What Mamdani Proved About Power, Policy & Populism—What a Winning Dem Looks Like Terrifies The Party

Are Democrats Are Out of Excuses As Progressives Show They're Done Playing Nice?

Former Obama hand, Dan Pfeiffer, has 5 lessons every Democrat running for office needs to learn from Mamdani’s big win last week. And they need to learn those lessons fast… before it’s too late. “While many younger, more progressive Democrats cheered Mamdani’s win, much of the Democratic establishment began to panic about the political ramifications of electing a Democratic Socialist with Mamdani’s positions, record, and past statements… The top two Democratic leaders in Congress, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, both New Yorkers, declined to endorse Mamdani even as they applauded his victory... I believe there are lessons in his win for every Democrat running for office in every part of the country— from places as blue as New York City to as red as rural West Virginia.” Every candidate needs to grok these points:

• Never stop communicating— adopt an “Everything, Everywhere All at Once” media strategy. The gist of it is that politics is now a war for attention, and if you want to get your message out, you have to always be communicating. Do everything, go everywhere. Never stop.

• Simple, Memorable Policies That Communicate Your Values— Those who say Mamdani won because of his charisma and cool TikToks are oversimplifying the matter. He had a great message, and the message was built on a very compelling policy platform: a rent freeze, a pilot program of city-run grocery stores in food deserts, free buses, higher taxes on the rich to pay for it.

• Focus on the cost of living— The cost of living is the issue of our time. The costs of housing, healthcare, and education have been rising faster than wages for a very long time, but the post-pandemic inflation-driven spike in groceries and other consumer goods has compounded this crisis.

• Insider vs outside, not left vs right— Mamdani ran a proudly progressive campaign. He didn’t try to sand down the edges of his policy proposals or his ideology. He ran as a proud Democratic Socialist, but he also won a lot of more moderate voters—people who never would have previously considered voting for a Democratic Socialist… Zohran Mamdani was also an outsider running against a broken, corrupt political system.

• Running to win vs running not to lose— Mamdani was totally unafraid of losing. Too many Democrats—and this is one of my criticisms of Kamala Harris’s otherwise valiant campaign under very challenging circumstances—are so afraid of losing that they can’t win. We are unsure of ourselves and worried about what Trump, Fox News, or even people on our own side will say about us. The decision-making is more focused on reducing the likelihood of the worst-case scenario than achieving the best case. No matter what you are running for—from president to school board—the odds are that you are probably going to lose. That’s the nature of politics. To win, you have to take risks; try things; and adopt higher-variance strategies.

Now let’s juxtapose that with Jon Jeter’s Black Agenda Report: Unable to Reinvent Itself, Dems Can’t Capitalize on Trump’s Missteps. “The DNC,” he wrote, “owes its stasis to the internecine feud that came to a head with Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump in last year’s general election and which spilled over into the New Year. That split pits party stalwarts against younger progressives who want Democrats to break from the conservative tradition established by Bill Clinton in his 1992 presidential campaign in a misguided effort to ‘out-Republican the Republicans.’”

The party’s disunion is the culmination of  Bill Clinton’s strategy to compete with Ronald Reagan’s GOP for the votes of white, suburban racists by effectively being more conservative. Covering the tune, “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better,” Clinton razed the Wall Street regulations that Reagan only loosened. When Reagan left the White House, the number of conglomerates controlling the bulk of U.S. media outlets had been whittled from 50 to 29; by the time Clinton left office, the number was six. And while Reagan talked a good game about lifting trade barriers, the U.S. tariff regime was largely intact when he left office; the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed into law by Clinton opened the floodgates for employers to ship the nation’s manufacturing sector offshore.

It was, however, Clinton’s 1994 crime bill that was the focus of intense scrutiny in the 2020 U.S. presidential season, and rightly so. The Reagan and Bush administrations nearly doubled the nation’s federal prison population yet Clinton jailed more inmates in eight years than the Reagan and Bush administrations did in 12.

While Joe Biden campaigned in 2020 as a traditional liberal who pledged to do something about police killings of African Americans such as George Floyd, he quickly retreated from that position once elected, and governed as a moderate Republican. In fact, with the lone exception of Biden, each Democratic presidential nominee– including Harris– has adopted rhetoric that is more conservative than the last nominee, leaving progressives with no viable alternative to the GOP’s policies.

Perhaps the best example of this is the tepid response of top-ranking Democrats on Capitol Hill to Trump’s handling of the military conflict between Israel and Iran. After Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities on June 12, Chuck Schumer, the minority leader in the U.S. Senate, urged Trump to be “tough” on Iran and not make any “side deals” without Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approval. In a June 13 press statement, he wrote:

“The United States’ commitment to Israel’s security and defense must be ironclad as they prepare for Iran’s response. The Iranian regime’s stated policy has long been to destroy Israel and Jewish communities around the world.”

Schumer’s remarks are largely consistent with Capitol Hill Democrats who complain that Trump bombed Iran without Congressional approval but are mute on the violations of international law incurred by the attack because they too seek regime change in Iran.

As Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III, a political scientist and host of “Inside the Issues” on SiriusXM Satellite Radio is fond of saying, the Democrats aren’t likely to regain their stride until they understand the difference between a minority party–whose differences with the ruling party are more style than substance– and an opposition party that challenges the very foundations upon which the government is built.

On Saturday, Vox published an essay by Christian Paz, The Democratic Party Is Ripe For A Takeover, noting that “the party’s “base is fed up with the status quo of their party. Democratic voters believe their party leaders are out of touch, and they don’t think they’re rising to meet this moment. They want more confrontation with Trump, and they’re hungry for an inspiring, forward-looking economic vision.” They’re certainly not getting that from Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Pelosi, Pete Buttigieg or any of the governors who want to be president.

He saw the kind of anti-establishment energy that boosted Mamdani and exists in Democratic enclaves around the country as a big warning for national Democrats. “It feels familiar— reminiscent of 2009 and the rise of the Tea Party among the Republican Party’s conservative base that ended up remaking the GOP. The energy also feels similar, but more widespread, than what boosted progressive victories during primaries in Trump’s first term. And that energy suggests that the forces that remade the GOP could be aligning for Democrats to face a Tea Party moment of their own... [I]t it appears at least likely to result in targeting older and established incumbents, replacing the party’s leadership, or, at a minimum, forcing those leaders to be more aggressive against Trump, accommodating of younger leaders, and less complacent when faced with populist anger.”

Will Saikat Chakrabarti beat Pelosi? Can Oliver Larkin and Elijah Manley in Florida and Donavan McKinney in Michigan oust useless Democratic incumbents? Will Travis Terrell thwart the Iowa Democratic Party’s plan to slip one of their own, Christina Bohannan, into the nomination to run against Mariannette Miller-Meeks for the third time? Can progressive young insurgents like Emily Berge (WI), Lukas Ventouras (NY) and Randy Villegas (CA) beat the odds in their purple congressional districts and beat establishment favorites? 

This morning, Iowa progressive Travis Terrell told us that “Even lifelong Democrats are ready for something bolder. All across this district, we’re hearing it: people are done settling for the bare minimum. What Zohran just proved in New York is what I’m hearing in Iowa— that playing it safe is how we keep losing ground. If we want to win the future, we can’t keep recycling the past. We need a party that fights as hard for working people as Republicans fight for billionaires.”

The Democratic Party establishment’s “incumbents and leaders are getting a clear warning. The ingredients are here for a populist revolt within the Democratic Party… The base wants not just confrontation with Republicans but to replace the party’s leadership entirely… Unlike previous moments of Democratic infighting, this divide isn’t primarily about ideology… Democrats want their party to focus more on affordability, on getting the wealthy to pay more on taxes, and health care expansion. Older and younger Democrats are broadly in agreement about prioritizing economic concerns over social issues— and there aren’t that many differences between what younger and older Democrats want to prioritize.”