Zohran Mamdani is definitely not the primary democratic socialist to fulfill with a US president. However his go to with Donald Trump reveals the renewal of a historic American motion.
Donald Trump (R) meets with New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani within the Oval Workplace of the White Home in Washington, DC, on November 21, 2025.
(Jim Watson / AFP by way of Getty Pictures)
When Zohran Mamdani met with President Trump on Friday, New York Metropolis’s mayor-elect did in order a proud democratic socialist.
And a profitable one.
None of Trump’s hyperbolic commentary on the New York mayoral marketing campaign, no absurd mischaracterization of Mamdani as a “communist,” no strain tactic or menace relating to federal funding or ICE raids, might change the truth that the democratic socialism that Mamdani champions has gained traction with voters, in New York and nationally, who’re trying anew at alternate options to status-quo politics and status-quo economics.
Trump—who, as he has typically mentioned, likes to be round winners—appeared to acknowledge that after the 2 males spoke within the Oval Workplace on Friday. The strikingly congenial tone of their post-meeting press convention felt like an indication that the Trumps of the world have begun to acknowledge—nevertheless grudgingly—that democratic socialism is right here to remain in modern American politics.
As a substitute of the campaign-season vitriol that Trump aimed on the New York Metropolis Democrat, the president mentioned Friday, “I really feel very assured that he can do an excellent job.”
Trump famous that “loads of my voters voted for him” on November 4—an acknowledgement that New Yorkers who backed Trump in 2024 due to cost-of-living considerations went to Mamdani, who addressed these considerations with much more specificity, in 2025. And he mentioned that he can be snug dwelling in a Mamdani-run New York—an entire reversal of the apocalyptic rhetoric the president and his billionaire allies used in the course of the marketing campaign. He even laughed off a query about Mamdani referring to him as a “fascist,” patting the mayor-elect’s arm and cheerfully telling him he didn’t should reply for his previous statements.
Present Concern
When it got here to ideological variations. Trump went no additional on Friday than to say of Mamdani, “He’s obtained views which might be a bit of on the market.”
Nonetheless Trump describes them, these views proved to be in style in New York Metropolis on this yr’s election– simply as they’ve confirmed to be in style throughout a rustic the place dozens of democratic socialists now serve within the US Senate, the US Home, state legislatures, and metropolis halls nationwide.
In his epic November 4 election night time victory speech, Mamdani spoke to this actuality within the triumphant language of a candidate who had scored a victory not only for himself but in addition for his democratic socialist beliefs.
“For so long as we will keep in mind, the working folks of New York have been instructed by the rich and the well-connected that energy doesn’t belong of their palms,” declared Mamdani. “Fingers bruised from lifting containers on the warehouse flooring, palms calloused from supply by handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns—these usually are not palms which were allowed to carry energy. And but, during the last 12 months, you’ve got dared to achieve for one thing larger. Tonight. In opposition to all odds, we’ve got grasped it. The longer term is in our palms.”
By any measure of latest politics, and even by the bounds of Trump’s understanding of America’s electoral heritage, that was true.
However it ought to be famous that democratic socialism has an important historical past in America, one which presidents earlier than Trump incessantly acknowledged. John Fitzgerald Kennedy acknowledged and responded to the very important message of Michael Harrington, the veteran socialist who authored the 1962 e book The Different America: Poverty in america. (Harrington went on to cofound Democratic Socialists of America, the group that supplied very important backing to Mamdani’s mayoral bid.) Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with Socialist Get together presidential candidate Norman Thomas, whose robust 1932 election showing signaled a need on the a part of many citizens to maneuver to the left in response to the Nice Despair, earlier than FDR’s 1933 inauguration. Roosevelt additionally labored intently with many socialists throughout his presidency and gave broad expression to democratic socialist idealism with his 1944 Economic Bill of Rights speech. Republican Warren Harding pardoned labor chief and former Socialist Get together presidential candidate Eugene Victor Debs—who had been jailed on prices stemming from his outspoken opposition to World Battle I—and invited Debs for a what turned out to be a friendly White House chat on December 26, 1921. (“Good morning, Mr. President,” Debs is reported to have mentioned, as Harding responded, “Properly, I’ve heard so damned a lot about you, Mr. Debs, that I’m now very glad to fulfill you personally.”)
Debs figured in Mamdani’s victory speech, when he quoted from the proudly radical labor chief who made socialism a family phrase—and have become a big drive on the American electoral panorama—greater than a century in the past.
After outcomes from throughout New York confirmed that the 34-year-old immigrant from Uganda can be the primary Muslim mayor of the nation’s largest metropolis, Mamdani declared, “The solar might have set over our metropolis this night, however as Eugene Debs as soon as mentioned, ‘I can see the daybreak of a greater day for humanity.’”
The group that had packed Brooklyn’s historic Paramount theater for the celebration erupted with loud and understanding applause on the point out of Debs, a founding father of America’s electorally potent Socialist Get together who led its presidential ticket 5 occasions within the first many years of the twentieth century.
As democratic socialism has swelled in recognition lately, particularly with younger voters, Debs has grow to be an iconic determine. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, whose 2016 and 2020 presidential bids did a lot to resume curiosity in socialism—and whom Mamdani has credited with turning him right into a socialist—has educated a brand new technology of activists about Debs. So it was no shock {that a} reference to him by the newly elected socialist mayor of New York impressed cheers.
However simply as Mamdani shouldn’t be the primary democratic socialist to fulfill with a president, so he’s not the primary mayor of an important American metropolis to speak up Debs. Certainly, when Debs ran what was arguably his most profitable presidential marketing campaign—a 1912 bid that gained 6 % of the nationwide vote and really outperformed sitting Republican President William Howard Taft in seven states—his working mate was the Socialist mayor of Milwaukee: Emil Seidel.
Seidel was certainly one of three Socialist Get together mayors who ruled Milwaukee throughout a lot of the twentieth century, managing municipal affairs so ably that Milwaukee was usually ranked as one of many nation’s most fiscally accountable, humane, and wholesome cities. The healthiness of Milwaukee was a significant precedence for the Socialists, who targeted on public well being initiatives, housing, and neighborhood renewal, and packages to guard the protection of employees within the metropolis’s huge factories. In actual fact, the Milwaukeeans invested so closely, and so enthusiastically, in sanitation tasks that they got here to be referred to as “sewer socialists.”
Mamdani is aware of this historical past. When Katrina vanden Heuvel and I interviewed him in July, after he’d gained the Democratic mayoral nomination, the candidate spoke at size about his socialist predecessors.
“The instance of sewer socialism is one which I consider typically,” he mentioned. “What we’ve got seen lately is that the language that ought to be recognized with the left has grow to be related to the correct: language of effectivity, of [fighting] waste, of high quality of life. To combat for working folks should additionally imply to combat for his or her high quality of life. Sewer socialism, to me, represents a perception that the value of an ideology can solely be judged by its supply. Meaning bettering the providers and social items that working folks expertise every day: the sewers, the clear consuming water, the parks. You win somebody’s belief by means of an final result, and that’s what I’m working backward from: an final result of an inexpensive metropolis and a need to indicate that authorities can, in reality, dwell as much as its tasks to working residents.”
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Mamdani’s quoting of Debs and referencing of the sewer socialists gives a reminder that america has a wealthy historical past of visionary, humane, and extremely profitable socialist governance—in Milwaukee and dozens of different cities. And that it could have a vibrant future in Mamdani’s New York.
Donald Trump tried to avert that future earlier than the November 4 election. However he failed. And, now, it’s the rising actuality of a nation that has a protracted historical past of electing socialists and—because the latest victories of Mamdani, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, and so many different democratic socialists point out—is ready to maintain doing so.
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