In the wake of New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary in June, there was some doubt as to whether a party that still aspired to represent mainstream voters would rally behind a man who was not only a Socialist but an anti-Zionist. Eight weeks later, not only is it clear that there will be no movement on the part of national or even statewide Democrats to disassociate themselves from his candidacy, but that his position on Israel may well be closer to the mainstream of Democratic officeholders, and perhaps, many voters than his critics think.

The confirmation that Mamdani was not going to be isolated within his party was delivered last week in a column by New York Times political columnist Mara Gay when she broke the news that former President Barack Obama had called the 33-year-old mayoral candidate to offer him encouragement and advice. She reported that other key members of Obamaworld, like political guru David Axelrod, speechwriter Jon Favreau, and political advisor and podcaster Dan Pfeiffer, have also been communicating with top Mamdani advisers. She quoted Axelrod as comparing the Mamdani campaign to the “familiar spirit” of “determined, upbeat optimism” that was needed to inspire the country and relate to working people in Obama’s campaigns.

Leave aside the fact that the Mamdani campaign has little appeal to working-class Americans, who, as last year’s election results showed, increasingly look to President Donald Trump and the Republicans to represent their interests rather than progressives, who reject their values, and favor globalist economics and illegal immigration. As writer Armin Rosen recently noted in Tablet, the enthusiasm for the Democratic Socialist comes largely from white upper-middle-class or wealthy elites who, insulated from the real world, have bought into the economic and woke social fantasies of the left.