The Mamdani victory in New York, the Epstein files and an economy approaching recession, open the door for a Democratic power-grab

The recent convincing win of 33-year-old Uganda-born and Muslim New York Assemblyman, Zohran Mamdani, in the city’s Democratic primary mayoralty election in June, in itself an insignificant triumph in the context of national politics, may have constituted a watershed event in US political history.

Mamdani, a liberal Democratic Socialist, made the kind of splash that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) made in 2018, when she defeated Joseph Crawley, a senior 10-term Democratic incumbent and possible successor to Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.

AOC has been a rising star in the party and is considered to be certain presidential material in the future. Mamdani gave a similar boost to the party at its lowest ebb of popularity, despite a monstrously authoritarian administration led by a wannabe dictator with the support of a radical right, Christian white supremacist movement.

Mamdani won the Democratic nomination for the mayoralty of New York City with over 56% of the vote, defeating 67-year-old Andrew Cuomo, who had served as the Governor of New York from 2011 to 2021, until he was forced to resign in the face of multiple allegations of sexual assault.

Mamdani will contest the November 4 New York mayoral election as the Democratic candidate in a deep Blue city. Mamdani’s rivals for the job are Cuomo and current mayor, Eric Adams, elected in 2022 as a Democrat. Cuomo and Adams will both contest as Independents. The Republican candidate is Curtis Sliwa.

Adams was indicted on charges of corruption, bribery and wire fraud in September 2024 by the Attorney General of the Southern District of New York during the Biden administration. The charges were dropped by Trump’s Department of Justice as a quid pro quo for his assistance in Trump’s anti-immigration movement in New York. A vote for Adams is a vote for Trump.

Strangely, Democratic New York Governor, Kathy Hochul, and many prominent Democrats like House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, New York Senator Chuck Schumer and others have withheld support for Mandani. They are cozying up to disgraced former Governor Cuomo.

Some Democrats recognize the extreme danger Trump presents towards the establishment of an authoritarian police state. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom mocking Trump with fact and humor seems to be getting under Trump’s skin. Newsom is exposing the obvious and ridiculous lies which Trump has been getting away with, believed especially by his MAGA audience.

Illinois Governor Pritzker has been challenging Trump’s attempts to deploy federal troops to Chicago, ostensibly to fight crime (every category of which has been reducing in the city over the past 12 months), but in reality to take federal control of a Democratic City. Trump is threatening such federal “police” control in other Blue cities like New York and Los Angeles, while ignoring cities like Louisiana, Memphis, Houston and Nashville, all in Red States with higher crime rates.

Deployment of federal troops to federal states and cities unless requested by their governors and mayors is unconstitutional, and will be challenged at the Supreme Court level. But the deed would already have been done before the appeal is heard, and we all know how the most corrupt Supreme Court in history will rule.

The Epstein files, if and when they are released, will show up without any doubt Trump’s alleged sexual escapades with minors with his “best friend” in the 1990s. And Trump has run the economy to the ground in the past eight months with his insane policy of unpredictable tariffs. Recession seems inevitable, inflation and prices of consumer goods are rising and the international reputation of the United States is at its lowest levels. And the wars in Ukraine and Gaza he promised to stop on Day one of his presidency are still raging, with no prospect of peace.

The recent Summit convened by President Xi Jinping, attended by Trump’s buddies, Vladimir Putin, Kim il Sung, most surprisingly Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the leaders of half the population of the world, showed unity of its adversaries against the Leader of the Free World.

Trump yearns for the Nobel Prize for pretending to be the “Peacemaker of the World”, as he hallucinates he has stopped seven, maybe more wars during his second term, wars that did not exist, are still raging and those he had absolutely nothing to do with, as in the dispute between India Pakistan. The spokesman for the Indian government issued an immediate statement that “the Indian government has never had any communication with President Trump or any official of the US before, during and after the four-day dispute, which was mediated by the combatants themselves”.

But Trump continues to ta take credit for having stopped World War III, as both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers.

Truth be told, Trump deserves the Nobel Prize for bringing peace and friendship to countries like China, Russia, Iran and India, former adversaries who are now allies and engaged in settling their differences. No mean feat!

Since the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal took immediate actions to bring about immediate economic relief and reforms, which vastly increased the scope of the federal government’s activities in all aspects of the economy. The New Deal was also the beginning of an equitable social safety net. The Social Security Act was its signature program, a permanent system of universal retirement pensions, unemployment insurance and welfare benefits for the handicapped, the vulnerable and the needy.

The beginnings of a social safety net which would result in a just and equitable society. A society which is the norm for 28 of the 29 developed nations of today, the exception being the richest and the most powerful.

All these nations, from Canada to Australia, from Germany to Japan, offer their citizens universal health care, free education, some up to post graduate levels, unemployment insurance, generous maternity leave and child care benefits, and many other privileges which make them the majority in the list of the happiest nations in which to live.

According to the 2025 World Happiness Report, Finland is the happiest nation in the world, and the other countries in the top ten are Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, Norway, Israel, Luxembourg. The US ranked 24th in the Report, its lowest position in the Report’s 13-year history.

These rankings are based on “individuals’ self-assessments of their lives, considering factors like access to nature, strong welfare systems, a high level of trust (in the government), good living conditions, freedom and low corruption”.

The United States also was treading the path towards the ideology of Capitalist Socialism, towards a society in which some citizens were not dying of starvation or declaring bankruptcy if hit by cancer, while others were buying smaller yachts to park within their bigger ones.

The United States boasted of a thriving middle class till the early 1980s, when Reagan slashed taxes of corporations and the wealthy on the infamous “Trickle Down” theory of economics, which effectively dismantled the middle class. Four decades later, all this “trickle down” theory has done is to increase wealth for the rich, while the middle and poorer classes were stuck with stagnant or declining incomes. Tax cuts for the wealthy did not result in increased consumption or job creation; it tended to result in asset accumulation and savings of wealth, which did not stimulate economic growth.

The argument against taxing the rich is that high taxation will discourage creativity and innovations. There is no doubt that any reservations about where your next meal is coming from will leave little time for any productive work. But there is also no doubt that ruminations about the accommodations in your luxury private plane will affect your powers of creativity.

Today, the average CEO in the United States has an income of over 285 times that of the median worker. The average CEO makes an annual income of $18.9 million, while a median worker earns about $66,000. These are averages. There and many CEOs who net as much as a 600 to 1 ratio when stock options and awards are added. And there is a significant percentage of Americans who earn close to the poverty level of $15-20,000.

These levels of income and wealth inequality in the US, the highest by far globally, have not changed much during the past few decades. And the costs of basic necessities like healthcare, education and many other benefits and privileges which are taken for granted in other developed countries, remain higher than ever.

The Democratic leadership has been totally ineffective for the past eight years. It has enabled Trump and the MAGA cult to win the hearts and minds of not just the white majority of the populations, but also low-and mid-income Americans which were reeling under high inflation and increased consumer goods and housing prices. Trump, with the little time he had during the years when he was not fighting 91 cases of felonies and playing four rounds of golf per week, was able to stoke anti-immigrant, anti-leftist fires of the white population, as they feared they were being outnumbered by brown immigrants, who were stealing their jobs. And eating their cats and dogs.

The Democratic Party made the biggest mistake by not holding President Biden to his promise of being a “transition” president, and elected a president through a series of primaries in 2024. A younger Democrat like Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris or Ben Shapiro would have eaten Trump for lunch if they had a full two years of campaigning. Especially after Biden’s first term’s outstanding performance in rescuing the economic mire left by Trump’s criminal mismanagement after Covid in 2020. Kamala Harris damn nearly achieved the impossible with just seven weeks of campaigning.

That is history. We now have a president who is faithfully keeping his campaign policies of garnering all the process of transforming the United States of presidential power that his lapdog Supreme Court will allow him. He is already in the process of making America into a police state, illegally deploying federal troops to the nation’s Democratic-majority cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and even New York City.

The Democrats make protests, they make 25-hour senate speeches, but when it came to the crunch, they voted with the Republicans not to shut the government six months ago. Shutting of government funding occurs when funding required to finance the federal government is not enacted before the next fiscal year begins. A shutdown curtails federal agency activities, furloughs non-essential workers and retains only essential employees on departments that protect human life and property.

The next vote to shut the government down is due by the end of September, and the Democrats simply must not help the Republicans again. People will hurt, they are already hurting with Trump’s enormously stupid economic policies. Let them realize that all their woes have been caused by Trump’s idiocy. Then no amount of lying will rescue Trump and the Republican Party.

Trump’s ratings in every single sector, the economy, inflation, handling of international disputes, even his favorite immigration are in the 30 percents, the lowest in either of his terms. The chaos caused by a government shutdown will result in endless protests and a certain rout of the Republicans in the midterms in November 2026. Hopefully, Trump and the Republican Party will allow fair and free elections to continue in the future.

This is the best chance the Democrats have to seize the leadership, return to a liberal policy and ensure the type of equitable society with a social safety net that the citizens of the richest and most powerful nation deserve. The election of Democratic Socialist, Zohran Mamdani, as the candidate for the mayor of New York, described as the “second toughest job in the world” is a signal that Americans have finally realized the Trumpian path towards authoritarianism, with all the threats to democracy it represents, has to be stopped at all costs.

Mamdani has awoken the Bernie Sanders movement, which has never wavered over the years. Younger leaders like New York’s congresswoman, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez (AOC) and the Squad, new Democratic stars, fiery Texas congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, Florida congressman, Jared Moscovitch and many other younger Democrats are spoiling to take the fight to the Republicans and lead the nation to its rightful status as the Leader of the Free World.

by Vijaya Chandrasoma ✍️