The article ends with

This is not the arrangement of a free society. This is the stuff of kings and feudal lords ruling over serfs. It is not befitting a democracy. And for a country so devoted to the principle of freedom and so proud of our history of rejecting illegitimate monarchical authority, we should be pissed off about it. Americans shouldn’t have to grovel pathetically before oligarchs to prevent them from nuking our economy as punishment for trying to attain an infinitesimal fraction of the privilege they enjoy — privileges which, of course, are already more lopsidedly distributed to the wealthy than ever.

If he wins the general election, Madani will have to proceed carefully, calling the wealthy’s bluff enough to pass meaningful reforms without setting into motion a devastating process in which those bluffs become reality. The rest of us, though, should be clear about one thing: what we’re seeing now is a tiny minority trying to hold an entire city — an entire society — hostage to its own interests, using its structural leverage in the economy to undermine the democratic will of ordinary people.

Surely there’s a better economic and political system than one where we have to coddle these villains every time we want to raise the standard of living for the majority. We don’t have to put up with this.

Imo. they aren’t buckling to it. The article points out that under the current system it is a real threat to the politician Mamdani. So it is up to the people to back him up in pushing for meaningful change as well as put the pressure for real change to the corrupted system.