Beyond the Machinery of Betrayal

Zohran Mamdani’s improbable rise—from barely registering in the polls to winning a primary against all odds—has been called a miracle. A Muslim, unapologetically left, and unafraid to speak plainly about the Gaza genocide, Mamdani triumphed despite doing everything the political establishment insists is disqualifying. Against every expectation, he closed a thirty-point gap and prevailed.

And yet, as the establishment begins to circle around him, many on the left who have supported his anti-establishment insurgency feel the familiar sting of suspicion. We remember how Sanders faltered, how Warren splintered the movement, how Obama cut deals that weakened the base, how AOC voted for financing Israel’s Iron Dome even in the context of an unfolding genocide. Each disappointment reinforces the conviction that betrayal is inevitable. And the truth is that it is inevitable—not because politicians are uniquely weak or uniquely corrupt but because of the way our politics is currently structured.

Every politician in our political system today is an individual actor with agency. That agency means choice, and choice means divergence. No matter how aligned a representative may be with our values, at some point, inevitably, they will cast a vote, strike a compromise, or make a calculation that cuts against what we wanted. We don’t forget those moments. We sear them into memory, and we label them betrayal. That is why bitterness has become the permanent backdrop of our politics. We live in a cycle of disappointment, not because individuals are especially flawed but because the system compels them to decide in our name and inevitably at times against our will.

This reality explains the cynicism that so pervades political life. We assume every handshake is a sellout, every meeting a concession, every alliance a slippery slope. Cynicism becomes the armor we wear to shield ourselves from disappointment. But in wearing it so tightly, we often turn it inward, sabotaging our own efforts before they can bear fruit. History is littered with examples of this pattern.

In 1968, after Lyndon Johnson stepped aside, the anti-war movement had a chance to consolidate around Eugene McCarthy or Robert Kennedy. Instead, activists tore into one another over ideological purity and strategy. By the time Kennedy was assassinated and the Democratic convention imploded in Chicago, the movement had fractured, handing Richard Nixon the presidency and prolonging the Vietnam War. Occupy Wall Street, too, began with clarity—“We are the 99%”—and electrified millions. But because it refused to channel that energy into lasting political structures, it splintered into debates and purity contests, made vulnerable to infiltration but undone mostly by its own refusal to resist suspicion and build resilience. Even the Sanders campaigns carry this lesson. In 2016 and again in 2020, parts of the left turned their fury not just against the party that rigged the process but against each other. That self-directed suspicion made retreat easier and defeat more certain.

The common thread is not simply betrayal by leaders but the inevitability of betrayal in a system built on agency. Every representative, no matter how sincere, will eventually diverge from the people they represent. When they do, we feel betrayed. When the betrayals accumulate, cynicism calcifies. And when cynicism dominates, movements collapse under the weight of their own mistrust.

But what if betrayal were no longer built into the system? What if votes in Congress were not the product of a single arbiter’s judgment but the direct reflection of citizen majorities? In such a system, a representative would not be an agent with discretion but a conduit. No calculation, no triangulation, no deal-making—only the tallying of where the people stand. The majority asserted its will, and that would be the end of the story. In such a system, the notion that one is betrayed by their representative because they cast a vote that was not to their liking would make no sense. The majority’s will was asserted, and that is the end of that. The representative had no say in the matter.

In other words, betrayal—in the sense we know it today—would simply vanish, because there would be nothing to betray. And with it, cynicism would dissolve too. The suspicion that shadows every alliance and every strategic decision would lose its grounding. If power were tethered directly to majorities, the old vocabulary of compromise and betrayal and backstabbing would be emptied of meaning. In such a politics, today’s cynicism would evaporate.

For now, of course, we do not live in such a world. Mamdani, like every politician, must still navigate terrain full of allies and adversaries, where betrayal remains not just possible but mathematically certain. That does not mean we abandon him or retreat into isolation. To refuse to engage with figures like Obama or Warren, or to close doors out of fear of contamination, would not be principled but paralysis. Power is never won by refusing to step onto the field. It is won by entering it with clear eyes, recognizing that betrayal is baked into the structure, and still pushing forward.

The task before us, then, is twofold. First, to tactically resist the temptation to sabotage ourselves with reflexive cynicism—to recognize that suspicion alone cannot be the foundation of a movement. Second, to keep alive the strategic vision of a politics beyond betrayal, where representatives no longer act as free agents but as direct reflections of the people they serve. That vision is not naïve. It is the only way to imagine a politics in which cycles of bitterness and disappointment do not consume us.

Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.