The Challenges Facing the Mamdani Administration

Summary

Podcast Summary: It Could Happen Here – "The Challenges Facing the Mamdani Administration"

Date: November 17, 2025
Host: Neil Wong (Cool Zone Media)
Episode Overview:
This episode of It Could Happen Here tackles the real-world challenges confronting newly elected New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani as he attempts to implement ambitious social democratic reforms. Host Neil Wong breaks down the major structural, financial, political, and institutional barriers Mamdani’s administration faces, from Wall Street’s power over city finances to state and federal resistance, economic contradictions, and the reactionary threat of the NYPD. The underlying message is one of both caution and motivation: winning an election is only the beginning—continued organizing and activism are crucial to realizing lasting change.

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Main Theme & Purpose

Neil Wong seeks to ground listeners in the harsh realities of urban progressive governance. The episode moves from theory to practice: what happens after you elect a left-wing mayor? Why can't transformative policies simply be enacted? How do entrenched structures—from the bond market to the police—throttle change, and how can supporters counter these forces through ongoing pressure and organizing?

"The conclusion of this episode is not to say that these things are impossible...but it’s to remind people that the way that actual politics works, electing one person does not immediately make everything better." - Neil Wong (04:18)

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Financial Constraints: The Bond Market and City Funding

[04:40 - 13:50]

• U.S. Cities’ Fiscal Limits:
  Cities do not control their own currency—unlike national governments, they must fund large initiatives by borrowing from Wall Street through bonds, which exposes them to market whims.
• Bond Market Dependency:
  To pay for major public programs (e.g., free public transit), city statutes require mayors to issue municipal bonds—IOUs sold to investors, repaid with interest. Banks, lawyers, and financial consultants capture a cut, diverting resources from programs.
• Structural Leverage of Banks:
  If capital holders dislike a mayor's agenda, they can refuse to purchase city bonds, stalling initiatives and gutting core services (with Detroit and New York in the ‘70s as cautionary tales).
• Federal Government Unavailable:
  In the current context, with President Trump in office, federal funds are especially unlikely for progressive programs.
• Limits of Taxation:
  Even if Mamdani raises taxes, much revenue is pre-committed to debt servicing, leaving little for new programs.

"For funding significant portions of anything you want to do as mayor, you are legally required to go through the bond market... forced to beg for money from Wall Street investment banks." - Neil Wong (06:02)

"The banks and investors can simply not buy your bonds if they don’t like what you’re trying to do." - Neil Wong (09:28)

Memorable Story:

Wong references the 1975 NYC financial crisis: banks refused to buy city bonds, and President Ford famously told the city to "drop dead." Without buyers, services collapsed until austerity measures dismantled the city’s welfare state.
[09:35 - 11:45]

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2. State-level Political Resistance

[17:38 - 22:50]

• State Democratic Party Dynamics:
  The NYS Democratic Party is conservative, often enabling Republicans to block progressive initiatives.
• Reluctance to Tax & Spend:
  Governor Hochul’s response to making buses free:

  "I cannot set forth a plan right now that takes money out of a system that relies on fares... But can we find a path to make it more affordable for people who need help? Yes." – Kathy Hochul (18:40)

• Childcare “Slow-walking”:
  Hochul supports expanding universal childcare “in phases,” due to high cost—she’s wary of spending reserves, preferring incrementalism.
• Organizational Implications:
  Wong notes that unless mass mobilization compels state leadership, substantial reforms will be delayed or watered down with means-testing and bureaucracy.

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3. Capitalism’s Structural Constraints

[22:50 - 25:35]

• Growth Mandate and Class Conflict:
  As mayor, Mamdani is tasked with “making the economy run”—typically defined as ensuring corporations’ profits grow annually, a metric in conflict with redistributive policies.
• Redistribution vs. Investment:
  Arguments that redistribution can spur growth hold water, but overwhelming inequality (where "50% of all consumer spending is happening from 5% of the population") makes the current imbalance unsustainable.
• International Lesson:
  Wong refers to former Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley, whose radical agenda was scuttled by capital flight and IMF-imposed austerity, showing dangers when finance breaks with left governments.
• Organizational Solution:
  Only sustained, large-scale popular movements can push through resistance from capital.

"If you’re the mayor of New York City, your job is to make capital more money... This is a structural constraint that every social democratic government has faced." - Neil Wong (23:45)

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4. The Police: Reactionary Institutional Power

[25:35 - 28:30]

• The NYPD as Political Actor:
  The police, often ideologically far to the right, are an “autonomous fascist force” whose loyalty is required for the state to function.
• Threat to Reformers:
  Even center-left mayors (like de Blasio) faced open hostility—Wong recounts how they kidnapped de Blasio’s daughter during protests as a barely veiled threat.
• Tactical Obstacles:
  The police may riot (as in 1992), use media to attack reforms, or directly disrupt the mayor’s agenda.
• Mass Mobilization as Deterrence:
  Only a powerful, organized public can contain police overreach and force accountability.

"Without the violence of the police, laws are just suggestions…Your power depends on the loyalty of a bunch of Nazis." – Neil Wong (26:15)

"They kidnapped the mayor's daughter during a protest movement. And that was Bill de Blasio, who was not some kind of wild anti police radical." – Neil Wong (27:30)

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5. Final Takeaway: Organizing is Essential

[28:30 - 29:39]

• Winning Office is Only the Start:
  No single election delivers justice or equity—concerted organizing is needed to overcome structural blockades at every level.
• Popular Pressure Works:
  From congestion pricing victories to more ambitious goals, sustained collective action can force hesitant politicians and unaccountable institutions to change course.
• Hopeful Call to Action:

  "None of this also means that the things that he wants to do to make people's lives better are impossible. Every single one of these problems are problems that you can defeat by organizing." – Neil Wong (28:50)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On the long-haul work of change:

  "If you actually want to see the things that you organized to happen by electing this person, you have to organize even harder once they are in power." – Neil Wong (04:33)

• On the bond market’s chokehold:

  “Banks and investors can simply not buy your bonds if they don’t like what you’re trying to do. And at that point, very little can be done to oppose them.” – Neil Wong (09:28)

• On structural conflict:

  "In order for there to be capitalist economic growth, those people [corporations] have to keep making more money every year... their profit comes directly from our exploitation." – Neil Wong (23:49)

• On police opposition:

  "The cops are the most consistently right wing group in the entire country. They are a bunch of racist shitheads... your power depends on the loyalty of a bunch of Nazis." – Neil Wong (26:15)

• On organizing:

  "Their victory is not inevitable. They can be defeated... But, you know, that’s not impossible. We know how to organize. We’ve been doing it for ages." – Neil Wong (29:18)

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Important Timestamps

• [03:03] – Episode introduction; challenges for the Mamdani administration outlined
• [04:40 - 13:50] – Deep dive into municipal finance, the bond market, and city constraints
• [17:38 - 22:50] – State governmental resistance and dynamics with Governor Hochul
• [22:50 - 25:35] – The contradictions of governing within capitalism
• [25:35 - 28:30] – Police as an existential threat to left-wing governance
• [28:30 - 29:39] – Final reflections and call to continued action

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Conclusion

The Challenges Facing the Mamdani Administration offers a sobering yet empowering look at what it takes to win lasting change beyond electoral victories. Wong systematically exposes the hidden power structures—financial markets, conservative state politics, profit-driven growth mandates, and the emboldened police—that conspire to frustrate progressive mayors. Yet, the episode maintains a fundamentally hopeful tone: these obstacles can be overcome, but only through unrelenting, collective organization. "Our jobs have just begun," Wong urges; the fight for a better world is built together, step by step.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it.

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Five, six white people pushed me in the car.

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Basically your stay at home moms were.

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Picking up these large amounts of heroin. All you gotta do is receive the package. Don't have to open it, just accept it. She was very upset, crying Once I saw the gun, I tried to take.

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His hand and I saw the flash of light. Listen to the Chinatown sting on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts. Cool Zone Media.

[B]

Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and how to put them back together again. I am your host, Neil Wong. So a week ago, we did some episodes about the election of Zoran Mamdani and a lot of the very funny reactions to it. And, you know, on Executive Disorder, we've talked about what this sort of means for politics. But now I want to do a slightly different kind of episode, which is looking at the challenges that Mondamini is going to face, attempting to implement his agenda, attempting to stay mayor, just taking him very seriously at his word, in his attempt to, you know, make the cost of living lower and make people's lives better. And there are unfortunately, very significant challenges to this agenda. And those challenges are a mix of structural problems and, I don't know, the President of the United States. Right. We're going to focus on a few of them today. And before we really start this, I think I want to start this to some extent with the conclusion. And the conclusion of this episode is not to say that these things are impossible. Right. And to not say they can't be done, but it's to remind people that the way that actual politics works, electing one person does not immediately make everything better. Right? You can't stop organizing because someone has been elected. And in fact, if you actually want to see the things that you organized to happen by electing this person, you have to organize even harder once they are in power and mobilize even more to allow the things that you fought for to actually happen. Because there are significant opposition to anything getting better for anyone in this country. And that opposition is powerful, well funded, well organized and structural. And also, as we saw with the election of Aoudani in the first place, it can be defeated. So we're going to start with the bond market. Now, many of you may be asking bia, what does the bond market have to do with make buses free? And to do that, we need to talk about funding mechanisms. So most plans in the US for sort of social democratic policy, for how you implement welfare state policies, how you implement policies that make people's lives better, tend to start from the federal government and the national level, Right? And there are very obvious reasons for this. Unlike the federal government, city governments don't issue their own currency, which means the modern monetary theory, things that you would normally use to fund welfare programs with at a national level don't work. The federal government, again, has control of its own debt and money supply. City governments Don't. That means the city governments. If you want to find money to do something, you have to find that from somewhere. And as wonderful as it would be if you could simply do that by just, okay, we raise taxes and the taxes go to the policy that we want to implement, that's not how the system actually works. The way the system works, if you want to pay for things at a city level, is the bond market. David I. Backer has a very good piece about this, the Bachelor, that I deeply recommend people read. The main thing that's important here for our purposes is that for funding significant portions of anything that you want to do as mayor, you are legally required to go through the bond market. And this means that the city is forced to beg for money from Wall street investment banks and then also pay those same banks exorbitant fees and interest. And a significant amount of money has to go to, as Backer points out, a whole bunch of, you know, lawyers and finance people and consultants and all of these, you know, sort of mafia of finance schools who are standing in between the normal mechanism of you have money and you pay for things. And that's assuming, again, that you even have the money in the first place, which you quite often don't. Because cities are very, very often cash strapped. As Backer points out, using these bond mechanisms to pay for programs is legally required. Now, Backer is mostly focused on the structural constraints created by servicing debt, which can consume increasing portions of a city's budget until, you know, there's nothing left. This is sort of what's happened to Detroit to a large extent. And also the bank's direct control over the payment mechanism, even when the city government brings in tax money, right? So even if you raise taxes and you bring in money because you have to go through the bond market, it means that a bunch of that money is going to be funneled into servicing debt and paying interest on debt. But there's also a secondary problem here, which is that in very extreme cases, and I'm not saying we are immediately facing this, but I want to put this on the table as something that if you are attempting to run a social democratic program in a city, you do need to be significantly worried about. The bank's direct control over payment mechanisms means that the banks, you know, the people who buy the bonds that you need to use to get to fund these things. So let's actually take a step back here and explain what a bond is. Right? A bond is basically you selling a piece of paper that is debt. So you go into the market and you sell, sell a bank a bond and they give you a bunch of money right now. And at the expiration of the bond, you pay that money back plus interest. This is how you have to fund things, because that is what's legally required. And also because cities need a way to get extremely large amounts of money. But this also means that cities that, you know, banks and investors can simply not buy your bonds if they don't like what you're trying to do. And at that point, very little can be done to oppose them. The most dramatic version of this problem came during the New York City bond crisis in 1975 where New York City had to sell a bunch of bonds. It was significantly in debt. And there's a very famous scene in, I think it's in hypernormalization. There's film of these city government officials who are sitting in this room waiting for the banks, people for the banks to show up to buy the bonds. And no one shows up. So suddenly they don't have any money. And then President Ford at the time tells the city to eat shit and die and refuses to buy any of New York City's bonds, refuses to give them any money. And this leaves the city bankrupt, right? It gets to a point where they have fired the teachers. There's no one to collect garbage because they literally don't have money to pay anyone because no one will buy their bonds. And eventually this crisis is sort of mitigated. But the problem is that, you know, the, the task force that was set up to mitigate this right to like, you know, get there to be people buying New York City bonds again, those people were able to come in and New York City had a functional welfare state, right? Had a sort of mini social democratic welfare state. And in order to reopen the government and have schools and garbage collection again, in order to get that money, the city was required to dismantle it. And, you know, the financial situation of New York is obviously significantly better than it was then, right? And the odds of having this kind of just full on macro scale crisis is not as high as it was then. But because of the fact that this is the legally mandated way that you have to do these payments. And because unlike the federal government, there are constraints on spending that in some ways function like needing foreign exchange currency. You know, you can't just issue this money. You have to get it from somewhere. And because the somewhere's usually the banks, it means that you have to constantly negotiate with the banks and with capital in order to keep the city's lights on. And this is a constant threat that they have sort of, you know, hanging over the head of anyone who wants to be governor. And as Backer points out, you can't even just tax your way out of the problem because payment structures for government projects work out of the bond system so that money just goes to debt payments. And you know, one of the other things that Backer points out, and obviously the situation in Chicago is different than the situation in New York, but the Chicago Teachers Union did elect a mayor who was, you know, their guy, right? The Chicago Teachers Union spent a significant amount of money and resources and effort getting their guy elected. And once he came into office, he basically ended up doing the same thing in their negotiations with the teachers union that the previous administrations had done. And the reason that happened, you know, and the reason that you started to see cuts to school services that were not supposed to happen, but did anyways, was because the bond market stepped in and said, this is what's necessary in order to do this. And they have that kind of power. Now, obviously Chicago was in a worse financial situation than New York is. Mom Domini is significantly further left than Brandon Johnson is. But these are real constraints. And the social democratic solution to this has always been to get money from the federal governments. But the federal government won't give money out to the things that it's legally required to give money out to right now because obviously it is run by one Donald Trump. And obviously Trump in and of himself is a significant problem to doing this right. There's always a chance that Trump will see something like mean about Mamdani on Fox News and decide to send the National Guard to New York or something. And you know, he will probably continue immigration raids. He can, you know, just fuck with people's ability to get Medicaid payments, which is a really significant issue. There will continue to be lots of creative and terrible things in the federal government can and will do to this administration that will have to be fought and can be defeated, but will have to be organized and fought against. But for our purposes right now, the big issue here is that you can't get money out of the federal government. So, okay, where are you getting money out of then? And the answer is the state government. Now, do you know what else gets money out of state governments? Probably not these products and services. I don't know. Who knows? Who knows?

[A]

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Daddy's looking good.

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Each week I invite someone fascinating to join me.

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Actors, musicians, creatives, highly evolved digital life forms.

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And we talk about what they love.

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Sometimes I'll driz a little honey in there too if I'm feeling sexy in the morning.

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Like when a kid says bra to.

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Hey, he's no Trey McDougal. Chill. This is like the comments section of my Instagram.

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Join me and my delightful guests every Thursday and let's get weird together in a good way. Listen to what are We Even doing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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We are back. So, okay, let's talk about the state government now. Again, this is even Even with a city the size of New York, there still is always significant negotiations in order to do things in that require the aid of the state level government. And part of the problem here is that the New York State Democratic Party is significantly responsible for the Republicans control of the House, particularly in the 2022 cycle. There's a whole long story here about how a bunch of the Democrats wanted to form this sort of moderate caucus thing where this sort of independent caucus that would caucus with the Republicans in order to give the Republicans the ability to stop any sort of liberal or left wing thing from happening in the state governments and handed a whole bunch of seats over to the Republicans because of it. But just, you know, setting all of that aside, the place that you can get money from would be from the governor's office. Unfortunately, that's a significant problem. So here's Hochul's response to Mamdami's plan to make buses free. Quote, I cannot set forth a plan right now that takes money out of a system that relies on fares of the buses and the subways. But can we find a path to make it more affordable for people who need help? Yes, of course we can. So Hochschul does not want to raise taxes. Any proposal that would involve raising taxes probably has to run through New York City's City Council and thus through her. I'm going to quote this from Spectrum News about Mondame's proposal to expand universal childcare. Hochul said she's also looking at expanding A universal child care program statewide, but the total price tag is $15 billion. Childcare, I already committed to, she said, I'm committed to this as a mom governor. I get it. But also to do it Statewide, it's about $15 billion, the entire amount of my reserves. Hochschule says she prefers to phase an expansion first within certain age groups in geographically underserved communities. So, okay, what is happening here in a macro sense is that Hochul is trying to slow roll both of these things. She is outright opposed to making buses free. She wants to do weird means testing Stu that will make it very difficult to do an extremely annoying bureaucratic layer meant to deny people services that you have to do instead of just having them be free. The child care thing she probably does want to do, but again, because she is not a Democratic socialist, because she is a regular Democrat, she wants to do it slowly, expanded through a whole bunch of phases and taking a whole bunch of time. And this is a pretty significant problem because, you know, at every step of this, not only are you going to have to be negotiating with the banking system, you're going to have to be negotiating with the statewide Democratic Party. And the statewide Democratic Party is fairly conservative. Hochschule's not as conservative. And she can be sort of dragged kicking and screaming into good policies like what happened with congestion pricing. And if something works and is really popular, after you do it, you will sign on to it. But it's a significant hurdle that you have to deal with. I want to move from this into a kind of related problem that's a more structural constraint on Rami's time in office, which is that he is now in charge of running a capitalist economy. When you take a position in a capitalist government, it is now your job to make the economy run. And. And that means maintaining economic growth. But, okay, what does economic growth actually mean in a capitalist economy? It means that corporations make more money than they did the year before. And this is a structural problem for all of us because we all have interests that are diametrically opposed to corporations making more money every year because their profit comes directly from our exploitation. Right. We have fundamentally opposed interests from the corporations and the capitalists and the billionaires. But in order for there to be capitalist economic growth, those people have to keep making more money every year. And obviously, you can make arguments about how redistribution enhances economic growth by creating a larger consumer base, and that's obviously true. We're in a extremely deformed economy right now, where, as I keep saying on this show, 50% of all consumer spending is happening from 5% of the population, which is just a completely unsustainable way to run an economy and is also absolutely miserable for every single other person who's in that bottom 95%. And you know, there are things that you can do to some extent, right? But at some point you are going to have to choose between workers and capital. And if you're the mayor of New York City, your job is to make capital more money. And this is a structural constraint that every social democratic government has faced. And it's worth noting that we are not in a world that is surrounded by social democratic governments. And part of the reason why, again, is that they, they need the economy to keep growing and that they're reliant on finance institutions to make money. And the most grim versions of this tend to happen at a sort of national scale. But if you look at morally in Jamaica in the 70s, where you have a democratic socialist who gets elected and is running Jamaica and then has to implement austerity because the country runs out of and the IMF comes in, these things can get really bleak. Now they don't have to, right? Sufficiently well organized populations can force the hand of capital to do things that they don't want to do. Significantly well organized populations can start trying to fundamentally redistribute economic power. But it's difficult. And the difficulty is magnified by the third really massive constraint. And that constraint is the police. One of the other big structural problems that comes with running a state is that it relies on armed men to enforce the laws. And those men, especially in the United States, are at best one step removed from straight up neo Nazis. A lot of them straight up are neo Nazis. The cops are the most consistently right wing group in the entire country. They are a bunch of racist shitheads who exist to perpetuate right supremacy and protect capital. And they're also again, a fundamental organizational unit of the state, right? Without the violence of the police. Laws are just suggestions. And if you're going to run a capitalist government, if you're going to run 1 In the US you have to deal with the fact that your power depends on the loyalty of a bunch of Nazis. And these people will riot if you attempt to do oversight of them. They very famously did this in 1992. They had this whole giant riot, right? They had the thing that was supposed to be a protest rally where they all went on strike. And then the cops who were supposed to be policing the protest obviously didn't do anything because again, they're also cops. And in 1992, I did this for a really, really, really minor oversight. Tempted oversight, right? And obviously they actually didn't win that direct fight, but they were able to cause enough of a political shitstorm that they were able to force the last sort of like vaguely social Democratic mayor out of power and install like Rudy Giuliani, who is a weird face, melty dipshit, right, who's an incredible tough on crime right winger. And obviously Mamdani has been trying to kind of trying to do his best to negotiate with the police and not overtly threaten them, but that kind of doesn't matter because they just hate him. Like, they think that a Muslim socialist is just inherently an illegitimate person and they think that anyone who's even vaguely liberal is someone who is their enemy and who is their target. And we have seen them take actions to just directly threaten mayors. Fairly recently, right? In 2020, they kidnapped Bill de Blasio's daughter at a protest and then sort of like paraded her mugshot around and posted it everywhere and did this whole big show of how they were holding her. To say it was a thinly veiled threat is a dramatic understatement of how incredibly, incredibly blatant this threat was. Right. They kidnapped the mayor's daughter during a protest movement. And that was Bill de Blasio, who was not some kind of like wild anti police radical. Right? And especially now as sort of fascism is on the march and we're with the backing of the US Federal government, right, the police form a very significant threat to Mondami's ability to do anything, both on a sort of political level. They are going to be constantly, you know, putting out giant press releases about how Mamdami is like, turn the city into an unlivable hellhole and how they can't do their jobs, et cetera, et cetera. And also just in terms of just directly threatening him and trying to influence his policy, they're going to be a real problem. And his ability to prevent them from, for example, smashing in the skulls of pro Palestine protesters, even if he wants to, was going to be very limited because the police have become a kind of semi autonomous fascist force in this country. They have always been a ticking time bomb on status democracy. And that clock is closing in on zero in this sort of moment of ascended fascism. Now, again, I want to close this by saying these are not all the challenges that he's going to face. But, comma, none of this also means that the things that he wants to do to make People's lives better are impossible. Every single one of these problems are problems that you can defeat by organizing, right? You can put enough pressure on capital to prevent them from doing a kind of capital strike or a bond strike to force them to continue to fund things, right? With enough public pressure, you can make a whole lot of things happen. You can make the police, you know, at the very least, be acting on a kind of defensive front to where they're not, you know, rioting and trying to run city politics, but are kind of forced by mass popular mobilization and pressure to, at the very least, not be openly attacking the mayor. You can put massive political pressure on Kathy Hochul to, you know, do things that are good, which. Which is how we got. How New York got congestion pricing in the first place, right? Like, that was. That was a result of a massive, like, organizational campaign that went extremely well. And Hushel tried to sabotage it because she thought it would be unpopular, and eventually it got implemented, and it's really popular now, and now she's really in favor of it. So these people can be pushed around, right? They are not invincible. Their victory is not inevitable. They can be defeated, and they can be forced to accept that, oh, wait, hold on. The extremely sensible policies that we want that make our lives better are good, and that requires mobilization. But, you know, that's not impossible. We know how to organize. We've been doing it for ages. And it was, you know, what had to happen to make all of this possible in the first place. And so instead of demobilizing now and going, oh, our jobs are done. It's, no, no, no, no, no. Our job. Our jobs have just begun. But, you know, the better organized we are, and the more we're able to push this and the more we're able to push all of these people, the better our lives will get. And this election, to begin with is a reminder that another world is possible, and it could be better than this one. We just have to build it together. It Could Happen.

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