Wall Street & The Democratic Establishment Just Got Their Asses Kicked By An Assemblyman From Queens

The Moment A Democratic Machine That Hates Winning Lost Control

Andy Ogles, Tennessee racist and serial liar— on a George Santos level— couldn’t wait to wave the Confederate flag and demand the Zohran Mamdani be denaturalized and deported. Not in the slightest bit embarrassed to post this tweet— probably because he knows there are so pitifully few voters in Wilson, Maury or Marshall counties who’ll be… and not even that many in Williamson County either.

David Sirota didn’t have Ogles in mind when he posted Who’s Afraid Of Zohran Mamdani? yesterday, noting how the democratic socialist’s big win “has prompted an elite panic, the likes of which we’ve rarely seen: Billionaires are desperately seeking a general-election candidate to stop him, former Barack Obama aides are publicly melting down, corporate moguls are threatening  capital strike, and CNBC has become a television forum for nervous breakdowns. Meanwhile, Democratic elites who’ve spent a decade punching left are suddenly trying to align themselves with and take credit for Mamdani’s brand (though not necessarily his agenda). On the surface, this freak-out can seem as if it’s about policy. Mamdani’s proposals for free buses, universal free child care, faster small-business licensing, higher taxes on the rich, some publicly owned grocery stores, a higher minimum wage and rent freezes are indeed shocking to oligarchs conditioned to getting everything they want. When you’re so accustomed to privilege, the most minimally humane policies for others can seem like oppression— and Mamdani’s agenda probably feels that way to New York’s billionaires, CEOs, and neoliberals.”

They’ve talked themselves into believing they’re on the precipice of the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution. If only! “This is about power— specifically, the power of money and establishment authority to control outcomes. Mamdani won despite being vastly outspent and despite being targeted for defeat by both the Democratic machine and the elite liberal media. His victory is a “system defining” moment, not because a charismatic underdog was victorious in one race, but because it was the first time the oligarchy was unable to buy the political results it wanted in such a high-profile contest. And that suggests a national political earthquake may be on the horizon.” And they— “the entire architecture of plutocracy we live under today: deregulated finance, lax antitrust enforcement, an out-of-control military-industrial complex, a winner-take-all economy, unprecedented inequality, and elections transformed into auctions”— are absolutely not throwing in the towel.

In 2016 and 2020, Bernie Sanders almost wrested the presidential nomination away from the Democratic establishment— but after the kind of elite panic we’re seeing today, power and money won the day.

In 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez found a glitch in the master plan with her upset primary victory over an incumbent Democrat— but in that anomaly, the oligarchy was caught off guard. Money and power quickly fixed the glitch, made sure never to be surprised again. The Democratic machine focused on crushing AOC-style primary challenges for congressional seats— and replacing other progressive lawmakers with corporate-friendly liberals.

Then came 2025 and Mamdani— a Sanders-style candidate who is openly hostile to oligarchy, who is telegenic like Obama, but who did not engage in the Obama-esque bait-and-switch of taking billionaires’ cash while winking and nodding at their political agenda. 

Mamdani did not ask permission from the establishment or a network of big donors to run for the highest office in the global capital of finance— and he did not benefit from AOC’s element of surprise. The establishment lined up behind Andrew Cuomo, a two-term governor with a famous surname and a massive political network. Despite previously calling on him to resign, the Democratic machine armed Cuomo with lethal weapons of political destruction: $30 million worth of ads, a constant stream of anti-Mandani agitprop from elite media brands, and a Hitler-invoking campaign depicting Mamdani as an antisemite. 

Casting the upstart as a crazed radical and spending him into oblivion has been plutocrats’ standard and devastatingly effective strategy, one that has been successfully deployed against candidates like Mamdani for 50 years. But for the first time in anyone’s memory, the gambit failed. When the votes were counted, Mamdani’s campaign for “a city we can afford” had triumphed over all the money and power that had previously guaranteed political outcomes. 

He was able to achieve a once-impossible win thanks to four big factors: 1) grassroots organizing work had been done in New York for the last decade 2) the city had a pro-democracy weapon against the master plan: a public campaign financing system that gave Mamdani some necessary resources 3) other anti-oligarchy candidates used the city’s ranked choice voting system to stand in solidarity with him and 4) his populist anti-oligarchy message resonated in a city where one in four residents are at or below the poverty line. 

More than any dispute over a particular policy, this is why the elites are throwing such a spectacular temper tantrum right now. They know they lost their power to control the outcome in a major election— and could now lose it in other elections across the country. 

Robert Reich had a similar message for his readers yesterday. “It’s one thing,” he wrote “for Trump to call Mamdani ‘a 100% Communist Lunatic.’ That’s to be expected from the vulgarian-in-chief. It’s another for Matt Bennett, co-founder of the centrist Democratic group Third Way, to warn that Mamdani’s ‘affiliation with the (Democratic Socialists of America) is very dangerous.’ Dangerous for whom? Bernie Sanders nearly won the Democratic primary for the 2016 presidential election after announcing he was a democratic socialist— and probably would have won had the Democratic National Committee not torpedoed him.”

Lawrence Summers, treasury secretary under former Democratic President Barack Obama, says the New York City results make him “profoundly alarmed about the future of the (Democratic Party) and the country.”

Well, I’m profoundly alarmed, too— by just this kind of vacuous statement. If polls are to be believed, the current Democratic Party doesn’t have much of a future. Mamdani and other young politicians with the charisma to connect with the people and a willingness to take on corporate America and Wall Street may be the only way forward for the Democrats.

Nor has the mainstream media greeted Mamdani’s upset victory with much enthusiasm. The Associated Press writes that “the party’s more pragmatic wing cast the outcome as a serious setback in their quest to broaden Democrats’ appeal.”

Pragmatic wing? Since when has the corporate establishment of the Democratic Party distinguished itself by its pragmatism or its quest to broaden Democrats’ appeal? If it were pragmatic— in the sense of wanting to win elections and fire up the base— Democrats would not have lost the House, Senate, and presidency in 2024.

Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post editorializes that “Democrats should fear that [Mamdani] will discredit their next generation of party leaders, almost all of whom are better than this democratic socialist.”

Bezos— who controls the content of The Post’s editorial page as he sucks up to Trump and is now occupying vast swaths of Venice for his wedding with Lauren Sanchez— is not the most credible source of wisdom when it comes to the identity of the Democrats’ next generation of party leaders.

Not surprisingly, The Post criticizes Mamdani’s proposals for a 2 percent annual wealth tax on the richest 1 percent of New Yorkers and for increasing the state’s corporate tax rate from 7.25 percent to 11.5 percent: “Mamdani’s tax plans would spur a corporate exodus and drive more rich people out of town, undermining the tax base and making existing services harder to maintain.”

It’s the same argument we’ve heard for 40 years: If you raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy, you’ll drive them away— from your city, your state, your nation.

Rubbish. The reality is that if you invest in your people— in their skills, education, affordable child care, affordable elder care, and the infrastructure needed to link them together— they’ll be more productive, and their higher productivity will attract corporations (and the wealthy). A major way to afford all these things is to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

Mamdani is the corporate Democrat’s biggest nightmare— a young, charismatic politician winning over Democratic voters with an optimistic message centering on the cost of living. Putting together a multiethnic and multiracial coalition backed by a sprawling grassroots campaign that brings out enormous numbers of volunteers. Aiming to fund what average people need by taxing corporations and the rich.

Instead of wringing their hands over him, Democrats should follow his lead.

The largest force in American politics today is antiestablishment fury at a system rigged by big corporations and the wealthy to make them even richer and more powerful.

The corporate Democratic establishment— fat cats on Wall Street, corporate moguls in C-suites, billionaire backers of Democrats who will do their bidding, and the big-named Democrats who endorsed Andrew Cuomo— are the biggest problem for the party. They are standing in the way of it’s mounting a forceful response to Trump and providing a blueprint for the future.

Trump is killing the economy, fueling inflation with his tariffs, reducing the U.S. government to rubble, and destroying our relationships with our allies. He’s readying another giant tax cut for the wealthy and big corporations— this one to be financed by cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, and other things average people need, along with trillions more in national debt.

… My simple advice to congressional Democrats: Wake the hell up. According to polls, most Americans don’t want a Trump Republican budget that slashes Medicaid, food stamps, and child nutrition in order to make way for a giant tax cut mostly for the wealthy.

Most don’t want tariffs that drive up the prices they pay for food, gas, housing, and clothing. Most understand that tariffs are taxes paid by American consumers. Most don’t want a government of, by, and for billionaires. Most believe in democracy and the rule of law and don’t want Trump trampling on the Constitution, acts of Congress, and federal court orders.

Not only should Democrats be making noise about all this, they should stop relying on so-called “moderates” to speak for them. The nation is in clear and present danger. Democrats must stand up for American ideals at a time when the Trump regime is riding roughshod over them.

Democrats need Zohran Mamdani and other young politicians with fight in their hearts and rage in their bellies who can show that Trump is bad for working people and terrible for America and the world, and who can point the way forward.

We need a new generation of leaders who are the voices of democracy, freedom, social justice, and the rule of law. A new generation that gives meaning to the “we” in “we the people.”

Instead of fretting over Mamdani, the Democratic Party should embrace him as the future.

The New York State Nurses Association, which didn’t endorse anyone the primary, announced their support for Mamdani yesterday. At the same time, two other huge unions, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council and 32BJ SEIU, which had endorsed Cuomo, switched to Mamdani yesterday. The 3 unions represent more than a quarter million workers. The oligarchs will never get behind him, but working people are continuing to move in his direction. The NY Times reported that “They promised to invest in boots-on-the-ground campaigns to help him beat Mayor Eric Adams in November. ‘We are confident that whenever we’re in a fight, Zohran will be on our side standing up for hospitality workers,’ said Rich Maroko, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council’s president. ‘That’s why we are genuinely excited to endorse Zohran and ready to help him win in November.’ The striking shift in union support came despite some effort by Cuomo’s camp to persuade labor leaders to hold off in moving to Mamdani.”

Tanya Lloyd is running for Congress in the Texas district that includes Corpus Christi, as well as a lot of rural territory further inland. “New York City and rural Texas may seem culturally worlds apart,” she told us, “but people’s needs everywhere, at their core, are the same. What I’m advocating for as part of my agenda for America’s rural revival is strikingly similar to the issues that motivated New Yorkers to secure Mamdani’s Democratic Party nomination for the mayoral seat. Addressing the root causes of violence, offering residents access to fast, fare-free buses, providing universal childcare, and improving quality of life while combating climate change by greening our schools— these are all examples of sound public policy that make sense in both New York City and Texas’s 27th Congressional District. Mamdani’s victory on Tuesday night filled me with hope that a different kind of future is possible— one where we center the needs of working-class people through universal, highly visible policies. To me, that’s what good politics is all about.”

One-time Arizona congressional candidate Eva Putzova, who currently heads the Catch Fire Movement, Told us that “Mamdani's win in the New York City mayoral primary is a clear message to the Democratic party— move to the left or move over. When too many political candidates— like the frontrunners for the congressional seat left open after Rep. Grijalva's passing in Arizona's strongly democratic district— refuse to discuss their position on Gaza and Israel publicly, Mamdani's unapologetic support for the Palestinian human rights is a breath of fresh air. Authentic, courageous and transparent campaigns tend to prevail over performative, manufactured, and timid candidates that operate from the position of fear.”

Let the centrists cry themselves to sleep over Mamdani’s win. Let the consultants wring their hands, the billionaires threaten to pack their bags, the lobbyists and think tankers draft white papers about  their flawed version of electability. They’ve all had their shot— decades of triangulation, deference to capital, empty rhetoric and broken promises and an electoral system based of less-of-two-evils politics. That gave us a collapsing Democratic Party and Trump in the White House twice.

The establishment had its chance to build a party of the people and chose instead to build a party of the donors. And now, when someone like Mamdani steps up and shows that a different kind of politics is possible— a politics rooted in solidarity, justice and courage—they panic… because it has nothing whatsoever to do with them. They smear. They mobilize every tool in the oligarch's toolbox to stop him. And they still lose.

Because Mamdani isn’t just a threat to Andrew Cuomo or Third Way hacks. He’s a threat to a political order that treats poverty as a personal failure and wealth as a divine right. He’s a threat to the idea that Democrats should govern from fear— fear of the rich, fear of the media, fear of the right. He’s a threat to a party leadership that would rather lose to Trump than win with the left. The path forward isn’t hard to see— only hard to swallow for those drunk on donor cash. The Democratic Party can either get out of the way or get run over by the future. Because it’s coming either way. Mamdani just proved it. Time’s up. No more consultants peddling defeatism and licking the boots of Wall Street and calling it bipartisanship. No more half-measures. I hope what I’m seeing is the next generation taking power instead of asking for permission.