for Zohran's effectiveness as mayor started the day he won the primary. Without the capacity to challenge figures like Adams, Brannan, Stewart-Cousins, and Heastie, or replace them with genuine allies, any progressive mayor becomes just another voice shouting into the void while the machine grinds forward unchanged.

As co-founder of Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress, I was there for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's recruitment and campaigns. I was communications director and chief strategist for her first campaign and stayed through 2020. I learned this lesson firsthand.

AOC went into the House with a massive platform and the assumption that she was building a political powerhouse. Her ability to release the Green New Deal with tons of co-sponsors showed what was possible. But that was before other members realized she wasn't working with Justice Democrats or interested in coming after their jobs through primaries. Her support of primary opponents dwindled to near zero within months of being seated.

I've seen what happens when you try to govern without the power to influence your own side. It doesn't work.

As Nancy Pelosi says, power isn't given. It's taken. Zohran oughta start taking it now by identifying exactly who will try to stop him from governing and building the capacity to neutralize them. Recruiting primary challengers now. Identifying who in Albany will kill your housing bills and organizing to take them out. Building political infrastructure to win fights after you're mayor, not just a field plan to get you to November.

There's going to be tons of pressure from really thoughtful theoretical allies telling Zohran he can't go too hard right now because the 2026 elections are coming up and Democrats need to take back the House. They'll say his type of democratic policies are going to be harmful to the greater brand of the Democratic Party. That's not only not true, it's backwards. These are the kind of policies and these are the kind of fights that people are looking for. They want to see people willing to take on an entrenched system and turn it on its end.

This isn't just a New York problem. It's a national Democratic Party problem. Look at California, the bluest state in the country with Democratic supermajorities. Universal health care can't pass. High-speed rail becomes a decades-long boondoggle. Housing costs spiral out of control despite Democratic control of every lever of power. Why? Because having a "D" next to your name doesn't mean you're willing to challenge the interests that profit from the status quo.

But it goes deeper. These Democrats genuinely believe government exists only to cushion the fall for the desperate, not to build or create or compete. They've internalized market supremacy so completely they can't imagine public solutions working better than private profit. They see government as an ATM for tax breaks and a regulatory referee, not as a builder, employer, care provider, or active market participant.

Which is wild, because New York City's greatness was built on public ambition. The city-owned IND expanded the subway to every corner. NYCHA once provided dignified, affordable homes for nearly 600,000 people before state, city and federal governments deliberately starved it.

Government didn't just regulate markets. It built the foundations that made the markets possible. Democrats have forgotten their own history.

This cycle of disappointment, promising change, winning elections, then getting blocked by your own party, is exactly why New York City shifted toward Trump. Voters got tired of being told things would get better while watching them get worse. They stopped believing that Democrats could deliver, so they tried something else.

What happens in NYC matters because it's the test case for whether Democrats can actually deliver when they have power. If Zohran can build the political machinery to overcome his own party's obstruction in America's biggest city, it creates a model for every other city and state where Democrats claim they'd fix everything if only they had the votes. They have the votes. What they lack is the will to fight their own donors.

Zohran has the opportunity to reverse this trend, but only if he breaks the cycle. Only if he stops treating the Democratic establishment as natural allies and starts treating them as what they actually are. Another obstacle to overcome.

The choice facing Zohran isn't between being reasonable and being radical. It's between being effective and being irrelevant. And effectiveness requires power. The kind that only comes from being willing to fight your own party when it stands in the way of the people you represent.

Going all in on big bold change is scary. You risk making enemies. But here's what progressive politicians never want to admit. Playing it safe is guaranteed failure. When you're trying to help people, every instinct tells you to be reasonable, build consensus, take the wins you can get. That instinct is wrong. It's not just wrong. It's a trap that ensures nothing fundamental ever changes.

The blueprint is clear. Identify the obstructionists now, recruit their challengers today, build the infrastructure to replace them tomorrow. If Zohran proves you can fight these forces and win, every progressive candidate gets a different playbook. If he fails by trying to be reasonable, it proves to every working person that the system can't be changed from within and sends them toward authoritarianism or apathy.

We need to see that people can overcome the powerful when we work together. But first, we need leaders willing to admit that the powerful include their own party.