The euphoria surrounding Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York City was palpable and, in many ways, justified. Zohran emerged as a novel kind of politician: he articulated the working people of New York City as a class, and channeled the energies of the Democratic base—including the visceral rejection of oligarchic society, the genocide in Gaza, and the geriatric technocracy of the Democratic Party—into a potent ethico-political vision. His campaign demonstrated the maturity of the left populist movement that sparked with Occupy in 2008, proving that a bold, democratic socialist vision could crystallize a collective will for a horizon beyond neoliberal decay. It seemed to herald, as I argued previously, the resumption of America’s long-deferred Democratic Revolution.

However, a recent development reveals the first major tension in this project, exposing a strategic divergence that risks containing its radical potential. When the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) debated whether to mount a primary challenge against House Democratic leader Hakeem Jefferies, Zohran—a member of the organization—intervened. He reportedly gave a speech encouraging a ‘no’ vote. The measure failed narrowly, swayed almost certainly by the mayor-elect’s substantial influence. His rationale, as understood, is pragmatic: as mayor, he needs to work with powerful figures in the Democratic establishment to pass his agenda—freezing rents, fast and free buses, and building affordable housing. Antagonizing the future Speaker of the House, who represents part of Brooklyn and controls key levers of federal influence, was seen as counterproductive to the goal of passing his ‘affordability agenda’.

This logic is understandable, but fundamentally limited. It marks a shift from the political insurgent who challenged the hegemony of the Democratic Party to the municipal executive who seeks accommodation within it. In doing so, it risks replicating, on the socialist left, the very failing that doomed Bidenism and constrains progressive politics everywhere: the fallacy of deliverism. As I argued in analyzing the 2024 election, the Biden administration’s belief that strong macroeconomic data and discrete policy wins (the IRA, CHIPS Act) would translate into political success was a miscalculation. They operated on a technocratic, economistic assumption: deliver material improvements, and voters will reciprocate with support. This failed because it ignored the ideological and narrative terrain upon which economic reality is interpreted. Inflation wasn’t just a statistic; it was experienced through a lens of anxiety and unfairness, which the right expertly weaponized into a story of national decline. Biden offered policy; Trump offered a story. The “vibes” weren’t irrational; they were the subjective manifestation of a political crisis.

Zohran’s post-election pragmatism now falls into a localized version of this same error. His apparent theory is that successful governance—the efficient delivery of popular municipal policies—will serve as its own justification and engine for change. “Point to New York,” the thinking goes, as a proof-of-concept for socialist politics. This is the trap of economism: the belief that the accumulation of tangible, economic deliveries  is the primary path to building power. This approach misreads both the nature of political transformation and the very source of his campaign’s initial power.

As seen with Biden, material concessions alone cannot sustain political energy or forge a durable collective identity. A tenant who benefits from a rent freeze is grateful, but they are not automatically transformed into a political subject engaged in a hegemonic struggle. Politics requires a story, a conflict, a sense of being part of a larger project of civilizational transformation. Reducing socialism to competent, progressive municipal management sells the vision short. It swaps the horizon of a “Democratic Revolution” for the horizon of a well-run city department. Bill de Blasio, a progressive predecessor, delivered Universal Pre-K and rent freezes. He was a good mayor on many metrics. Yet his administration did not spark an ideological shift; it was contained, often mocked, and ultimately absorbed by the city’s unchallenged neoliberal power structures. Rather than cement a progressive legacy, his reforms resulted in the next mayor being the arch-corrupt Eric Adams—who subsequently rolled back many of de Blasio’s accomplishments.

This “pragmatism” risks an abdication of the ideological struggle. The decision to protect Hakeem Jefferies, while seemingly an understandable tactical choice, was a symbolic abdication of leadership in the ongoing left populist insurgency in the Democratic Party. Jefferies is the perfect avatar of the decaying Democratic establishment: superficially oppositional to Trump but ineffectual, uncharismatic, and fundamentally committed to oligarchic finance, Zionism, and the suffocating “normalcy” that Zohran’s campaign rejected. A serious primary challenge—especially at the peak of Zohran’s national spotlight—would have been a seismic act of political clarification. It would have drawn a bright line between two irreconcilable projects: invigorating socialism versus fraying liberalism. It would have forced a national conversation, captured media attention, and demonstrated that the movement is expansive and relentless, not content with a single municipal victory. By arguing for caution, Zohran prioritized managerial peace over ideological conflict, effectively telling the energy that elected him to stand down at a moment of maximum potential.

Furthermore, New York City’s mayor is powerful, but also heavily constrained by the federal and state governments, financial markets, and the structural power of capital. The agenda of a socialist mayor, however popular, will face relentless, well-funded opposition. To believe that cordial relations with party bosses like Jefferies will disarm this opposition is naive. Leverage comes not from politeness, but from the relentless contesting of power and the constant threat of mobilized popular energy. The best defense for Zohran’s agenda in Albany and Washington rather than  a quiet understanding with Jefferies, was a vibrant, threatening national movement that made punishing a popular socialist mayor politically untenable. Disarming the base to placate power centers weakens, not strengthens, his hand.

This accommodation misreads the very source of the campaign’s power. Zohran’s policy proposals were never powerful solely for their economic utility. Their potency lay in their function as signals of class struggle. Raising the city’s top tax rate to match New Jersey’s is, in strict economic terms, a mild reform; the wealthy would remain wealthy. Yet it sparked intense opposition because it represented a power shift—a declaration that capital’s prerogatives could be challenged—that the city’s resources could be mobilized against its will. The proposals were vectors of political energy, crystallizing an “us vs. them” antagonism. The post-election contradiction is that the pursuit of these policies as deliverables now comes at the expense of the struggle for power that gave them meaning. By protecting Jefferies to smooth the path for implementation, Zohran seeks to decouple the policy from the conflict, to extract the economic concession while relinquishing the fight to attain power. This transforms a demand that signaled a rebalancing of class power into a technocratic adjustment to be negotiated with the very powers it was meant to challenge.

Zohran’s decision illustrates the central tension inherent in the socialist project today: the clash between the political struggle for power which requires relentless ideological expansion and conflict; and the logic of deliverism, which seeks tangible wins within existing constraints, often necessitating accommodation with the antagonistic forces. His campaign brilliantly executed the first. His intervention in the DSA vote privileged the second. The task for socialists seeking to become a genuine political force—a party in the Gramscian sense, not merely an activist machine—is to hold these two logics in a dynamic, productive tension. It is not to choose between governing and struggling, but to understand that governance, to be transformative, must be an extension of the ideological and political struggle, not a retreat from it.

The Democratic Revolution will not be administered from City Hall. It will be won by forcing open political space on multiple fronts simultaneously—in city councils, in congressional primary challenges, and in the battle for popular consciousness. Zohran’s mayoralty can be a powerful node in this network, but only if it is understood as one front in a wider war of position. To freeze rents while leaving the political power of the real estate oligarchy intact is hardly even a temporary victory. To primary a Jefferies, even at the risk of short-term friction, is to contest that power directly. The lesson of Zohran’s  pragmatism is not that he was wrong to run for mayor, but that a movement which ceases to expand, to draw lines, and to fight for ideological leadership—even from a position of hard-won local power—has already begun to accept the limits of the order it seeks to overthrow.