While Zohran Mamdani Was Showing Us The Future, The House Democrats Were Showing Us The Problem

As The Nation Reeled From Trump’s Latest Stunt, Dems Could've Shown Some Backbone. Instead, They Showed Their Belly

The Party of the Future Won’t Be Led by the Past

Tuesday was historic for another reason that we’ll get to in a moment, but Tuesday also saw a vote in the House to impeach Trump. It lost dismally. 344 Members voted to table (kill) Al Green’s impeachment resolution and just 79 voted against the motion. These were the 79. If your Member of Congress is missing from the list, call them and ask them why. 

A big majority of House Democrats (128)— led by AIPAC, the New Dems, the Blue Dogs, Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark, Pete Aguilar and Nancy Pelosi— voted with the GOP against Green’s resolution to impeach Trump for ordering an “illegal and unconstitutional” sneak attack on Iran last weekend. Voting to table the resolution was political malpractice of the highest order— a blaring message of cowardice and impotence— not a procedural misstep. The Democrats handed the would-be authoritarian, another free pass to wage war and skirt accountability. By voting with the Republicans to kill the motion instead of amplifying it, the potential to rally around principles of structure, oversight and constitutional norms was squandered. Instead of underlining a unified opposition, the Democrats signaled that checks and balances are negotiable. Tone-deaf much? It was a calculated retreat in the face of Trump’s abuse of power. The Dems had a chance to respond with clarity and moral urgency to a lawless presidency. What message does that send to the public? That war powers don’t matter? That Democrats will roll over if AIPAC and Hakeem Jeffries tell them to? That even now, democracy on the line, they’re still afraid to rock the boat? It’s weak and shameful and it handed Trump exactly what he wants: the illusion of the all-powerful strongman.

I asked a few of the Flip Congress candidates. Iowa progressive Travis Terrell told us he “would've voted to open the impeachment hearing. The president was echoing calls for a regime change and joined in on a foreign military attack. It's a threat to global stability and Democrats need to start showing our voters we have the spine to stand up to him. Even if the delicate ceasefire does stand, it once again reminded the world that America has a loose cannon as president who will do anything to pad his fragile ego.” 

Randy Bryce, the working class progressive running for Congress in southeast Wisconsin has a similar perspective. He told us that “It’s clear that what Trump did by acting alone to order a strike against another nation was unconstitutional. There was no ‘imminent threat’ against the US or its personnel. Every President needs to follow the oath that they took in order to uphold the Constitution that defines us as a nation. This holds true for the past as well as future. It’s written to protect us from someone like Trump, but only if it’s followed. It may be symbolic but it shows us where people stand. If I was in there would have been 80 votes.”

Suffolk County New Deal Dem, Lukas Ventouras says he would have also “voted to advance the motion because we cannot afford to engage in another illegal attack on a sovereign nation, followed by regime change. Especially so, when it was done illegally without congressional approval. The era of abusing the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), using it as a pretext to bomb whoever we want, whenever we want, must end. This power must be reigned in and Congress, representing the will of the people, who are overwhelmingly against another foreign conflict, needs to be part of the decision making process. Trump is abusing his powers and violating the constitution, and is putting American lives at risk, by illegally starting another war, and he must be punished for it. All Presidents have abused this power since 2001, and I believe no matter the party in the White House, this must be changed.”

Arizona Democrat Eric Descheenie is running against MAGA extremist Eli Crane in the massive second congressional district. Crane worships Trump. Descheeni told us he “would have unequivocally voted to impeach Donald Trump. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution is explicit, and given the gravity of what this impending war would mean for our military personnel, fellow citizens and country, there is no room for blatant disregard for the law."

And that historic moment we need to discuss? Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory in the NYC mayor’s primary election. What a contrast with Jeffries and the congressional Dems! The party needs to stop pretending they can thread the needle between appeasement and principle. If the Democrats want to win the future, they need to be more like Mamdani and a hell of a lot less like Jeffries and his 127 functionaries and fence-sitters. Mamdani didn’t hedge; he’s not waiting around for permission. He sure didn’t look to party leadership for a green light. He ran on unapologetic progressive values, took on one of the ultimate corrupt establishment figure, and won— of course not in the blood red precincts on Staten Island but he won big. His victory was a referendum on political courage while the congressional Democrats were choosing to duck their constitutional duty—a complete failure of imagination, of nerve and, once again, of moral clarity. 

If Democrats want to prove they’re more than just the janitors cleaning up after Republican disasters, they have to start acting like they believe in something. Mamdani's win shows voters are hungry for a party willing to take risks, speak plainly and challenge power— not one that cowers in the shadows every time the oligarchs raise their voices and threaten to cut off the easy money flow. The future doesn’t belong to the managers, cowards and moral compromisers. It belongs to the fighters; yesterday, only one side of the party remembered that. In the words of Thomas Edsall: Democrats don’t know which end is up. “There have been endless laments for the white working-class voters the Democratic Party lost over the past few decades, particularly during the 10 years of the Trump era. But detailed 2024 election analyses also make it clear that upper-income white voters have become a much more powerful force in the party than they ever were before. These upscale white voters are driving the transformation of the Democratic Party away from its role as the representative of working-class America and closer to its nascent incarnation as the party of the well-to-do.”

Edsall noted that “This evolution of the two parties has been slow but steady over the past three decades, first emerging in the early 1990s as education polarization drove those with college degrees to the left while working-class voters without degrees moved right. Sam Zacher, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California, has detailed both the shift and its policy consequences in a series of papers, including his 2023 article “Polarization of the Rich: The Increasingly Democratic Allegiance of Affluent Americans and the Politics of Redistribution.” “Beginning in the 1990s,” Zacher writes, ‘the Democratic Party started winning increasing shares of rich, upper-middle-income, high-income occupation and stock-owning voters. This appears true across voters of all races and ethnicities, is concentrated among (but not exclusive to) college-educated voters and is only true among voters living in larger metropolitan areas. In the 2010s, Democratic candidates’ electoral appeal among affluent voters reached above-majority levels’... The changing demographics of the Democratic Party, Zacher notes, ‘may make it more difficult to execute an economically redistributive agenda— in an era of rising inequality— since it would have to redistribute away from voters in its own coalition.’… Many political analysts and Democratic strategists find the changing demographics of the party worrisome.”

Our old friend Mike Lux told Edsall that “The foundational idea that Democrats are the party of working people (and its corollary that Republicans are the party of business and the wealthy) has grown much more tenuous than it once was. Democrats are lost without that core idea… [conversations with working-class voters show they] ‘want a candidate and a political party that will fight hard for you. Right now, they don’t think that is the Democrats… Working-class voters’ perception, fed brilliantly by the Republican and right-wing media infrastructure, was that Democrats cared more about other issues and other people than they did about the essential economic needs of regular working families.’”

This might be a good moment to remind readers that AOC didn’t just win big with Mamdani. She endorsed 9 City Council candidates, although 2— David Diaz and Shirley Aldebol— both ran in the 13th district. It appears that Aldebol won in that 6-person race. Almost all of AOC’s other endorsees won as well, including some who were up against the full power and might of the oligarchs and AIPAC working hand in hand against them, Brooklyn’s Shahana Hanif, who crushed her AIPAC/Uber candidate, Maya Kornberg, with 70%, being a top example. Similarly, Alexa Avilés routed the right-of-center candidate, Ling Ye, in the Sunset Park, Red Hook, Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst district, with 71.5%. In Queens, Shekar Krishnan and in the Bronx Pierina Sanchez won, both with 67%. Justin Sanchez, also in the Bronx, is comfortably ahead and will win in the ranked choice computation next week. Ericka Montoya is locked in a tight race in District 21 (Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Corona) in a 4 person race that will be decided based on ranked choice. Montoya is in second place right now with 25.3%

Cuomo wasn’t the only sex predator NYC voters rejected. Anthony Weiner’s political comeback was thwarted by a 4th place finish in his Greenwich Village/Gramercy/Murray Hill district.

Back to the mayoral race for a moment, Nate Silver wrote that Cuomo ran an abysmal campaign against Mamdani’s stellar one and in a political environment where voters are comfortable with democratic socialists, “provided they emphasize cost-of-living issues rather than culture wars…  [T]his demonstrates how the Democratic establishment is out to lunch, with much of it backing Cuomo, an obviously flawed candidate who came to prominence because of his family name, who hasn’t lived in New York City in decades, and whose preferred ‘bagel’ order consists of an English muffin.”

Cuomo’s campaign produced a laundry list of endorsements, such as Bloomberg, former president Clinton, former majority whip Jim Clyburn, plus lots and lots of unions. Meanwhile, the New York Times, which can be incredibly influential in the city, issued a half-hearted anti-Zohran endorsement after initially swearing off involvement in local races, encouraging voters to rank Cuomo toward the lower end of their ballot but Mamdani not at all.

The Clintons, Clyburn, the New York Times and the unions, plus Black groups, Jewish groups, Italian groups and every other stripe of the rainbow: that was supposed to be a winning formula in New York. But the old formula doesn’t compute anymore.

It’s hard not to be reminded of the past three presidential races, and particularly the Democratic establishment forcing an eat-your-spinach choice down the throats of the primary electorate. It was Hillary Clinton’s turn to win the nomination in 2016 after she lost to Obama in 2008 and she heavily emphasized this in her campaign— although to be fair, she performed much better in NYC against Bernie Sanders than Cuomo did against Zohran.

Democratic Party leaders including Clyburn, panicking about a potential Sanders nomination as the COVID pandemic hit American shores, then successfully intervened to boost Joe Biden in 2020. That was forgivable— maybe even quite smart— given that Biden won. But then Democrats made a catastrophic error by failing to seriously challenge Biden in 2024 until it was too late, pretending that a primary against the likes of Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips constituted a real choice for voters— and then nominating Kamala Harris in lieu of the sort of “mini-primary” that some observers had called for.

Cuomo, like Clinton, was from a political dynasty that most people under the age of 40 have little or no affection for. And although Bernie is an exception, maybe it isn’t that complicated. If you want to inspire younger voters, nominate younger candidates. Mamdani, at age 33, is literally half Cuomo’s age: the former governor is 67.

…Cuomo trotted out that same boilerplate, tired themes, including a heavy emphasis on Trump, that had also failed Clinton, Biden (in 2024) and Harris rather than the local issues that mayoral races often turn upon.

The extent to which this might be a leading indicator for national politics, and particularly the 2028 presidential nomination race, is an open question. But I think you could go too far in dismissing it, and some fellow center-left types probably will. New York City is a weird place, but it’s also an exceptionally diverse place, home to every imaginable ethnic group, more conservatives in the Democratic primary electorate than you might think, and plenty of voters who were probably closer to Cuomo on the issues but who just didn’t like his vibe, or who liked Mamdani’s.

So Zohran thoroughly earned the win, and Cuomo and the Democratic establishment thoroughly earned the loss. And even if they finally take the hint, generational turnover in the Democratic Party is coming whether they like it or not.

The morning after, Politico’s Playbook noted that the “campaign neatly mirrored the Democrats’ generational and political divide so apparent on the national stage… For plenty of observers, this wasn’t about identity. Mamdani has promised free buses, free child care, city-run grocery stores, rent freezes, wealth taxes and more. And whatever you think of those kinds of pledges, there’s a running theme that plenty of Dems believe was the real lesson from last night: Mamdani won by focusing relentlessly on the cost of living— the issue poll after poll shows voters care about most. (It’s still the economy, stupid.)… Mamdani won by running as an insurgent and being prepared to criticize Israel over Gaza— unlike Cuomo who has defended Netanyahu to the hilt.”

So we ended the day with an almost comical split screen showing us who’s ready for the fight ahead, and who still thinks hiding under the table is a strategy. I guess we can take it as a cup-half-full moment.