Marjorie Taylor Greene has been on a bit of a journey lately. Over the last few months, the diehard MAGA congressman from Georgia has broken with the GOP—often excoriating the party’s leaders in Congress—on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the release of the Epstein files, and most recently the government shutdown. Even Donald Trump isn’t immune from her, especially on foreign policy. She has criticized the president over Ukraine, and now she’s suggesting that he’s more concerned about foreign entanglements than domestic problems. “It’s a revolving door at the White House of foreign leaders when Americans are, you know, screaming from their lungs,” Greene told Axios on Thursday, later adding, “I thought we were America First?”
The core of her complaint is one that she keeps returning to: that her fellow Republicans aren’t doing enough to fix the affordability crisis. “Mike Johnson has not had a single conference meeting about any sort of plan to deal with the ACA tax credits expiring,” she said. “What am I saying that can be criticized? I’m saying the cost of living is too high, health insurance premiums are destroying the middle class, and Republicans have no plan.”
It’s a message that sounds strikingly similar to one being pushed by a decidedly different politician: Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist who is poised to become New York City’s next mayor.
A lot of coverage of Mamdani’s rise understandably focuses on his style. He’s a charismatic and compelling politician with an invaluable gift in 2025: He can speak contemporaneously and comfortably in seemingly any format, whether it be podcasts about sports, stupid Instagram bits, or longform interviews. But the substance of Mamdani’s candidacy often gets short shrift. He is running a phenomenally disciplined campaign built around the skyrocketing cost of living. He can turn almost anything—the rising cost of halal food trucks or the World Cup—into a story about affordability. It is why he likely will be elected mayor in next month’s general election.
The affordability crisis is easily lost in a manic news cycle dominated by the Trump administration’s growing despotism. ICE raids, a push for regime change in Venezuela, the arrest of critics on (mostly) spurious charges—these are all stories worth covering. But for many Americans, that’s not the most important story in the country. The cost of staples like coffee and beef has skyrocketed in recent months, thanks in large part to Trump’s tariffs. Democrats may have spent the early part of the year railing about the cost of eggs, but they’ve lost the thread in recent months. The ongoing government shutdown, however, is an opportunity to retake it.
Here they can take a lesson from Greene—a sentence I never thought I’d write. But the shutdown is about affordability. Democrats are refusing to reopen the government unless Republicans agree to reinstate Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. If they expire, the cost of health will triple instantly for some families, rendering it unaffordable.
This is a topic that benefits Democrats—which is not true about many issues these days. A recent Searchlight Institute poll found that 56 percent of swing-state voters said health care should be a top priority for the parties, and 64 percent say affordability should. Only 22 and 30 percent of voters, respectively, think the GOP is focused on those issues. This is, as the pollster G. Elliott Morris noted on Twitter, one explanation for why “the shutdown is going better for Democrats than lots of people thought.”
Democrats have made those subsidies the centerpiece of their message, but it could be extended further to a larger cost-of-living crisis that people are very angry about. Obamacare isn’t the only thing that’s getting more expensive due to Republican policies. Trump’s tariffs have caused costs to rise everywhere—not just on food but household items and many consumer goods. Republicans have backed the president’s illogical (and potentially illegal) trade war at every turn, even though it is causing costs to rapidly rise.
Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, does not seem to be particularly fond of Mamdani; like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Schumer has conspicuously declined to endorse the Democratic nominee from their state. But Schumer could look to Mamdani for tips on messaging—specifically how to hammer a message at every opportunity.
Mamdani’s message discipline served him well in Thursday’s mayoral debate, when again and again he turned serious and silly questions back to his core theme. When Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa hijacked an already comic segment devoted to parades to press Mamdani on whether he would support taking down statues of Christopher Columbus, Mamdani smiled. “My focus is on affordability,” he said. When former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing in the Democratic primary, offered a stunted explanation for that loss—he basically said he didn’t tweet enough—Mamdani jumped in. “It’s been an hour and 20 minutes of this debate and we have yet to hear Andrew Cuomo say the word ‘affordability,’” he said. “That’s why he lost the race.”
Affordability is a strong issue for Democrats—voters trust them on it. Mamdani knows this. And so does Marjorie Taylor Greene. Does Chuck Schumer?
The post Zohran Mamdani Gets It. So Does Marjorie Taylor Greene. appeared first on New Republic.
