Zohran and Alex Soros after the win. Reassurance!

There’s a beautiful irony in Zohran Mamdani’s victory that should make every American pause and wonder what democracy actually means anymore. Here’s a guy who just won the New York City mayoral race on the back of 40,000 small-dollar donors, who explicitly ran against the billionaire class, who faced a coordinated $40 million assault from plutocrats like Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb—and won anyway. A real David-versus-Goliath story, right?

Wrong. Because, no matter how many lefties cry “sell out”, the political reality is this: even after slaying Goliath, David still has to go meet with Goliath’s family in their Rockefeller Center offices and promise to play nice. A mayor is not a congressman whose job is to speak and write laws; a mayor is an executive position, and you need so many people to cooperate after you win if you’re going to pull off the mayor thing.

Welcome to 21st-century American politics, where you can win every vote that matters and still lose the only war that counts.

The Surrender Meetings

In mid-July, before he’d even formally secured his general election victory, Mamdani found himself sitting in a conference room organized by the Partnership for New York City—a glorified billionaires’ club masquerading as a civic organization—facing roughly 100 CEOs. These weren’t just any business leaders. These were representatives of the same financial titans who’d spent record amounts trying to destroy him.

What happened in that room tells you everything you need to know about the limits of electoral democracy in America.

According to reports, Mamdani softened his stance on “globalizing the intifada”—a phrase he’d previously defended on free speech grounds—telling the assembled executives he would now “discourage” its use. The man who’d built his entire brand on not backing down from principle was now carefully walking back positions to appease people who literally bankrolled his opposition.

But here’s the thing: He had no choice.

The Invisible Veto

Most Americans think the mayor of New York City is powerful. They’re right—sort of. The mayor controls a $100 billion budget, commands the nation’s largest police force, and oversees services for 8 million people. On paper, it’s one of the most consequential elected positions in America.

In practice? The mayor is a middle manager answering to landlords, developers, financiers, and CEOs who can’t be voted out.

Consider the arsenal of weapons New York’s wealthy have at their disposal:

Economic Terrorism: Real estate developers can simply stop building. Financial firms can threaten to relocate (and some already are—Florida business leaders are literally preparing welcome packets). When you’re sitting on billions in capital, you have the power to make elected officials suffer for policies you don’t like. One real estate lender already put New York projects on hold until after the election. That’s not business—that’s blackmail with a McKinsey presentation deck.

Legal Warfare: The rich don’t just have lawyers; they have entire law firms on retainer. They can tie up every initiative Mamdani proposes in litigation for years. Want to freeze rents? See you in court for the next five years while landlords bleed the city dry. Want to raise taxes? Better hope you enjoy depositions.

Media Capture: The New York Times—that bastion of liberal journalism—ran an editorial board piece essentially telling voters not to rank Mamdani. They later published a story using hacked documents from a self-described race scientist to question Mamdani’s college application from 15 years ago. The Post called him a “menace.” When the city’s major papers are working overtime to delegitimize you, you’re not just fighting an opponent—you’re fighting an entire apparatus.

Political Gatekeeping: After Mamdani won the primary, watch what happened: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries held off endorsing. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stayed silent. Governor Kathy Hochul—who he’d need to pass any tax increases—waited. These aren’t personal slights. They’re institutional reminders of who really runs things.

The State Legislature Choke Point: Here’s the kicker that seals the deal: Nearly every major policy Mamdani wants to enact—taxing the wealthy, raising corporate rates, freezing rents—requires approval from Albany. The city council can’t just pass these things. The mayor can’t decree them. They need the state legislature and the governor to sign off.

Guess who has more influence with state legislators than a freshman mayor? The same business interests now demanding meetings.

The Realpolitik of Revolution

So why did Mamdani take those meetings? Why soften his language? Why tell business leaders he wants “partnership”?

Because he understands something that armchair revolutionaries on Twitter don’t: Martyrdom is cheap, governing is expensive.

Imagine Mamdani had refused to meet with business leaders. Imagine he’d doubled down on every position, told the CEOs to pound sand, and tried to govern as a pure ideologue. Here’s what would happen:

Year One: Every major development project gets canceled or moved. Real estate investment in the city plummets. Tax revenue drops. The budget crisis that exists becomes a budget catastrophe.

Year Two: Hochul and the state legislature—under intense pressure from business lobbyists—refuse to pass any of Mamdani’s tax proposals. They might even pass laws limiting what the city can do. The city council, seeing which way the wind blows, starts defecting from his agenda.

Year Three: The media narrative becomes “Mamdani’s Failed Experiment.” Every pothole, every delayed subway, every closed business gets blamed on the socialist mayor who scared away job creators. Fox News runs segments daily. The Times publishes concerned long-reads about the flight of talent and capital.

Year Four: A well-funded challenger emerges. Someone “reasonable.” Someone who “understands business.” The same billionaires who couldn’t beat Mamdani in 2025 spend $100 million to beat him in 2029. And they win.

Revolution without power is just performance art. Mamdani gets this.

The Trap Within the Trap

But here’s where it gets really insidious. By forcing Mamdani to moderate before he even takes office, the wealthy elite accomplishes something more valuable than just defeating him: They prove the system works.

Think about it. When a democratic socialist with massive grassroots support, funded by small donors, running explicitly against billionaire power, wins an election—and then immediately has to start negotiating with and placating the same billionaires he ran against—what message does that send?

It tells every future progressive candidate: You can win, but winning the most votes is not enough to translate your vision into reality.

It tells voters: Your vote matters, but only within parameters set by people you never get to vote on.

It tells the billionaire class: You’re safe. The system is safe. Democracy is just a pressure valve, not a threat.

This is the genius of modern American oligarchy. It doesn’t need to cancel elections or jail dissidents. It just needs to make clear that elections only determine who manages the empire, not whether the empire continues to exist.

The Impossible Position

So what was Mamdani supposed to do?

He could have refused to moderate, stuck to every principle, and watch his mayoralty collapse under the weight of economic sabotage and political isolation. He’d go down in history as a brave failure, memorialized in folk songs and graduate seminars about the limits of municipal socialism.

Or he could do what he’s doing: Take the meetings. Soften the language. Build relationships with people who hate what he represents. Work within the system he hoped to change. Try to deliver whatever incremental improvements he can while the billionaires hold a gun to the city’s economy.

It’s not a choice between revolution and surrender. It’s a choice between different flavors of defeat.

The real question isn’t why Mamdani was meeting with CEOs and moderating his message. The real question is why we have a system where someone who just won a democratic election had to negotiate the terms of his surrender with people who were never on the ballot.

The Lesson

Mamdani’s victory proves something important: You can beat the billionaires at the ballot box. The $40 million they spent against him failed. The media campaigns failed. The smears failed. Democracy, in the narrow sense of counting votes, actually worked.

But his randezvous with the powerful proves something more important: Beating them at the ballot box isn’t enough.

The real power in America doesn’t stand for election. It doesn’t need your vote. It just needs you to need something it controls—capital, credit, jobs, investment, development, tax approval. And if you want access to any of that, you’ll come to the table and negotiate.

Zohran Mamdani won the race for mayor of New York City. But he’s discovering what every democratic socialist before him has learned: In America, you can win the election.

You just can’t win.

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