With President Trump continuing to bulldoze through American politics, Democrats are forced to confront a fundamental question: Do voters even want what they’ve been offering?
The meteoric rise of Zohran Mamdani, a fiery young Democratic Socialist who recently claimed a shocking New York mayoral primary win, points to a grim answer.
It’s presumptuous to extrapolate too much from one state or local race. (Remember how Scott Brown’s special election win in Massachusetts was supposed to signal the end of liberalism? Exactly.) But underestimating moments like this is also dangerous because tectonic rumbles often precede a political earthquake.
Even if Mamdani isn’t the solution — and he likely isn’t — his stunning victory suggests a sobering possibility: The very thing Democrats have been running from is precisely what voters are chasing.
For a decade now, there have been basically two prevailing theories about how to beat Trump.
The first is simple: Be whatever he isn’t. If Trump is vulgar, be decent. If Trump is chaotic, be stable. If Trump breaks things, fix them. This theory is comforting, but it also assumes that voters will respond to decency and logic. An assumption that, as it turns out, is dubious.
The second theory, while cynical, may be more accurate: Fight fire with fire. If you can’t beat him, join him. Not on policy — that would be insane — but on vibe. If Trump is a spectacle, Democrats should find one of their own.
Trump understood the importance of dominating the public’s attention from the start. Apparently, so does Mamdani. And so do a handful of other left-wing firebrands (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, et al.) who make the party’s establishment look like buttoned-up accountants.
There are different ways to break through in the modern era. You can be young and hip. You can be weird and magnetic. You can master the art of long-form podcast appearances and creating viral social media videos. But above all, you must eschew the trite pablum of scripted politicians.
In this regard, it’s difficult to divorce style from substance. It’s no coincidence that today’s most attention-grabbing pols tend to promote the most radical proposals that also happen to excite previously underserved portions of the electorate.
“Build the wall.” “Lock her up.” “Defund the police.” “Medicare for all.” These slogans are all, to varying degrees, unworkable — and previously unthinkable. But they all sound unorthodox and decisive, which in the contemporary political ecosystem is more effective than being wise or correct. Case in point: Trump can shift an entire news cycle by suggesting we should invade Canada or Greenland.
Could a mainstream Democrat, if he or she were charismatic and talented enough, cut through that noise? In theory, yes. But the problem with moderates is that they tend to be moderate. Even in how they talk and how they dress.
It’s not just their policies that feel safe — it’s their entire aesthetic. And in the attention economy, that’s a real handicap.
The center, to paraphrase Yeats, cannot meme.
This is why Mamdani’s radical take on politics is so resonant. Like Trump before him, he proposes ideas that have been wildly outside the political mainstream, and he actually seems to believe what he’s saying.
This last part is key. Younger voters, especially, don’t merely want revolutionary policy positions; they want existential authenticity.
So what is his radical take on politics? Mamdani wants to freeze rents and make buses and childcare free. He doesn’t think billionaires should exist. He has floated the idea of government-run grocery stores. He’s openly anti-Zionist. He refuses to condemn the incendiary phrase “globalize the intifada.” He’s confrontational. He’s shocking. He’s newsworthy. He’s … a complete turnoff to middle-aged, conservative commentators like me — which is proof he’s succeeding!
It might be horrible for America to have not one, but two extremist parties; but after years of trying to sell candidates who won’t scare the suburban normies (with Kamala Harris being an earnest yet flawed attempt at this), you could forgive Democrats for wondering if what they really need is a Trump of their own. Someone who is fiery, meme-ready and authentically combative (albeit in a younger and entirely different package than Trump).
It’s way too soon to say if this will be their trajectory. But it’s worth noting that, outside of Mamdani’s victory, the only Democratic moments this year that have evoked any real excitement or virality came during AOC and Bernie rallies.
Still, nothing is guaranteed. If Democrats decide to go this route (say, with an AOC candidacy in 2028), they risk alienating otherwise “gettable” swing voters and dragging down the entire ticket.
Indeed, some of Trump’s most potent 2024 ads involved pointing out Harris’ previous dalliances with “woke” politics. And that was with a candidate going out of her way to appear moderate.
What energizes the base can just as easily terrify the middle. And it could hand fresh ammunition to a suddenly rudderless Republican Party, which without Trump on the ballot in 2028 could be quite vulnerable to losing to a standard-issue “vanilla” Democrat.
Nevertheless, there’s an increasing sense that Democrats have no choice but to crawl into the carnival tent Trump built and become louder, flashier and fringier than he was. Not just because trying to be the respectable (read “boring”) party of institutions failed, but because our modern media milieu all but demands it.
Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”
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