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Zohran Mamdani Should Herald the Birth of a New Democratic Party
This dark time should wake us up to the bankruptcy of the corporate Democratic Party and give rise to something people nationwide are yearning for: a People's Democratic Party.
Oct 24, 2025
The only upside to living through this dark time is it pushes us to rethink and perhaps totally remake things we once thought immutable.
Like the Democratic Party.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the current Democratic Party is dysfunctional if not dead.
Better dysfunctional than a fascist cult like the Trump Republican Party. But if there was ever a time when America needed a strong, vibrant Democratic Party, it’s now. And we don’t have one.
The brightest light in the Democratic Party is Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old member of the New York State Assembly who has a good chance of being elected the next mayor of New York City when New Yorkers go to the polls a week from Tuesday.
Mamdani poses a particular threat to New York’s corporate Democrats because he wants to tax the wealthy to pay for his plan to make New York more affordable to people who aren’t wealthy.
Mamdani is talking about what matters to most voters—the cost living. He says New York should be affordable to everyone.
He’s addressing the problems New Yorkers discuss over their kitchen tables. He’s not debating “Trumpism” or “capitalism” or “Democratic socialism.” He’s not offering a typical Democratic “10-point plan” with refundable tax credits that no one understands.
He’s proposing a few easy-to-understand things — free buses, free childcare, a four-year rent freeze for some two million residents, and a $30 minimum wage. He’s aiming to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the 1930s — fix it.
You may not agree with all his proposals (I don’t) but they’re understandable. And if they don’t work, I expect that, like FDR, he’ll try something else.
The clincher for me is he’s inspiring a new generation of young people. He’s got them excited about politics. (My seventeen-year-old granddaughter is spending her weekends knocking on doors for him, as are her friends.)
Name a Republican politician who’s inspiring young people. Hell, I have a hard time coming up with a Republican politician since Teddy Roosevelt who has inspired young people.
You don’t have to reach too far back in history to find Democratic politicians who have inspired young people. Bernie Sanders (technically an Independent) and AOC. Barack Obama. (I was inspired in my youth by Bobby Kennedy—the real Bobby Kennedy—and Senator Eugene McCarthy.)
And Zohran.
What do all of them have in common? They’re authentic. They’re passionate. They care about real people. They want to make America fairer. They advocate practical solutions that people can understand.
Nonetheless, Mamdani is horrifying the leaders of the Democratic Party. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries haven’t endorsed him. Hillary Clinton has endorsed Andrew Cuomo, who’s spending what are likely to be the last days of his political career indulging in the kind of racist, Islamophobic attacks we’d expect from Trump.
Meanwhile, the editorial board of the New York Times counsels “moderation,” urging Democratic candidates to move to the “center.” Tell me: Where’s the center between democracy and fascism, and why would anyone want to go there?
In truth, the Times’s so-called “moderate center” is code for corporate Democrats using gobs of money to pursue culturally-conservative “swing” voters — which is what the Democratic Party has been doing for decades.
This is part of the reason America got Donald Trump. Corporate Democrats took the Party’s away from its real mission—to lift up the working class and lower middle class, and help the poor. Instead, they pushed for globalization, privatization, and the deregulation of Wall Street. They became Republican-Lite.
In 2016 and again in 2024, working and lower-middle class voters saw this and opted for a squalid real estate developer who at least sounded like he was on their side. He wasn’t and still isn’t—he’s on the side of the billionaires to whom he gave two whopping tax cuts. But if the choice is between someone who sounds like he’s on your side and someone who sounds like a traditional politician, guess who wins?
This is part of the reason America got Donald Trump. Corporate Democrats took the Party’s away from its real mission—to lift up the working class and lower middle class, and help the poor.
Trump also fed voters red-meat cultural populism — blaming their problems on immigrants, Latinos, Black people, transgender people, bureaucrats, and “coastal elites.” Democrats gave voters incomprehensible 10-point plans.
The Times tries to buttress its argument that Democrats should move to the “center” by citing Democrats who won election last year in places Trump also won.
But that argument is bunk. Democrats won in these places by imitating Trump. One mocked the term “Latinx” and was hawkish on immigration. Two wanted to crack down harder on illegal immigration. Two others emphasized crime and public safety. Another bragged about taking on federal bureaucrats.
This isn’t the way forward for Democrats. Red-meat cultural populism doesn’t fill hungry bellies or pay impatient landlords or help with utility bills.
Mamdani poses a particular threat to New York’s corporate Democrats because he wants to tax the wealthy to pay for his plan to make New York more affordable to people who aren’t wealthy.
He aims to generate $9 billion in new tax revenue by raising taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents and businesses. He’s calling for a 2% tax on incomes over $1 million, which would produce $4 billion in tax revenue. He wants to increase the state’s corporate tax rate to 11.5 percent to match New Jersey’s, generating about $5 billion annually.
He’s right. The wealthy have never been as wealthy as they are now, while the tax rate they pay hasn’t been as low in living memory.
Inequalities of income and wealth are at record levels. A handful of billionaires now control almost every facet of the United States government and the U.S. economy.
Even as the stock market continues to hit new highs, working class and lower middle class families across America are getting shafted. Wages are nearly stagnant, prices are rising. Monopolies control food processing, housing, technology, oil and gas.
The time is made for the Democrats. If the Party stands for anything, it should be the growing needs of bottom 90 percent—for affordable groceries, housing, and childcare. For higher wages and better working conditions. For paid family leave. For busting up monopolies that keep prices high. For making it easier to form and join labor unions.
Pay for this by raising taxes on the wealthy. Get big money out of politics.
This dark time should wake us up to the bankruptcy of the corporate Democratic Party.
It should mark the birth of the people’s Democratic Party. Zohran and others like him are its future.
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Mamdani Shows Us How to Defeat Trump's MAGA Vision
A democratic socialist won by acknowledging what everyone already knows—life has become unaffordable—and saying we're going to build our way out of it. He's shown Democrats how to stop lying and start acknowledging what's broken. Provide solutions and talk about them relentlessly with excitement and enthusiasm.
Jun 25, 2025
Zohran Mamdani just beat Andrew Cuomo in NYC's mayoral primary by doing something Democrats forgot how to do: acknowledging reality and promising to build our way out of it.
Too few people can afford to live in America anymore. We've given up on the idea that hard work gets you anywhere. We're buying lottery tickets and praying we got into Bitcoin at the right time because that's the only path to stability we can see.
I co-founded Justice Democrats. I was AOC's Communications Director. I've watched the fire die out from Bernie to AOC to Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush. I've seen movements and moments that seemed poised to take back our democracy and our economy for the people slow to a crawl. Partly because our leaders were too trusting of the Democratic party. They thought we were all on the same team.
We aren't. We never were.
It's time for a full court press on the party. It's time to reshape it in the image of a better FDR. Take it over from the inside. Primary every corporate Democrat who thinks extraction is an economic policy. We need a new party—not a third party, but a Democratic party willing to clean house—starting with those who forgot how to build.
The party establishment can't just steal Mamdani's message. They've spent 30 years telling us why we can't build things, why we can't have universal healthcare, why we can't afford what every other developed country has. If Chuck Schumer suddenly started talking like Mamdani tomorrow, everyone would know he's full of shit.
So they'll do what they always do. They'll join Republicans in calling him too radical, too far left. They'll wring their hands about needing to appeal to the "center."
The center ain't what they think it is. It's swing voters who went from Obama to Trump and they want change, not compromise. They want someone to acknowledge that the system is broken and promise to fix it. They want a plan that makes sense.
Only 22% of Americans believe government can improve their lives. Twenty-two percent. That's what happens when both parties spend 40 years making sure that public options aren't functional. They make sure we can't build our own housing, transit, childcare, or healthcare system. They made sure the public can't build anything except tax breaks for billionaires.
Democrats tell us it's complicated. Republicans tell us it's immigrants' fault. Working families are taking on credit card debt to buy groceries. Teachers are driving Uber at night. Parents are choosing between daycare and rent.
We've accepted that this is just how it is. That America doesn't build things anymore. That the best we can hope for is tweaking a broken system around the edges.
Mamdani just showed Democrats how to call bullshit on all of that.
He won by acknowledging what everyone already knows—life has become unaffordable—and saying we're going to build our way out of it. Housing that teachers can afford. Transit that actually works. Childcare centers so parents don't have to choose between working and raising their kids. And that the ultra wealthy are going to pay their fair share.
He hasn't even been elected yet. But he's shown Democrats how to stop lying about the problem.
Stop explaining why we can't. Start acknowledging what's broken. Then provide the solution. Talk about it relentlessly with excitement and enthusiasm.
The establishment endorsed Cuomo—a sexual predator who spent his career making life worse for working people—because he represents their vision: pretend everything's fine, blame messaging when voters don't believe you.
Bill Clinton, Bloomberg, Clyburn, Torres—they all backed the predator over the builder. Because predators don't threaten their business model. Someone who acknowledges reality does.
Wall Street is terrified of Mamdani because public building kills private extraction. Every public housing unit is one less rent check for Blackstone. Every public childcare center is one less profit center for private equity. Every public transit line that works means fewer Uber rides, fewer car loans, fewer opportunities to bleed working people dry.
Wall Street doesn't build anymore. They buy what exists, jack up prices, and extract until there's nothing left. Our economy runs on extraction now. Healthcare alone will suck up $75 trillion over the next decade—not to make us healthier, but to transfer wealth upward. Housing, childcare, education—they're all cash vacuums.
Mamdani's promising to build public alternatives. That scares the shit out of them. He's proving you can win by admitting what everyone already knows. You can say "housing is unaffordable and we're going to build more of it" instead of lecturing people about market dynamics.
Now someone wins by saying we can build the things people need? Their business model collapses. Democrats have spent 30 years helping corporations privatize everything—from healthcare to housing to transit. They've turned basic needs into profit centers for Wall Street.
Young people assume they'll never own homes. Parents quit jobs because childcare costs more than they earn. Families crowd into apartments they can't afford while Democrats lecture us about GDP growth.
We've been trained to see poverty as inevitable. To see suffering as complicated. To see solutions as impossible.
Mamdani showed Democrats a different way. Admit that life has gotten harder. Acknowledge that work doesn't pay. Stop pretending the game isn't rigged. Then promise to build the things that make life livable.
Public building doesn't kill capitalism—it saves it from itself. When government builds housing, private developers have to compete. When we build public childcare, private centers can't charge whatever they want. But healthcare? Build public hospitals and clinics, and suddenly private insurers can't extract $75 trillion while people die rationing insulin. That's how you restart real competition. That's how you force corporations to actually create value instead of just extracting it.
Build the things people need to live. Not tax credits. Not market solutions. Not complicated programs that take three years to maybe help some people.
Mamdani won because he's the first Democrat in years to talk about the affordability crisis like someone who's actually tried to pay rent.
Americans aren't stupid. We know when we're being fed bullshit. We know when politicians are pretending our problems don't exist. We know when they're lying about why rent costs $3,000 a month or why insulin costs $600. We've just stopped expecting anyone to acknowledge reality, let alone fix it. We've accepted that politicians are liars and they will keep explaining why suffering is actually prosperity if you squint right.
The lottery tickets and crypto gambling show we've given up on the normal paths working. We need a party willing to admit those paths are broken before we'll believe they can be fixed.
What really terrifies them is if Mamdani succeeds in NYC, it spreads. Other cities start asking why they can't build public housing. Other states wonder why they can't have public childcare. The entire extraction economy—$75 trillion in healthcare alone, trillions more in housing, education, childcare—starts to crack. Every public option is a private profit center destroyed. Every successful public project is proof that we don't need them.
Mamdani hasn't even been elected yet. But he's shown us how to stop lying about what needs fixing. He's shown that you can win by promising to build for everyone, not just donors.
The movement's next job is to help Mamdani actually build—to prove the model works. Then we replicate it. Primaries in NYC, NYS, the US House and Senate. Every corporate Democrat who backs extraction over building needs a challenger who can build. Every AIPAC-purchased politician needs a challenger. Then maybe we can win in Texas and Tennessee and West Virginia. Then maybe people will believe the words we say.
If you still believe in this party, prove it. Help us take it back.
This isn't about purity. It's about survival. Either we build our way out of this mess or we keep managing the collapse until there's nothing left to manage.
Democrats need to learn from this. Or get sent home. We're building anyway.
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What Progressives Already Know About the 2024 Election Results
A Trump presidency will push progressives back on our heels, in a dire defensive position as we fight to protect rights and programs won during many previous decades. Regardless of who wins, the challenges for progressives will be enormous.
Oct 22, 2024
While the name of the next president is unknown, some outcomes of the election can be foreseen. For instance:
- President Biden’s successor will be a dangerous militarist.
Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are supporters of boosting already-huge Pentagon budgets along with continuing U.S. warfare in many forms. Trump likes to pander to voters who don’t want endless wars, but his actual policies as president kept them going. Harris’s glimmers of senatorial interest in scaling back military largesse faded into standard bellicosity. Both candidates beat cold-war drums, with Trump focusing on China rather than Russia.
- If Trump wins, corporate Democrats and mainstream media will blame the Harris campaign for not moving rightward enough.
Progressive ideas, as usual, will be convenient scapegoats for the failures of Democratic Party elites.
- If Harris wins, corporate Democrats and mainstream media will immediately warn that she must steer clear of the left.
The establishment is ever alert to the danger that progressive populism could majorly reduce income inequality and subdue corporate power.
- If Trump wins, progressives will be on the defensive for at least four years -- unable to accomplish anything of substance at the federal level and trying to mitigate the damage under an unhinged and fascistic president.
The disasters with a second Trump administration will include unleashed nativism and official bigotry. As one liberal commentator observed weeks before the election, “More than ever, Trump’s rhetoric is steeped in racism, xenophobia and dehumanization. He routinely calls immigrants ‘vermin’ and says they are ‘poisoning the blood’ of the country. He claims they are ‘stone-cold killers,’ ‘animals’ and ‘the worst people’ who will ‘cut your throat.’ . . . He called migrants from Latin America, Congo and the Middle East ‘the most violent people on Earth.’ . . . He’s even suggested that nonwhite immigrants have ‘bad genes’ that make them genetically inferior.”
- As in the past, the Green Party will again congratulate itself on the tiny percentage of votes for its latest presidential candidate (after the party’s nominee received 0.36 percent in 2012, 1.07 percent in 2016 and 0.26 percent in 2020).
In October, this year’s Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein campaigned in swing states and declared: “This is a very dire situation that will be continued under both Democrats and Republicans. So we say there is no lesser evil in this race.”
Really?
- If Harris wins despite his best efforts, Benjamin Netanyahu will be disappointed that he was unable to sufficiently help get Trump elected.
“For anyone who doubts Trump will be even worse than Biden is on Gaza,” Mehdi Hasan tweeted a mid-October video clip of Trump saying that Netanyahu “is doing a good job, Biden is trying to hold him back... and probably should be doing the opposite. I'm glad that Bibi decided to do what he had to do.’”
- Whether Trump or Harris wins, the U.S. government will continue to support Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians under the guise of its “right to defend itself.”
If Trump wins, virtually all Republicans and many Democrats in Congress will support his unequivocal backing for whatever Israel does. If Harris wins, we can expect her policies toward Israel to be dreadful, while she’ll be subject to increasing pressure from much of her party’s base and some Democratic members of Congress for an end to arming Israel.
- In response to the climate emergency, Harris has foreshadowed that her policies would be predictably inadequate, while Trump has repeatedly denied that a climate crisis even exists.
The burden will be on activists to demand actions commensurate with the realities described in The 2024 State of the Climate Report: “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.”
- No matter whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is inaugurated on Jan. 20, the challenges for progressives will be enormous.
A Trump presidency will push progressives back on our heels, in a dire defensive position as we fight to protect rights and programs won during many previous decades. With a Harris presidency, progressives will have some space to organize, with potential to actually move some U.S. government policies in a positive direction.
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