The former president had an obvious reason to favor the Democratic frontrunner in the New York mayor’s race with a weekend call, writes Corinna Barnard. Mamdani is winning.
Former President Barack Obama during Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20. (DoD /Vanessa White/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
By Corinna G. Barnard
Special to Consortium News
CN at 30
Over the weekend, with early voting well underway for the New York City mayoralty, and just days before polling ends on Tuesday night, Barack Obama turned the headlights on this campaign even higher.
Just over a week from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ very late endorsement of Zhoran Mamdani, the former president placed a call to the Democrats’ 34-year-old frontrunner. News of the call broke in The New York Times. Reportedly, this is the second time Obama has called Mamdani since the primary.
From the way the piece was crafted, it seems Obama, a backstage Democratic Party boss, set ground rules on how the conversation could be reported. This was to be portrayed as a god-fatherly, behind-the-scenes contact. He reportedly offered Mamdani to be a “sounding board” into the future. “Mr. Obama said that he was invested in Mr. Mamdani’s success beyond the election on Tuesday,” writes Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent.
Obama did not use the call to make an outright endorsement that would cue other Democrats, who have been cold-shouldering Mamdani, to echo — most conspicuously New York politician Chuck Schumer, the party’s U.S. Senate minority leader.
The call, with its non-endorsement, is generating the expected buzz.
ABC News’ reporters noted that Obama’s
“silence on the New York City mayoral race was notable as he had weighed in on every other major contest ahead of Tuesday’s election. That included publicly supporting voting ‘yes’ on California’s Prop 50 redistricting measure and even weighing in on Supreme Court retention races in Pennsylvania.”
The New York Post, which reigns over the overtly hostile brand of Mamdani coverage, takes the angle that Obama, by not offering an outright endorsement, is moving onto the chess board strategically here, playing a go-between role. Their reporters quote a former political adviser of former President Bill Clinton as saying “Obama is being very careful. An Obama endorsement of Mamdani could be used against Democrats across the country next year in close elections when they’re trying to get back the House.”
In other words, the Post suggests the party is holding its nose at the potential of a positive verdict by New York voters on Mamdani and the message of his campaign.
?? Wham, Bam! No, Thank You, Mam
?Obama refuses to endorse radical NYC mayoral front-runner Mamdani — even after publicly backing this previous mayor
?@ccampy & Chris Nesi
?https://t.co/jsjoW39Fi7#frontpagestoday #USA @nypost ?? pic.twitter.com/HUSyKiQwOj— ????? ????? ????? ? (@ukpapers) November 3, 2025
Whatever the case, Obama, with his “sounding board” offer and wording about being “invested” in Mamdani’s future beyond the election, is at least posturing as a potential mentor.
This could be helpful to Mamdani as a counter weight to President Donald Trump, who threatens to withhold federal funds to the city if he wins.
“Because if you have a communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there,” Trump said in a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday, Newsweek reports.
But Obama’s outreach also raises obvious questions about the political influence he might seek to exert over Mamdani and his social-democratic agenda, if Mamdani becomes a protégé, rather than a champion of the party’s sidelined progressive flank.
While withholding an endorsement, Obama suavely congratulated Mamdani on the way he ran his campaign.
Smooth. But the reason for Obama’s outreach can also be stated bluntly. Mamdani has been winning — in the primary and in the polling data; all without support from the upper ranks of the party. That’s what got Obama’s attention.
Mamdani and his advisers should remember this in any future parleys with Democrats. His campaign, with its working-class agenda, caused a big party leader to come calling. The Mamdani camp should be wary of policy accommodations.
As the Seattle social democrat Kshama Sawant told Chris Hedges in a cautionary interview in July after Mamdani’s primary victory:
“If you don’t understand that careerism is one of the death knells of winning anything substantial for the working class, then you will sell out even with those good intentions because you will make it about yourself and you will immediately get the memo that in order to fight for working people, you will need to be in battle mode every single day when you enter City Hall.”
Social Democracy Beacon
Mamdani speaking at a DSA 101 meeting in New York City in November 2024. ( Bingjiefu He /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0)
New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America launched Mamdani into the race and provided him with vital organizational support.
Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed Mamdani in January, a couple of months after Mamdani announced his primary campaign.
An independent who caucuses with the Democrats, Sanders functioned as a party crasher in his two failed efforts to win the Democratic presidential nomination, during which he advocated for single-payer healthcare under the Medicare-for-All rallying cry.
Now that Mamdani has enjoyed a groundswell of voter support, his Sanders-aligned platform — taxing corporations and the rich, freezing rent and building affordable housing, free child care, fare-free buses — is stirring up the media.
With expectations of a Mamdani victory running high, Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is also being friendly towards Mamdani, with Fox News highlighting the way Martin is “downplaying the socialist-moderate rift in the party. “
NBC reports that capitalism is losing popularity overall, but that socialism is still unpopular. CNN says democratic socialists see their moment. Reason Magazine, champion of “free markets, free minds,” questions why a failed ideology won’t die.
Mamdani’s campaign has caused widespread recognition, complete with plenty of fear and loathing, of an economic populist uprising in the party, swelling up from “the base” — in other words, voters — with potentially far-reaching consequences.
This, From Beijing
Outside the Temple of Confucius in Beijing, September 2025. (Corinna Barnard/Consortium News)
In September I happened to be in Beijing to visit relatives. No reporting or news gathering. Nonetheless some came my way through a casual conversation and it wasn’t about China.
At a small social gathering a young ex-pat asked me what I thought about “the election.”
Beijing, for me, is on the other side of the planet, literally day-for-night. What election was he talking about? I couldn’t help looking baffled and wondering if Trump’s second term was already over; if I had fallen into a such a deep slumber on the plane that I had awoken, not only in a far-away place, but in some future time.
“Oh,” he said. “I guess you’re not as caught up with Mamdani and the New York election as some of us.”
It wasn’t that. I just didn’t expect to find someone in China’s capital city who was similarly fixated.
He said he was interested in Mamdani and what the New York DSA was achieving with his candidacy for what it might mean to the forces of democratic socialism in Europe, where he’d grown up and where he planned soon to move back. He thought a win by Mamdani would give social democracy a boost everywhere; across oceans and national boundaries.
Europe’s left flocks to New York to take notes on Mamdani’s meteoric rise https://t.co/JMV4TMh1MA
— Lara Korte (@lara_korte) November 3, 2025
Pro-Palestine Power Gauge
People all over the world, it appears, have reason to watch this municipal election. And not only as a bellwether on reversing the political tides of a New Gilded Age.
Mamdani’s candidacy also offers a power gauge of rising pro-Palestine sympathy in the United States amid Israel’s bipartisan stranglehold of Washington.
As a result, during this campaign, Mamdani has been hounded by the odious specter of Islamophobia.
This hydra-headed monster — fueled by the noxious proposition that to criticize a government committing genocide is anti-Semitic — has been on the move aggressively since the start of the accelerated genocide that began on Oct. 7, 2023.
It has been gorging on the vulnerabilities of representative democracy, feeding off, you name it — universities and congressional show trials and student protesters and small town politics. It has found ways to attack and silence and repress any and every trace of opposition to the use of taxpayer money to bankroll the live-streamed genocide.
New York City Democratic Socialists of America and Jewish Voice for Peace lead march for Gaza ceasefire an end to Israeli apartheid on Oct 20, 2023. (4kbw9Df3Tw, Wikimedia Commons, CC0)
It’s also been gnawing on the psychic health of U.S. citizens who loathe the way their I.R.S. payments force them into complicity with Israel’s U.S.-funded atrocities against people in Gaza, day after day, week after week, for more than two years.
Unless you are constantly demonstrating or organizing, or breaking the law or unwritten rules in the U.S. these days by withholding taxes, for instance, or boycotting Israeli goods or sabotaging a weapons plant, you are forced, when you look in the mirror, to see an accomplice, however unwilling, of a murderous regime.
The mayoral race in New York gave people, including the substantial number of Jewish voters who support Mamdani, a way to collectively register an objection to all that, in a way that commands notice.
By supporting an avowedly pro-Palestine Muslim candidate who was often called anti-Semitic and was targeted by Zionist billionaires, supporters of the Mamdani campaign gave the world their answer: No, it is not anti-Semitic to oppose Israel. And they showed that the anti-Semitism smear is not a “good look” for Democrats in a party that has become increasingly pro-Palestine over the course of the past two years.
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Public Financing Versus Billionaires
In September, New York’s Gov. Kathy Hochul emerged as one of the few establishment Democrats to dare to defy powerful party centrists and endorse Mamdani, whose main opponent during the party primary was her predecessor Andrew Cuomo. (In the last day of early voting on Sunday, Hochul was avidly campaigning beside Mamdani at a sports bar in Queens, The New York Times reported. Quite possibly, she was happy about Obama’s call too; they both looked very upbeat in the photos.)
Not too long ago, Cuomo was considered a viable Democratic presidential contender. But Cuomo disgraced himself. In addition to facing sex-harassment allegations, he lives under the heavy cloud of under-reporting Covid nursing home deaths.
After primary voters gave him the boot and overwhelmingly supported Mamdani, Cuomo chose to stay in the race, a scandal-damaged figure running as an independent favored by billionaires who want to sic him on Mamdani. They have been pouring millions into SuperPACs.
So how did Mamdani survive the billionaire barrage?
A big part of the answer is New York City’s public financing system. It matches small donations from voters up to certain limits; in Mamdani’s case it was just under $8 million. Mandani maxed out those limits in both the primary and general election campaign.
This is an example of how the biggest factor in Zohran’s ascent is NY’s publicly financed campaigns.
Without public financing, he wouldn’t have resources to finance these ads & reach voters.
Our piece for @thenation based on our new book MASTER PLAN: https://t.co/2RBLyJaqif https://t.co/HRZNR14g9v pic.twitter.com/JPvtQxp4xi
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) October 26, 2025
If people-powered campaigns want to battle the big bucks, they need to erect systems such as this. That’s the lesson that David Sirota underscores in a Nation magazine article. Sirota reports that “14 states and 26 localities of varying partisan complexion have set up public financing systems in their own elections.”
A candidate elsewhere, who tries to mount a campaign without this kind of financing aid, can easily get snuffed out. However promising, he or she may never have a chance of receiving a pep call, on the eve of an election, from a major national power broker about running a “good campaign.”
Corinna Barnard, deputy editor of Consortium News, formerly worked in editing capacities for Women’s eNews, The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. At the start of her career she was managing editor for the magazine Nuclear Times, which covered the 1980s anti-nuclear war movement.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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My dog retired , no longer peeing on that bush .
Now the neighbors lively mascot decides he rules the roost .
Lessons learned among old friends .
So I , old pal , do rise and guide , so wise , telling , in my most cockily rendu , lift your foot much higher , lest you wet the masters shoe ,
Mamdani’s program is “not* radical –it’s popular– and that’s what frightens the bosses. Robert Arnold gets it absolutely correctly!
$400,000 a speech. A $850,000,000 monolith being built in his name on what was public land. Hollywood Producer. The man who sold 45,000,000 Americans over to the insurance predators. “The public option is off the table.” Told the people who crashed the world that he was there to “protect them from the pitchforks,” then bailed them out with our money while millions of us were broken. Bomber, executioner, fraud. Guantanamo is still open.
When he ejected Jeremiah Wright at the beginning, I felt unease. I put it out of my mind as I wanted the Bush wars to stop. That was the first inkling of who Obama really was. Still, I excitedly voted for him the first time. Much less so the second time as I began to recognize my naïveté. By 2016 the betrayals were clear and the D party was dead to me. I say it again, people hate their betrayers more than their enemies. We stand to face our enemies together, and are run through from behind by assassins posing as allies. Assassins using weapons forged by our enemies through dollars, policies, and laws.
Obama shows his deep political pedigree when he refrains from openly endorsing Mamdani. With Democratic Party’s socialist credentials already running low in its true leftist constituency, Obama is wise not to risk diluting the future prospective big Blue Wave that is sure to take shape. But will Mamdani make any difference to the reconstituted fate of the true American left ? This only time will tell ! Be warned American elitist greed have a way of leaving through the front door only to burst back in through the back channel ! LOL !
Norman Solomon called it, “Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Trump.” No f/doubt about it, “a slick road combined with bad brakes and old tires lead [BHObama] to hydroplane and careen down the embankment.” Consequently, BHObama is Done & Dusted!
And, when “we” hear it from the other side, “C”- Complicity, USA; it’s a completely different vibe.
….. Damn, Gina! The last thing “we” needed, the first thing this morning, imo, is BHObama, “Biggie-$ized!” The 14”x 16” photo, imo, is what the Commander-N-$peech, an Assassin-N-Chief, a Community Organizer, a Constitutional Lawyer, a f/Fraud, looks like! No doubt about it, the big, fat f/zero, in the DNC’s bag of voodoo, is “O”for Obama; but, like DJ “The Big$hot” Trump, BHObama fosters blind loyalty. No worries, Obama’s-Trump’s Inc., h’ors de war willfully demonstrate blind loyalty to planet Earth’s *“Masters of War”.
In turn, the duopoly doubles-up, to double-down, “snuffing-out” a way to foster loyalty without it becoming blind loyalty. Basically, it’s black & white, nka “White Noise” past & present. “White noise is a good masking agent”. Concluding, “for the sake of the flowers, water the thorns, too.” Thoughts & prayers, eh? No thanks! The Party of Jackasses oughta know to “never compete w/the elephant in defecating.”
…. “One pill makes you larger; &, one pill makes you small; And the ones that [POTUS] gives you don’t do anything at all.
Go ask Alice. When she’s ten feet tall; And, if you go chasing rabbits & you know you’re going to fall. Tell ’em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call. He called Alice When she was just small.” White Rabbit
…. The “red pill” refers to a metaphorical choice between accepting a difficult truth about reality, “Taking the Red pill” OR remaining in blissful ignorance, “Taking the Blue pill”. “Go, ask, Alice.”
* hxxps://consortium-news.com/2025/10/23/corporate-democrats-paved-the-way-for-trump/
* “Masters of War,” Bob hxxps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JEmI_FT4YHU&list=RDJEmI_FT4YHU&start_radio=1
For the sake of actual democracy in America having any chance of actually being resuscitated, “a backstage Democratic Party boss” such as the likes of Obama and his erstwhile cohort, it is definitely time to butt out!
Democracy is far too crucial to let it fail, if WE – the majority, truly want to finally prevent its total radical systemic trajectory of collapse, already on the way for far too long now.
This means our choices must no longer be between “either or” of the least worse option!
Virginia Democrats presented only one choice in this election for Governor, a politician who is famous for saying “[The Democrats] need to stop talking about medicare for all. It’s making [people like me] who don’t support that look bad”.
In my effort to stave off pro-fascist candidates from ascending in the future, I wrote-in “None of the above” as my choice for Governor. If only that could result in neither candidate winning and new choices being offered up.
Troy Davis, an African-American, was executed in 2011.
Much of the campaign to save him arose from serious doubts that he was really guilty.
There is no evidence that President Obama did anything to save him. In fact, more concern about the case was expressed by some conservatives such as William Sessions and Bob Barr.
I would be very careful about dealing with Barack Obama.
Mamdani would have done well to tell Obama he had rung up the wrong man and they are working for different constituencies: Obama for the donors and the empire, Mamdani for the people of New York.
Obama has nothing to offer Mamdani other than that he will not see his political career destroyed unless he plays ball with the death machine. Mamdani’s correct response to that is, “I know that Boss. There was no need for you to come down here to tell me.”
Mamdani has the people of the City. True, the murdering, plundering establishment will kill him anyway, but can they kill everyone who lives in New York City? Gaza, yes, of course. But New York City?
Mamdani ran as a Dem. He’s a Dem Party politician. He HAS to listen to Obama.
We passed public financing of campaigns in Massachusetts years ago, but the Dems at the State House refused to fund it. This so called progressive blue state is corrupt to the core.
I wish Mamdani well, but I fear the party and Obama will make sure his socialist policies will never see the light of day. We really have to make a clean break with the duopoly and run third party candidates. This corporate racket needs to be destroyed.
The fact that he’s of and for the DSA means he’s already co-opted, fatally. The DSA is nothing more than an appendage of the Dem Party.
Yeah, sure, we can trust neolib Dems.
Who under Clinton made the world safe for multinationals through the WTO. Who also repealed New Deal financial regs thus enabling the Great Recession of ’07-’08. The response under Obama was to bail out the Wall St. vultures while the millions of us working class nobodies who lost jobs, pensions, houses got nothing. The already hurting Rust Belt became deaths of despair central–the D elite doesn’t care. No Wall Streeters were harmed by, you know, like answering for their outright fraud schemes. Nor was anything re-regulated to prevent the same from happening again. No wonder a recent poll of Rust Belt states PA, IL, WI, MI showed overwhelming support for a message of strong economic populism. Tellingly, there was more support if voiced by a hypothetical independent than if the candidate were a D. The trust issue…
Look at Chuck Schumer’s attitude. In 2016, he said: “For every blue collar Democrat we lose in western PA we pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia and you can repeat that in OH, and in IL,and in WI.” If the amorality of standing for nothing other than retaining power isn’t moving, consider how it’s losing strategy.
Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani dare to speak the truth to power. And they’re for us, the working class majority.
Bingo!
That photo epitomizes Obama’s fundamental attitude – probably towards all, but not towards his Fraternity of Very Fat Money and Power Cats.
Looking down that nose of his with a very smug smile. The more I learn about Obama, the more my antipathy
grows towards him. I hope and pray Mamdani’s instincts for smelling out a rat are finely honed.
As George Carlin said; “It’s a private club and we ain’t in it.”
Obama , keep out of my consciousness.
MS Barnard could well have left off the mention of Reason Magazine
It’s eye opening to read how their smug, circular “reasoning” about economics consists of assumptions with little, if any, empirical evidence yet dominate domestically and globally. An example: this econopathic dogma defines away devastation of human communities and entire ecosystems as irrelevant externalities. Never a word of criticism from the D elite.
It’s ruling class cultural hegemony as described in this post by Richard Moser.
“The main idea behind “cultural hegemony” is that, in any given historical period, the most popular and powerful ideas are those of the ruling class. They exert a kind of “full-spectrum dominance” on the collective mind. The ultimate struggle is not over fine points or policy or even voting, but the nature of political “reality” — because reality strongly influences what actions seem natural, practical, or possible. Ruling class ideas are so deeply embedded in everyone’s thinking that they appear as “common sense.” Our best response is to use history to reveal the constructed, transient, and contingent nature of the existing order, while simultaneously making new history through actions and alliances that build alternatives both in our minds and in our lives.”
“Reason Magazine, champion of “free markets, free minds,” questions why a failed ideology won’t die.”
Yes, I wonder that about capitalism too.
BTW, Cuomo didn’t just underreport nursing home COVID deaths. He made policy decisions that actively increased those deaths.
But as to Obama’s call, yes, it’s because Mamdani is winning. The Democrats’ attempt to sink his campaign didn’t work, so now they’re going to co-opt him. I don’t have great feelings about Mamdani’s ability to resist that co-opting.
Maybe sending a message to Mamdani would be a good idea. No?