This is an adapted excerpt from the June 25 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
On Wednesday, every Democrat who holds office in this country woke up to the possibility of a primary challenge next year because of what happened the night before in New York City. Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman and democratic socialist, is poised to be the Democratic nominee in New York City’s mayoral race in November.
It’s hard to see Tuesday’s results and not take a step back to look at what this means for the future of the Democratic Party and the existential question of whether it’s up to the task the moment demands.
Mamdani’s success tapped into the seismic dissatisfaction among the Democratic Party base with the political establishment and status quo. Mamdani — a Muslim immigrant born in Uganda to a filmmaker and a college professor, who came to the U.S. when he was 7 — toppled a multigenerational political dynasty in New York and delivered a crushing defeat to the state’s disgraced former governor, Andrew Cuomo.
In hindsight, the knockout blow came during a televised mayoral debate a few weeks ago, when Mamdani took Cuomo to task over his many, many scandals and for his steadfast refusal to pronounce Mamdani’s name properly.
To Mr. Cuomo, I have never had to resign in disgrace. I have never cut Medicaid. I have never stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA. I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment. I have never sued for their gynecological records. And I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr. Cuomo. And furthermore, the name is Mamdani: M-A-M-D-A-N-I. You should learn how to say it.
Mamdani’s margin of victory, in the first round of New York’s ranked choice voting, was more decisive than even his most ardent supporters were hoping for. He managed to build a multigenerational coalition of voters along lines of race, ethnicity, religion and class, who stood up and rejected Cuomo and the political status quo he had come to represent.
At some level it is a new story, but it is also something we have seen before in politics. Two candidates that come to mind are the most successful Democratic politicians of my lifetime, former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
In fact, in his endorsement of Mamdani on Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York said Obama’s victories in 2008 were the closest possible comparison to what we saw on Tuesday.
For some reason, the Democratic Party has forgotten how important it is to run genuinely talented candidates.
Clinton and Obama were very different figures, ideologically speaking, but, like Mamdani, they represented a kind of generational shift against the party’s old guard. Clinton and Obama were both considered long-shot candidates when they first announced their intentions to run for the presidency. But the two men managed to put together winning coalitions in large part by rejecting a party establishment that was seen as increasingly out of touch with voters.
However, for some reason, the Democratic Party has forgotten how important it is to run genuinely talented candidates rather than handing the reins to the people who have simply waited their turn. That strategy has proven catastrophic.
Hillary Clinton won the party’s nomination in 2016 largely on the argument that it was her time to serve. She lost to Donald Trump. Despite pledging to serve as a bridge to a new generation of leaders, Joe Biden made the shockingly short-sighted decision to run again in 2024, before dropping out at the last minute and handing the nomination to the person next in line.
But, even after those defeats, so many figures in the party establishment have still failed to get the message. That’s how we got high-profile figures like Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn and Clinton himself telling voters that a disgraced 67-year-old former governor is the future of their party instead of an outsider candidate who manages to inspire voters.
Mamdani’s success should serve as a wake-up call for Democrats. The party needs to elevate voices from outside the establishment. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont may have fallen short in his 2016 campaign, but he inspired a once-in-a-generation realignment within the Democratic base.
Sanders’ campaign inspired a young bartender from the Bronx, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to unseat an establishment Democratic congressman in New York. Ocasio-Cortez’s upset victory in 2018 in turn inspired Mamdani to run for the New York State assembly two years later.
To be clear, a few months ago, Mamdani’s victory would have been inconceivable. He faced a massive uphill battle to get to Tuesday’s results. An Emerson University poll from February of this year showed him with 1% support. Mamdani also had to overcome some really ugly, Islamophobic smears due to his long-standing and unflinching pro-Palestinian politics and criticism of Israel. Additionally, he faced real skepticism from lots of Jewish New Yorkers who have seen antisemitic attacks and vandalism in this city and go to synagogues with security watching over them. Mamdani’s success should serve as a wake-up call for Democrats. But Mamdani overcame the odds by running an extraordinary campaign and, in large part, by staying relentlessly, laser-focused on one issue: affordability. Like Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid,” or Obama’s message of “Hope and change,” or even Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” Mamdani ran on one consistent principle: Make New York City more affordable. He also did an excellent job meeting voters where they are. Mamdani first went viral with a video outlining his plan to lower the price of a New York City staple: Food from Halal trucks. Mamdani masterfully gamed the “attention economy” from that point on, and much like Trump and JD Vance in 2024, he cast as wide a net as possible, essentially never declining a media appearance, whether that was a conversation with the centrist Bulwark podcast, an interview with an Urdu-language news channel, or just a fun video with the popular internet talk show, Subway Takes. What Mamdani did in New York over the past few months shows that there are solutions to the problems that have caused Democrats so much despair since November’s election. Mamdani thrived with young men and in immigrant communities across the city, two demographics that drifted towards Trump less than a year ago. Of course, Republicans are champing at the bit to smear Mamdani and try to tie him to the future of the Democratic Party. In fact, in between his NATO meetings and travel, Trump went after Mamdani on Truth Social calling him a “Communist Lunatic.” So while it remains to be seen how much of Mamdani’s success can be replicated across the country, it is clear he has tapped into something special.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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