That doesn't really address what I was wondering though. First of all, Bernie wasn't successfully elected, for all the reasons you pointed out. But as an already-elected mayor of one of the largest and most politically and economically significant cities in the US, Mamdani (or a hypothetical actual socialist) has a fair amount of potential power to accomplish good things already despite the media control.

expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize literally any inconvenience ain't that hard.

It's not as though they didn't try to do that with Mamdani already, because they tried to prevent his election using media control and failed. I realize they could ramp all that up, but he's already in there doing some good things with the OP being an example, and I think there could be room for a lot more that bourgeois media control alone wouldn't be able to prevent or squelch. And at some point, more drastic measures would have to be taken. I was just thinking about how far it could go before that happened, again despite media control. Don't get me wrong, I don't and never did think Mamdani would end up doing more than any typical socdem working within the capitalist structure, but I get very curious about where the potential lines are.