Careful What You Wish For...

The Democratic establishment has longed for a Donald Trump of the Left to excite its base. The rise of Zohran Mamdani might give them second thoughts.

Zohran Mamdani at a watch party for the Democratic New York City mayoral primary election on 25 June. Photograph: David Delgado/Reuters

“Democrats have crossed the line by elevating a 100% Communist Lunatic,” Donald Trump declared after Zohran Mamdani emerged victorious in last week’s Democratic Primary for Mayor of New York City. Coming from Trump, who is fond of branding even the most milquetoast corporate-friendly Democrats “radical Marxists,” the scathing assessment of the 33 year-old Democratic Socialist assemblyman was no surprise. Yet in the days after the mayoral primary, it would not just be Trump and his MAGA groupies condemning New York City voters for making a colossal error in picking Mamdani. The Economist characterized the Mamdani win as a victory for Trump. The Washington Post’s editorial board declared the voter selection of a socialist as “bad for New York and the Democratic Party.” For the centrists, Mamdani’s victory amounts to nothing short of political suicide by New York City voters, putting forth a radical leftist Muslim with unabashed pro-Palestinian sympathies as a very public face of the Democratic Party when the country is still supposedly within the grips of a rightward cultural vibe shift in the wake of the 2024 presidential election.

Those eager to contain the Zohran contagion to just New York’s Five Boroughs liken Mamdani to the second coming of Brandon Johnson, the progressive mayor of Chicago, whose 6.6% approval rating set a new standard for political ineptitude. Both veterans of the late 2010s and early 2020s activist movements calling for police reform and increased public spending on social services, Mamdani and Johnson fit a similar progressive stereotype. But while Johnson arose through the gears of Chicago machine politics (public school teacher to active member of the Chicago Teachers Union to County Councilman to mayor), Mamdani secured a primary victory by taking on Andrew Cuomo, heir to one of the greatest dynasties in the history of New York State politics. While Johnson is chronically indecisive and finds ways to alienate even his one-time staunchest allies, Mamdani is confident and charismatic. Even to those who do not share his politics, Mamdani shines as a preternaturally gifted politician. RememberAmalek, a user on the crypto-based betting platform Polymarket, bet on a Mamdani victory after studying Zohran’s speeches and social media feed, concluding, “this guy was brilliant, but a narcissistic sociopath.” Recognizing Mamdani’s political potential when the socialist long shot was only polling 8%, RememberAmalek would rake in over $300,000 in Polymarket winnings for correctly guessing the unlikely outcome of the New York City mayoral primary.

Let’s play a political word association game. When I say “narcissistic sociopath,” what politician do you think of? Probably not Brandon Johnson. Even if you are a Republican, you probably couldn’t help but think of Donald Trump when hearing those words. Which makes us wonder, what if Zohran Mamdani is not the next progressive flake to tarnish the Democrats’ brand but rather the Democratic Donald Trump that party strategists have searched for in vain over the past decade?

Comparing Zohran Mamdani to Donald Trump will likely trigger waves of nausea in each one’s respective political base. Could there be anything more different from a 33-year-old immigrant, socialist Muslim, than a 78-year-old white Republican who has gained power through the ugliest mix of crony capitalism and xenophobic racism? Maybe not, but that does not mean there aren’t parallels between Trump and Mamdani that go beyond a similar Big Apple swagger. Both have been able to acknowledge their privileged upbringings without losing their populist shine: Trump brushed off his real estate mogul father’s financial support as a “small loan,” while Mamdani (son of an Oscar-nominated filmmaker and Ivy League professor) slyly admitted “nepotism and hard work go a long way.” Both have shown an ability to brush off statements that any sober strategist would deem career ending for a less gifted politician: Trump made significant gains with Latino voters despite calling Mexicans “drug dealers, criminals, rapists,” Mamdani won the mayoral primary in a city boasting the largest numbers of Jews outside Israel despite defending the slogan “globalize the intifada.” Most importantly, both Trump and Mamdani have a mastery over media that allows voters to feel an immediate personal connection to them. Trump harnessed everything from tabloid journalism to reality TV to Twitter in its infancy to simultaneously cultivate an image of billionaire grandeur and everyman accessibility. Mamdani’s famed TikTok videos run the gamut from disarmingly goofy to soberly urgent, all the while forging a personal bond with the viewer. Mamdani’s political career has been a short one. But from what we’ve seen so far, few Democrats have shown more potential for becoming a legitimate Donald Trump of the Left than Zohran Mamdani.

It would be easy to overemphasize the autobiographical and stylist similarities between Trump and Mamdani without digging deeper into the true root cause of their appeal. Too often, Democratic strategists attempting to neutralize Trump’s appeal focus on transparent messaging gimmicks and half-hearted pivots to the right on policy, e.g., taking shots in the media against wokeness, camouflage Harris-Walz trucker hats to rival the bright red MAGA standard, tough on immigration rhetoric during reelection years, etc. This fixation on superficialities prevents many Democrats from seeing what may be the primary source of Trump’s appeal to his followers: an ability to push the horizons of political possibility in clear, tangible ways. From forcing Mexico to build a wall on the Southern Border to seizing control of Greenland to the deportation of migrants by the millions, Trump presents to his followers a vision of America transformed by his policies, a new reality that voters could see and feel in their everyday lives. Revulsion toward the cruelty and chauvinistic nationalism animating these policies has prevented liberals from understanding that a true Democratic counter to Trump can only come from a candidate who also presents a vision of expanded political possibility built on policies that change the material reality of voters’ lives.

Zohran Mamdani’s surprise primary victory and emergence as a rapidly rising star on the national political scene are attributable more to the substance of his platform than the style of his campaigning. Just like Trump tossed red meat to right-wing voters tired of establishment Republicans’ vague promises of “immigration reform,” Mamdani’s platform makes clear, tangible promises of financial relief to voters who are tired of establishment Democrats’ vague promises of an “opportunity economy.” Mamdani promises a rent freeze, free mass transport, free childcare, and city-owned grocery stores. These are solutions to pocketbook issues with an impact that voters can immediately and tangibly see in their pocketbook without going through the typical Democratic Rube Goldberg Machine of means testing, tax credits, and corporate subsidies. To right-wing Republicans and a good many Wall Street liberals, Mamdani’s platform will come off as repellent as Trump’s immigration policies are to Democrats. Any Free Enterprise Fundamentalist who has bothered to read the introduction of a Milton Friedman book will scoff at the idea of any government service being “free” and warn of the black markets to be created by rent freezes. But to the Democrats who voted in New York City’s primary, it is Mamdani’s boldness to push against the limits of what we deem politically possible that inspired them to vote for him. Voters want candidates who dare to try something that the pundits and experts tell them cannot be done. Mexico never built the wall, Denmark still owns Greenland, and Trump’s enforcement of mass deportation orders looks more like a futile theater of cruelty than a genuine solution to America’s economic woes. Yet in promising bold things, Trump has won the ardent devotion of his followers. Zohran Mamdani might never get that city-owned grocery store up and running, but his efforts to expand the horizons of political possibility will likely win him a similar level of devotion from New Yorkers who gave him their vote.

There is a word we use to describe those who expand our horizons of political possibility. They are called leaders. Love him or hate him, Trump has been the most transformative leader in 21st-century American politics. Similarly, the nationwide excitement sparked by the New York mayoral primary is attributable to the fact that Zohran Mamdani is something Democratic voters rarely get to see: a true leader. Sure, we are all familiar with the leaders of the Democratic Party, but that does not mean we get the opportunity to vote for true leaders from the Democratic Party, candidates that inspire us to believe that a truly better America is possible. This was not always the case. FDR led our nation through the Great Depression and much of the Second World War, inspiring us to believe in a society where all Americans could be assured that their basic material needs would be met. LBJ led America through the heartbreak of the Kennedy Assassination and inspired us to believe that we could win a War on Poverty, protect the civil rights of all citizens, and establish the Great Society. Yet with the emergence of the professionalized New Left, the Democratic establishment would place its faith not in leaders of society but in managers of government bureaucracy and public opinion. Lacking a clear policy agenda, Jimmy Carter was enlisted to manage America’s crisis of confidence and spiritual malaise in the fallout after Watergate. Bill Clinton managed the reconciliation of Baby Boomer liberals’ desire to advance the cultural priorities of the 60s with their growing embrace of the economic policies of the Reagan 80s. Barack Obama managed to channel America’s desire for hope and change toward symbolic and tokenistic achievements while leaving intact Wall Street and Silicon Valley’s dominance over the Democratic Party. And Joe Biden was entrusted with managing America’s path to post-Trump normality, only to have his obvious struggles with managing his aging self open the door for a more vengeful and demented second Trump Administration than what would have been installed had he won reelection in 2020. Democratic power brokers have created a culture where becoming a leader of the Party requires attributes of a meek follower rather than a bold leader of society at large, a trend that reached its tragicomic climax when 2024 nominee Kamala Harris could not name one thing she would have done differently from her boss, Joe Biden. In such bleak circumstances, it is no surprise that Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign would inspire hope in Democratic voters starving for real leadership.

The Democratic establishment must reform a culture that elevates followers over leaders to positions of power if they don’t want Americans led by the likes of Donald Trump or Zohran Mamdani. If a candidate is not free-spirited and charismatically compelling enough to be accused of being a “narcissistic sociopath,” they are not capable of being the kind of true leader this moment in history requires. Moderate Democrats will take some solace in the one crucial fact about Zohran Mamdani that prevents him from ever truly being the liberal Donald Trump: born in Uganda to non-American parents, Mamdani could never become president without a most unlikely amendment to the Constitution. Mamdani’s ineligibility for the highest office should not make the Democratic establishment complacent. Power is not limited or defined by official titles. If the Democratic establishment can give us presidents who are not true leaders, then their grip on power might need to be broken by a true leader who could never be president.