Dems debate future of the party after Mamdani's upset win
Progressives argue Mamdani's win is a sign of where the party needs to go if it wants to build winning coalitions that propel it to victory in next year's midterms and beyond. But moderate Democrats opposed to Mamdani say moving too far in that direction could put the party in jeopardy in areas of the country less friendly to the sort of progressive policies he has embraced.
Some political observers point to Mamdani's strengths as a candidate and messenger as more critical to his success and a future playbook for other Democrats than his ideology.
'[Mamdani] pretty clearly has a lot of political talent,' said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of the nonpartisan election handicapper Sabato's Crystal Ball. 'Whatever his ideology is, it may be that the talent itself is more important than the actual issue positions.'
Mamdani shocked New York on Tuesday as votes poured in, showing him in a healthy position to beat the former powerful governor for the Democratic nod for mayor. The remarkable lead — well ahead of his start 30 points behind Andrew Cuomo — excited progressives in and out of the city, offering them a much-needed boost after a dismal November election.
Democrats pointed out that Mamdani, a young democratic socialist who's served in the state Assembly since 2021, offered a vision to voters that excited them and noted the coalitions that he uniquely brought.
'You can win if you build a coalition, and you show that you're not just speaking to one part or one slice of voters — you're speaking to a broader slice,' said Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, the co-founder and vice president of the Democratic strategy firm and donor network Way to Win. 'And that enabled him to keep likely voters who were maybe on the fence, for him to win them over. But then he also, by doing that, won over all these new people who came into the electorate.'
The extent of Mamdani's success, leading by 7 points in the first round of ranked choice voting after almost no poll showed him ahead, is a result not just of his strengths but outperforming expectations with groups believed to be his weaknesses.
Key to Mamdani's coalition were young people, who rallied significantly behind the 33-year-old, along with white voters and those with a college degree. But he also performed significantly better than expected with groups considered to be in Cuomo's column.
He minimized his loss in heavily Black areas that went strongly for Cuomo, put up decent numbers in Hispanic precincts, and even won in some mixed Black-Hispanic areas like Harlem. He also won in some older white, wealthy neighborhoods.
Progressives quickly pointed to Mamdani's success as evidence that progressive policies can win over a wide range of voters and should represent the direction for the Democratic Party.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who endorsed Mamdani in the primary, told Politico in an interview that he ran a 'brilliant' campaign.
'So number one, he ran a strong grassroots campaign around the progressive agenda. They go together,' he said. 'You cannot run a grassroots campaign unless you excite people. You cannot excite people unless you have something to say. And he had a lot to say.'
David Hogg, who stirred controversy during a brief stint as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee for his advocacy of primarying certain incumbents and calls for generational change, praised Mamdani. 'It's gonna be a fun couple of years,' he said in a post on X.
But moderates have been equally quick to distance themselves from Mamdani and argued that the GOP was just given ammo to further attack Democrats as extremists. Republicans have pounced since Tuesday's results, calling Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party and tying others to him.
Rep. Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.), who represents a battleground House district on Long Island, called him 'too extreme' and the 'wrong choice for New York.'
'His entire campaign has been built on unachievable promises and higher taxes, which is the last thing New York needs,' she said in a statement.
Kate deGruyter, the senior director of communications for the center-left think tank Third Way, argued Mamdani's victory was because Cuomo was a 'deeply flawed' candidate, citing the controversies that surrounded him.
'Mamdani had a youthfulness and dynamism that fit this moment, but the baggage and the danger of some of the ideas that he espouses and does so proudly, even in the final stretch of his campaign, is something that Democrats have to recognize is going to be deeply problematic in the places that we are going to need to win to take back the House,' she said.
Third Way co-founder Matt Bennett said on X that too many Democrats running for president in 2019 felt pressure from the left, and it continues to haunt the party today.
'It's dangerous to believe a NYC Dem primary offers a roadmap for winning in purple/red places,' he said, pointing to moderate Democrats' success in the 2018 midterms.
One senior New York Democratic strategist familiar with Cuomo's campaign said it failed to see how 'adeptly' Mamdani was rising and change the conversation. They said Mamdani was able to separate himself from his past identity as a 'radical extreme socialist.'
The strategist did acknowledge a positive takeaway from Mamdani's campaign that other Democrats can look to for inspiration for their own.
'What is good for the party nationally is this is proof positive that young candidates, super talented at messaging, media, social media and energizing voters who are laser-focused on an economically popular agenda and an economic populist agenda will win and should be put forward,' they said.
They argued that should be 'decoupled from the radicalism that comes with Zohran Mamdani,' saying it wouldn't work anywhere except a 'big, super liberal city.'
Democrats across the spectrum agreed that the party must find the right balance to broaden its appeal and can make inroads using Mamdani's strategy.
New York Democratic strategist Trip Yang noted that Mamdani won in areas that voted in 2021 for Mayor Eric Adams, whom many consider a moderate or even conservative Democrat, demonstrating the widespread appeal. He said those watching Mamdani's ads couldn't immediately tell he is a member of Democratic Socialists of America, only hearing what he said about safety and affordability.
He said some aspects of Mamdani's campaign, like his video team's skills at virtual messaging and his own 'charm,' can't be replicated, but others can.
'He might be a democratic socialist, but he actually talks differently about progressives,' Yang said. 'He opens the tent and encourages people who are not identified progressives or identified socialists, 'Come on in. The water is warm.' That's the real skill.'
Fernandez Ancona said one consistent trend among Democrats has been a desire to shake up the status quo, and the result proves Democrats can't 'status quo our way out of this mess.'
'It's not necessarily where are you on this left, right spectrum,' she said. 'Are you telling a story that plugs into disrupting the status quo in order to make people's lives better in a very real, tangible way? And are you authentic in how you do it?'
Caroline Vakil contributed.
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14 minutes ago
- Newsweek
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CNN
14 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: The Democrats go ‘Trump lite' in latest plan to save democracy
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Newsom — who has a long and testy history with the president — but who shares some of his instincts for stunt politics — is not just taking on Trump by leveraging the mechanics of government in the Democratic cause. He's also personifying the maxim that one way to defang a bully is to laugh at him. The governor's turned his social media accounts into a parody of the president's own huffing and puffing in block capitals on Truth Social. 'THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GN' Newsom wrote after a post on X earlier this month, trolling Trump by mimicking one of his online quirks. This might all seem rather immature and below the dignity of the governor of one of the most powerful states in the union. But it's playing Trump at his own social media game and recognizes that the president has shattered the norms of political speech. A more serious argument many Democrats are now making is that the Republican Party has transformed into such an anti-democratic force that they must do everything to fight back. Sure, it would be more noble for Democrats to stand on principle and refuse to follow Republicans down an authoritarian path by just drawing up more House seats because they feel like it. But they'd be sure to lose. Newsom's response might be cynical. But he's also seized on the Texas redistricting fight because he's one of the few Democrats who have power and know how to use it. He's also channeling palpable demands from the Democratic base for more of a fight. 'He doesn't play by a different set of rules,' Newsom said of Trump last week. 'He doesn't believe in the rules.' On Monday, Newsom seized on Trump's latest Truth Social rant about mail-in voting with his own post on X that aimed to get into the president's head. 'Trump knows he is going to LOSE in 2026,' Newsom wrote. 'His plan to rig new Congressional seats is going to backfire — thanks to California. Now, he's clamoring for other ways to cook the results. This man reeks of DESPERATION.' Newsom is taking a political gamble. There is no guarantee that enough of California's voters will agree with his attempt to change the state Constitution. The California Citizens Redistricting Commission is a cherished plank of state democracy. But as he eyes the White House, the California governor has created a platform to elevate himself over Democratic rivals in galvanizing demands for more urgency in the fight against Trump and his administration challenging election fairness on multiple fronts. In effect, he's soft-launching a bid for the 2028 Democratic nomination without having to make it official. If he succeeds in creating more seats for his party and it captures the House next year, he will claim a lion's share of the credit. Obama addressed the conundrum of whether to play by the rules on redistricting as a true democrat might in a speech on Tuesday night. 'I've had to wrestle with my preference, which would be that we don't have political gerrymandering,' he said at a fundraiser for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. The ex-president added: 'What I also know is that if we don't respond effectively, then this White House and Republican-controlled state governments all across the country, they will not stop, because they do not appear to believe in this idea of an inclusive, expansive democracy.' Obama said he had 'tremendous respect' for Newsom's approach in that Newsom made the California response conditional on what Texas did. He also praised Newsom's proposal to restore the state's independent redistricting committee after the 2030 census — following Trump's term. The 44th president's pragmatism reflects bitter experience, since he rocketed to attention in a 2004 Democratic National Convention address in which he declared, 'There's not a liberal America and a conservative America — there's the United States of America.' Obama might be best remembered for soaring speeches. But eight years since he left the White House, it's often forgotten he could play hardball: His 2012 reelection campaign ruthlessly savaged GOP nominee Mitt Romney's character. Arguing that democracy was not 'self-executing,' Obama said that if Democrats really believe their own rhetoric, they should do something about it. He called for more support for the NDRC, litigation and organizing. And Obama also made striking allusions to the fights against slavery and racial discrimination in the 20th century. 'It took organizing and activism, and people demonstrating and sometimes getting beat or thrown in jail. It took a civil war,' he said. 'It took extraordinary leadership and courage in order to amend the Constitution. And then to make sure that those victories were actually manifested required people to march and go to jail and in some cases, die.' This came against a backdrop of the supine response of law firms, universities and corporate chieftains to Trump's power grabs. Obama's warning posed the immediate question of whether the ex-president will be taking a more prominent political role himself. Obama has been a caustic critic of Trump at key moments — for instance during the 2020 and 2024 Democratic National Conventions, when he warned about his successor's threat to democracy. But he has wide interests in a lucrative retirement, including in film production and advocacy for his post-presidential foundation. And ex-presidents (among many others) know there can be a price for standing up to a successor who has weaponized the Justice Department. And would Obama be an effective force? His efforts in 2024, including a barn-burner speech at the convention in Chicago that was one-upped by former first lady Michelle Obama, couldn't prevent Trump's return to the White House. Many Democrats are pining for a new generation of leaders. And the next Democratic president, whenever he or she arrives, will require fresh vision and energy after the GOP's attempt to eviscerate the government. Meanwhile, Newsom isn't the only Democrat adopting some of Trump's methods to try to gain traction in the age of fragmented media and online anarchy. Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, for instance, has been trolling the president, Trump-style on social media. 'The man in the White House wants to 'crack down' on crime in D.C.… cute,' she wrote on X this week. 'The audacity of sitting in the Oval Office with felony charges and thinking you can lecture anyone on 'law and order.'' Still, Democrats had better be careful. However brazen they get, they'll never match Trump's flame-throwing. A subtext of Trump's populism is that all politics are corrupt. And if voters believe that the Democrats are just as bad as the president, his own more venal behavior won't seem as bad. Trump and MAGA Republicans are trying to create such equivalence. They've portrayed the criminal indictments against Trump during his campaign as the cold-blooded exploitation of government power — even though several of them arose from his attempt to steal the 2020 election. The GOP has better arguments that he was singled out in a successful civil fraud prosecution against him, his adult sons and the Trump Organization in New York. And when Republicans argue that Democrats are guilty of flagrant partisan redistricting of House seats in states they control, like Illinois and Maryland, they have a point. Still, most such efforts fit into the conventional corruption of the age-old practice of gerrymandering. No modern political figure has attempted the assaults on democracy and elections carried out by Trump. The run-up to the midterms may also show whether voters want another showdown over democracy when they are pained by still-high grocery prices and a struggle to afford housing. Neither party has compelling plans to offer relief. No wonder Trump's approval ratings are underwater and Democrats have been plumbing record lows in popularity this year. Democrats are now vowing to 'fight fire with fire,' as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul put it recently. But getting down in the muck and fighting dirty with Trump is risky. He's miles better at it than they are.
