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Yesterday, Zohran Mamdani, a 33 year-old Democratic socialist, shocked the political establishment by winning the Democratic primary in the contest to become the next mayor of New York City, riding a wave of young voters angry about the cost of living to defeat the entrenched party machine that has controlled New York politics for decades. I’m going to write about his win, because one of the people at his victory party was former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. And there’s a reason for that.

The election was historic. Mamdani’s opponent was old guard stalwart Andrew Cuomo, who had endorsements from across the Democratic Party, including Bill Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Queens machine boss Greg Meeks, and a host of unions. His voting base was ethnic and wealthier whites, as well as older black and hispanic voters. Cuomo’s financial support came from Wall Street, billionaires like Bill Ackman, as well as the real estate industry. The Democratic establishment went all-in.

Mamdani had his own endorsements, including Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as New York Attorney General Leticia James and Rep. Nydia Velasquez. His financial support came from small donors and public campaign funds provided by New York City’s unusual election system, and his base was younger voters upset at the high cost of living.

Cuomo ran as a basic corporate labor Democrat, supporting a higher minimum wage and offering access to unions and big business, while also arguing that he was competent and the left was crazy. At an IBEW event three days ago, for instance, he said that his attempt as Governor in 2019 to lure Amazon’s second headquarters with corporate subsidies was a model for the city, and that the refusal of local leaders to accept his deal was disastrous. “We lost Amazon,” he lamented.

To give you a sense of the level of rage and fear among the superwealthy, billionaire John Catsimatidis, the CEO of grocery chain Gristedes, said that if Mamdani won, he would close down his chain of New York supermarkets.

By contrast, despite the Democratic socialist label, Mamdani linked his campaign with anti-monopoly arguments, focusing on the cost of living and blaming well-known villains like the utility giant Con Edison, suggesting that the city fund challenges to the utility’s rate increases in dockets. He proposed a ban on non-compete agreements in New York City, which was one of the core goals of former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. And he discussed ending junk fees and predatory contracts. Here’s one plank of his campaign platform.

In fact, in early June, Mamdani did an event with Khan, praising her and former antitrust enforcer Zephyr Teachout and discussed “taking on corporate power, lowering the cost of living and building an economy that works for working people.”

Mamdani also proposed opening up five city-operated grocery stores to address food deserts, which is a way of taking on a problem caused by price discrimination. City-owned stores, which is not particularly different than commissaries the military used to run on bases, are generally hated by independent grocers for ideological reasons. But they could provide a platform for the city itself to file Robinson-Patman cases against price discrimination by the large packaged goods companies, which would fix the problem that independent grocers have. New York City can afford a lawsuit like that, and isn’t intimidated by a Walmart-style giant the way a small store might be. Or city stores could just be an operational disaster. Mamdani is untested as a leader of large-scale organizations, and New York City is just massive. We don’t know how he’d do as mayor, or even if he’ll win the general election.

Regardless, the ideological distinctions in the race are a bit confused because of Mamdani’s “Democratic socialist” label, which doesn’t really mean socializing the means of production, it just refers to a Bernie Sanders-style New Deal Democrat. Why is this race so important? First of all, New York City is a big place, so if the mayor of that city chooses to pursue policies to crack down on corporate power, it will matter. The more important reason, however, is that regardless of where you come down politically, what happened last night matters for the anti-monopoly movement and populism in general. As with Trump’s ascendance on the right and the turn that fostered within conservative politics around corporate power, something is now brewing on the left.

Certainly the establishment sees that, and is terrified. Here’s a WSJ headline of one of their most popular stories of the day:

Look at pro-monopoly economist Larry Summers, who today discussed his fear of the candidate’s “Trotskyite economic policies” and its relationship with the Democratic National Committee and Harvard University.

They also fear this dynamic, correctly, as going far beyond New York. Summers, who is a spokesman for economic elites, claimed that the “calamitous” election of Mamdani is a “byproduct of abandoning the consumer welfare standard in antitrust.” It’s a silly point in and of itself, but it shows that Summers believes that there is a larger ideological meaning to this race.

Most elections are conflicts over who will run an existing system, with the candidates offering tweaks to what is essentially a stable political order. But a few elections are what I will call “system defining,” where a rising coalition, reflecting a new set of political demands, contests with an old order, seeking to re-gear the basics of how our institutions operate. These elections are quite rare, but they matter far beyond the region that holds the election. For instance, Trump’s win in the Republican primary of 2016 was presaged by an upset in 2014 of Republican leader Eric Cantor by a Tea Party candidate named David Brat. The GOP base had had enough of Bush-era candidates, and said that first in a Virginia district, and then nationwide.

Mamdani’s win yesterday is likely such a system defining election. For as long as I’ve been in politics, the Democratic Party base voters have liked their leaders. They might dislike a scandal-tarred Democrat here and there, but they broadly believed that the Democratic leaders are good, that they meant well, and that it’s mean to pick someone younger or different. It’s why most Democratic leaders are old. Recently, I’ve been seeing polling showing that Democratic voters are unhappy with their leaders, but it’s hard to believe that until you see proof. The heart of American politics are elections, and the election last night just delivered that proof, some undeniable evidence of populist anger on the left.

The last time I’ve seen a system defining election in the Democratic Party - but from the opposite perspective - was in 2006, long before I focused on antitrust, when I worked to defeat Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, who was being challenged in the Democratic primary by a wealthy businessman named Ned Lamont. The main issue was the war in Iraq; Lieberman was a huge hawk and supporter of George W. Bush, Lamont by contrast ran an anti-war campaign.

The campaign was bigger than Connecticut; the Democratic establishment had until that moment broadly supported Bush and the Iraq war. But as Lamont picked up momentum, bringing in support from white progressives who organized on blogs, as well as Congressional Black Caucus stalwart Maxine Waters and a set of rogue unions, and the polling showed a change, the hawks got nervous. It was a liberal coalition, before Obama and Trump reordered politics. (To give some context, Glenn Greenwald, among others, was part of the anti-Lieberman movement.) Lieberman had the support of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the D.C. lobbying establishment.

Lamont ended up winning the primary, narrowly, which surprised the political establishment. But Lieberman decided to run as a third party candidate, and with the help of Clinton and Obama, consolidated enough of the party behind him, as well as bringing in the Republican Party, to win the general election. And to those in charge, that was as it should be. When Lieberman returned to the Democratic Senate caucus as an indepdent, after defeating the Democratic nominee, the Senate Democrats gave him a standing ovation. As it turns out, the subtext was not just the war, but corporate power, though I didn’t really know that at the time, it just seemed like every major corporate lobbying PAC gave Lieberman money.

For a brief moment in 2006, the establishment had been scared, thinking that a new coalition might break from the Bill Clinton orthodoxy of the 1990s. But we just couldn’t do it. That was a system defining election, and the existing system won. In 2007-2008, every major Democratic candidate for President - Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards - understood that the corporatist world had the votes to win. Moreover, the nascent populists saw that too, and gave up; the coalition that had opposed Lieberman fractured; half the leaders went into the Obama administration or focused on getting on MSNBC.

This system defining election happened at a very unfortunate moment, right before the banks tottered in the 2008 financial crisis. After the Lieberman-Lamont primary, populists watched helplessly as much of the Democratic Party celebrated hope and change and vacuous celebrity songs, happily oblivious to the malevolent choices they were about to make. I didn’t know exactly what Obama would do, but I’d seen him side with the corporatists in Connecticut, and his candidate had won while his opponents had lost. I don’t want to pick on Obama; any candidate in 2008 would have been roughly similar, because the people had spoken in the system election of Lieberman-Lamont. Again, the heart of American politics is elections, and the neoliberals won them, while the populists did not. One result was the 2008 agenda of bailing out the banks and fostering a foreclosure wave on the middle class.

Throughout the Obama era, this Lieberman architecture held, and it was impossible to mount a real political challenge to a coalition that was supportive of Wall Street and corporate consolidation. A whole set of Obama-era validators and celebrities emerged on MSNBC, building a political culture on top of diversity corporatism. Washington D.C. became “cool,” the city had a lot more attractive and well-dressed people, and Democrats helped construct and embrace big tech monopolies. Meanwhile, the populists whined and lost, some sought to rebuild the Republican party - Steve Bannon frequently discusses 2008 as his turning point - others quietly withdrew, and still others, like Elizabeth Warren and a young Khan, began fleshing out an anti-monopoly framework.

There were moments when this system looked fragile, the Bernie Sanders challenge in 2016 and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018. When Joe Biden brought in Khan to run antitrust, it showed a real willingness to bring the populists into the coalition, in a minor role. But the Democrats were still the party of Larry Summers. And in retrospect, the Lamont challenge was much weaker than it seemed at the time. We had a wealthy self-financing candidate, and no intellectual framework beyond “Iraq war and Bush bad” and a dislike of big telecom and oil firms and the 2005 Bankruptcy reform bill. The coalition of anti-Lieberman voters Lamont tapped into was frustrated that Lieberman was too close with Bush, but had no goal aside from disdain for someone who wasn’t partisan enough.

This system election seems different, stronger, more meaningful. Mamdani didn’t self-fund, he was outspent dramatically, winning anyway with the power of his arguments. It wasn’t just Mamdani; populists did well in lots of elections in New York. There really is a new voter universe, young people frustrated over affordability, and not just angry over partisan affiliations. It’s a system defining election because it’s likely the coalition of voters behind Mamdani exists in every state and city, with varying degrees of strength. There are also different ideas to play with, and a broad frustration with the arc of American foreign and domestic policy, and a real economic governing agenda in the form of anti-monopoly proposals and industrial policy.

System defining elections influence more than just the actual contest at issue; the establishment moves to try to stay relevant. New York Governor Kathy Hochul, for instance, who is an ardent corporatist, is already doing that in response to Mamdani’s win. Other key Democrats - from New York and elsewhere - are chiming in as well.

Many will follow, assuming Mamdani can perform well in the general election. And that is an assumption; already real estate interests are trying to figure out how to coalesce behind a candidate to challenge Mamdani in the general, as Lieberman did Lamont. They may pick current mayor Eric Adams, or they might try someone else. The freak-out among the superrich is real.

So far, I’ve focused on what this election means to the Democrats, but this essay isn’t about partisan preferences. After all, the Republican Party has already undergone their transformation. A conservative Trump official once explained to me that Trump was the rejection of a Republican Party run via the “Bush family’s Christmas card list,” a party he argued that was based on tax cuts for the rich, free trade, endless war, and open borders. He had believed that the GOP would see Bush as a disaster and turn the page quickly, but the party nominated Mitt Romney in 2012, continuing along the same trajectory. They needed their rebellion, first in the form of Tea Party challenges like the aforementioned David Brat, and then Trump. One can question the extent of the policy changes under the GOP, but it’s beyond doubt that at least the rhetoric of multilateralism and free trade is over.

Is that what is happening to the Democrats? It appears so. I mean, Democrats even ignored the New York Times and its anti-endorsement of Mamdani, and the New York Times is the most important signifier of good taste and fake sophistication among liberals. If liberal primary voters have decided they no longer care about using the right salad fork, well, big business is in trouble.

Thanks for reading!

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cheers,

Matt Stoller