Boy does it feel good in New York City. On Tuesday night, just over 30 minutes after polls closed, Zohran Mamdani won the election to become the city’s next mayor. To do so, he overcame substantial political headwinds: The man who will be our first Muslim mayor was constantly tarred as an antisemite and, as too often seems to follow, was subject to an undercurrent of Islamophobic attacks about “sharia law” and “global jihad” throughout the race. Mamdani also faced the city’s ruling class of millionaires and billionaires, who engaged in some heartwarming class solidarity by spending tens of millions against him and vowing to flee the headquarters of global capital if he won, which perhaps motivated ordinary New Yorkers to turn out to support the mayor-elect. In other words, the New York assembly member stared down the ruling class and still won.

In a stunning turn of events, many of those high-class naysayers have come right back around to offer a helping hand in governing the city, effectively bending the knee to the man they cast as an existential threat.

Chiefest among these converts is billionaire hedge fund mogul Bill Ackman, who famously contributed nearly $2 million of his own money to efforts to kill Mamdani’s candidacy and warned on social media that the city would “become much more dangerous and economically unviable” after........

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