Nithya Raman and Zohran Mamdani are both socialists — but there’s a key difference

Karl Marx said that history repeats twice: “[T]he first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

Marx was describing the 1848 revolution in France, but he may as well have been describing the socialist campaign of Nithya Raman in Los Angeles. 

Raman leads incumbent Karen Bass in the latest polls for LA mayor. If that lead holds, she will achieve the second major socialist victory since Zohran Mamdani in New York last November. 

Both share the same radical policies and have the same core constituency of disaffected elites. Both went to top colleges; both are immigrants of Indian origin; both chose a far-left path. 

But while Mamdani has leadership qualities that allow him to drive his agenda forward, Raman is a weak leader who lacks charisma and vision.

Mamdani has the persuasive skills to create an illusion of success; Raman is singularly uninspiring, both on social media and on the stump.

Mamdani was a state legislator who built his profile behind a bullhorn, as a rabble-rouser in the antisemitic street protests that erupted after the Oct. 7 terror attacks. He mobilized the “trustafarian” activists who have disrupted New York City politics since the Occupy Wall Street movement, and joined them with a growing constituency of immigrant voters, especially from the Muslim community, which (ironically) has expanded rapidly since the 9/11 terror attacks.

Raman, in contrast, is a city councilwoman who began her career in LA as a policy wonk. She focused on homelessness — to no great effect, as it has increased since she arrived in LA over a decade ago. She has a self-effacing persona that is unusual in big-city politics, and perhaps unsuited to it. 

Her main skill appears to be timing: She rode the Black Lives Matter protests to victory over incumbent David Ryu in 2020, and is now taking advantage of Mayor Bass’ deep unpopularity.

But unlike Mamdani, and unlike Bass, the councilwoman struggles with coalition politics. Her core supporters remain the hipsters of Silver Lake and the city’s permanent left-wing activists.

Raman owes her surprise second-place primary finish to organizational discipline, not to broad appeal. Her council district includes the middle-class homeowners of Sherman Oaks, who could barely contain their frustration with her when they hosted a mayoral debate in August.

Another example: Mamdani is widely considered to be an antisemite. He is obsessed with hating Israel; it is the cause that motivates everything he does, the one issue on which he cannot even force a smile. Yet he reaches out to visibly religious Hasidic Jews, some of whom are indifferent to Israel, and launched a plan to fight antisemitism, which gained attention, fatally flawed though it may be.

Raman, in contrast, barely visited places like Pacific Palisades until she was running for mayor. She presented a credible plan for rebuilding, but hardly anyone noticed.

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It is too early to say whether Mamdani has governing skill to match his other political skills. But he is already the leader of a movement. He endorsed several anti-Israel radicals in Democratic primaries in New York City, and ousted several incumbents. Candidates across the country are copying his style. They barely flinch when he targets rich investors, or frightens thousands of homeowners by publishing their addresses. In fact, Democrats seem to be enjoying the show.

Raman, by contrast, barely won the endorsement of her own socialist organization. The local Democratic Socialists of America (DSA-LA) threw a tantrum when she pointed out that Measure ULA — the so-called “mansion tax” — was discouraging developers from building new apartments. (It turns out that taxing the rich doesn’t create housing for the poor; it just means less housing for everybody.)

Those ties were mended. But she’s their follower, not their leader. And she refuses to state whether she agrees with the DSA’s radical policies. Like gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, she avoids substantive debates.

When The California Post asked her specific yes-or-no questions, based on the DSA’s own manifesto, she refused to answer.

These included questions such as: “Does she support using eminent domain to move privately owned housing into public or community ownership? Reducing the number of sworn police officers? Decriminalizing drug use? Noncitizen voting? City-owned businesses?”

No response. She knows a “yes” will alienate voters, and a “no” will irritate the DSA. She lacks the courage, and the strength, to lead.

The tragedy of Mamdani’s rise in New York City is that he is undoing reforms that turned the city around in the 1990s. He is also threatening entrenched ethnic communities, especially Jews, who now experience their beloved city as a hostile place.

Mamdani has been protected thus far from the consequences by the fact that Trump’s border policies (which he opposes) have lowered crime and ended the migrant wave that flooded the city. But none of it will end well.

The farce of Raman’s candidacy is that her socialist revolution is simply the status quo with a more explicit label. She isn’t proposing much different from what Bass, a Cuban communist-adjacent leftist, has done; she just promises to do it with greater “urgency.”

Perhaps her wonkish instincts will prevail, and Raman will govern as a pragmatist. But she lacks the ability to push back against her radical left-wing base. 

If she wins, expect more of the same in LA. Only worse.

Joel Pollak is Opinion editor of The California Post.