A surprising shift in the Democratic Party

Voters demand it. Maybe they'll get it?

Welcome to a Wednesday edition of Progress Report.

I was writing the Midweek Rundown tonight but I went waaaay, waaay long on the first item, so tonight’s newsletter will be devoted entirely to the main story. I’ll be back tomorrow night with a Midweek Rundown with stories from all over the country (including Congress) exclusively for paid subscribers.

Quick Congress pulse check: it looks as if Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill may actually fail in the House. It won’t be the total end of this thing, not by a long shot, but depending on just how many Republicans vote no, it’s going to become a very messy civil war. Let’s hope they hate every moment of it.

Tonight I want to look inward one more time at the shifting sands of Democratic politics and why it’s a good thing. Yes, a positive story about Democrats (or at least some of them). We’ll be back with lots more tomorrow, for paid subscribers.

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Something very unusual — if not downright weird — is happening in New York: establishment Democrats and corporate power players are rushing to apologize, suck up to, and/or copy a democratic socialist. And not just any democratic socialist, but a 33-year-old brown Muslim immigrant who just embarrassed them.

It started Monday, when NY Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a harsh rebuke to both Republicans and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand for making brazenly racist accusations against Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mandani.

“No one should be subjected to any comments that slur their ethnicity, their religious beliefs, and we condemn that anywhere it rears its head in the state of New York,” Hochul said.

The governor had been less than enthusiastic about Madani’s win and almost immediately shot down the tax increases on wealthy New Yorkers key to his platform. But condemning racist attacks against him was a no brainer. What made it somewhat remarkable was the fact that she clearly heard Gillibrand lumped in with the otherwise nameless offenders mentioned by the reporter who asked the question.

It was an opportunity to grab some credibility with Mamdani’s supporters and the left more broadly, something Hochul has rarely done and needs to work on ahead of her own primary campaign in 2026.

As for Gillibrand, it emerged that she too had bowed to the public backlash that followed her patently racist and misleading accusations against Mamdani during a radio interview last week.

“Gillibrand apologized for mischaracterizing Mamdani’s record and for her tone on the call,” according to a readout of the call. “Gillibrand said she believes Mr. Mamdani is sincere when he says he wants to protect all New Yorkers and combat antisemitism. She said the GOP attacks on him are outrageous and unacceptable.”

The GOP attacks have only escalated since, including a series of insults and threats from Donald Trump, who hinted at abusing his power to prevent Mamdani from becoming mayor. The president’s threats drew out another eager defense from Hochul as well as a cringey tweet from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who pretended not to even know Mamdani as recently as Sunday.

None of the three senior Democrats have gone so far as endorse the Democratic mayoral nominee (vote blue no matter who?) but they have not only endorsed his platform, they’ve tried to adopt his rhetoric as their own.

It took until this week for Hochul to fully embrace a provision in the state budget that paid down the debt on unemployment benefits stemming from the pandemic depression. Labor was pushing hard for the provision, and Hochul just so happened to hold a rally celebrating it with the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council (HTC) days after the union endorsed Mamdani.

Gillibrand on Tuesday released a hostage video in which she condemned the GOP’s reconciliation bill. That’s standard fare, but what was particularly interesting was how she framed it: “You deserve a senator that works for you, not their billionaire buddies.”

Ironic and shameless, yes, given that Gillibrand has spent her year screaming at Democrats to pass Trump’s government funding bill and lobbying hard to pass his crypto grift bill. But she did it nonetheless, and while I don’t think she’s suddenly anything resembling a populist, the cumulative effect suggests the beginning of an acknowledgment, however awkward, of a sea change in Democratic politics.

Because that is what’s happening, both in New York and nationwide, and there are a few coalescing factors that I think led to these sudden pivots.

First, Zohran didn’t just squeak past Cuomo, he wound up absolutely crushing him. It only took two rounds of ranked choice voting for him to reach 56% of the vote. Compare that early 12% win to Eric Adams’ performance in 2021, which required eight rounds to squeak past Kathryn Garcia by less than a point but was greeted as the coronation of a new national Democratic leader.

Hochul understands that the bulk of her votes in any primary and general election will come from New York City and that she can’t already be alienating a very clear majority of the city. Jeffries’ Brooklyn district voted overwhelmingly for Mamdani, too, and he’s under enough pressure as it is.

Second, Democratic voters nationwide are itching to throw the bums out. It’s tempting to treat New York City as its own unique political biome and not at all representative of the broader electorate.

Poll after poll has found the Democratic Party’s approval rating at a record low, and a survey released in late June found that the knives are out for party leaders in particular. Reuters/Ipsos found that 62% of Democratic voters agree that “the leadership of the Democratic Party should be replaced with new people,” while just 24% disagree.

Even more revelatory was the fact that Democratic voters do not think the party’s leadership is prioritizing what matters to them: economic issues.

The poll found a gap between what voters say they care about and what they think the party’s leaders prioritize. It was particularly wide on the issue of reducing corporate spending in political campaigns, where 73% of Democrats said they viewed putting limits on contributions to political groups like Super PACs a priority, but only 58% believed party leaders prioritize that.

Along that line, 86% of Democrats said changing the federal tax code so wealthy Americans and large corporations pay more in taxes should be a priority, more than the 72% of those surveyed think party leaders make it a top concern.

… only 55% of Democrats aged 18-39 thought the party prioritized paid family leave that would allow workers to care for sick family members and bond with a new baby, but 73% said it was a priority for them.

What’s remarkable is just how easy it would be to do things the right way. Mamdani’s success has been driven by a plainspoken economic populism highlighted by tangible policies and solutions — something that I’ve preached over and over again.

Here’s Mamdani in NY Magazine:

“We have tried to listen more and lecture less, and it’s in those very conversations that I had with Democrats who voted for Donald Trump many months ago that I heard what it would take to bring them back to the Democratic Party — that it would be a relentless focus on an economic agenda,” Mamdani said. “And when I asked those same Democrats who voted for Trump why they did it, what they told me again and again came back to rent and child care and groceries and even the $2.90 that it costs for a MetroCard, which is now out of reach for one in five New Yorkers. And the manner in which we have to respond to this is both to acknowledge it and actually put forward policies that would resolve it.

Emphasis mine, because it’s really what I’ve been writing for the past half-decade: give people something to vote for. Literally.

Democrats have been trying to sell the same solutions for the past two decades — they still haven’t actually really lowered the cost of prescription drugs, which was a big promise during their 2006 campaign — and vague concepts and preemptive compromises (think tax credits and “fair pay”) are very hard to grasp, let alone worth getting out to vote for. Even Trump had real concrete plans for working class Americans, which were easy to understand — no taxes on tips means no taxes on tips — if not particularly impactful.

Not all Democrats are going to be on board, but even the dissenters are Rep. Tom Suozzi, who represents Long Island, wrote an obnoxious op-ed in the Wall Street Journal slamming Zohran for “lofty, utopian” promises like more affordable housing (that might be utopian in Long Island), a freeze rent for rent-stabilized apartments (done already by Bill de Blasio) and free buses (an idea pushed by notorious communist Michael Bloomberg).

But even Suozzi, who hates popular ideas, had to recognize the power of Zohran rhetoric: “Mr. Mamdani tapped into the same economic discontent—the same zeitgeist—that powered Mr. Trump’s rise. Democrats must recognize that the future starts with a message of economic security for American families.”

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