Mamdani Is the Future Face of the Democratic Party, Whether Democrats Like It or Not

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, November 04, 2025

 

For weeks now, progressive activists have tried to muscle Democratic lawmakers into explicitly endorsing Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral bid, elevating the question into a litmus test — the price of admission into the left-wing political ecosystem. Those who “know what time it is,” to borrow a thought-terminating cliché on the right, have buckled under that pressure. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was among those who broke. But while he endorsed the Democratic Socialist’s candidacy, Jeffries still attempted to keep his options open.

 

“No,” the Democratic House leader told CNN’s Jake Tapper over the weekend when asked if Mamdani represented the “future” of the Democratic Party. “I think the future of the Democratic Party is going to fall, as far as we’re concerned, relative to the House Democratic Caucus and members who are doing great work all across the country.”

 

Jeffries’s dismissive remark seems not to have thrown Mamdani off his game. It was only two weeks ago that the Democratic mayoral nominee declared himself the leader of a “movement that won the battle over the soul of the Democratic Party.” Today, however, the candidate is quick to assure reporters that his “ambitions are squarely within these five boroughs” of New York City.

 

If you believe that, I have some “free child care” to sell you.

 

Neither Mamdani nor his progressive supporters are coy about their aims or the scope of their ambition. They want to engineer a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party, supplanting what they regard as the corporatist, lethargic, and capitulatory class of establishmentarians presently at its helm. But that’s tomorrow’s problem. Today, the Democratic Party is seeking to contain the fallout from Mamdani’s election and ensuring the rest of the party is sufficiently insulated against the charge that he and his socialist politics are ascendant.

 

In a dispatch in, of all places, MSNBC, Democratic political professionals lamented how difficult Mamdani is about to make their jobs.

 

As Democratic strategist Caitlin Legacki confessed, “It would be a grave mistake to think you could run somebody with these policy positions anywhere outside of America’s most liberal city.” Third Way executive vice president Matt Bennett agreed. “The [Democratic Socialists of America] platform — which Mamdani has not repudiated — hands a potent set of weapons to Republican ad makers eager to tie Mamdani-style politics to Democrats running in much tougher places than deep blue New York,” he observed.

 

It’s not as though there’s no evidence in support of that contention. Not only have figures like New York Senator Chuck Schumer and New York’s Democratic Party chair Jay Jacobs declined to endorse the candidate, some New York-based state and federal lawmakers have gone so far as to express their opposition to his candidacy. And Bennett forecasts a long and bitter battle to prevent Mamdani from becoming the arbiter of political fashion among Democratic voters. “The fight not only has not ended,” he said, “it has not yet begun.”

 

Mamdani is keen to play possum — at least, for now. But he will be as full-throated an advocate for socialism in the mayor’s office as he was on the campaign trail and in the New York state assembly.

 

“There are many who say that a democratic socialist vision of governance for New York is impossible,” Mamdani said in a video posted late Monday to his campaign’s social media accounts. “To them, I say: We need look only at our past for proof of how socialism can shape our future.”

 

Mamdani will get his wish. Every American will look to New York City to evaluate how its experiment with socialism is going. Whatever the results of that experiment, the Republican Party will frustrate Democratic efforts to maintain some plausible distance from the highest-profile mayor in America.

 

If Mamdani wins, he will almost certainly shelve the demure posture he’s adopted for the benefit of apprehensive Democrats in Washington. He will want to play the colossus bestriding left-wing politics, and the GOP will help their favorite foil secure that status. If conventional Democrats are inclined to contest Mamdani’s play to become the party’s spiritual leader, they’ll have to adopt a less passive posture than the one they’ve assumed. Don’t hold your breath.

 

Democrats didn’t have the spine to make a stand before Election Day — when Mamdani had not yet won high office and hadn’t consolidated his role as the avatar of the progressive movement in America. Why should we expect them to suddenly show some backbone when the stakes for their party and respective individual careers are high?