The road to political redemption for Democrats in the midterm elections and the 2028 presidential race must include heeding the lessons of affordability exemplified by Democratic Socialist Zohran’s Mamdani’s victory in the primary for New York City mayor, a former top political strategist said Wednesday.
David Axelrod, a Chicagoan who has helped elect mayors, senators and the nation’s first Black president, said the 33-year-old Mamdani defeated scandal-scarred former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo by tapping into the frustrations of working-class families and disaffected young people.
Those voters were lured by Mamdani’s populist platform that includes: taxing millionaires and corporations, freezing subsidized rents and subway fares, providing free bus service, opening city-owned grocery stores and creating a Social Housing Development Agency to oversee construction of 200,000 units of subsidized housing over a three-year period.
“The wrong response is the reflexive one: to say Democratic socialism … is a menace that will destroy us,” Axelrod said. “Democratic socialism … is progressivism. It’s not communism. Democratic socialism is a response to the failure of the system to equitably provide opportunity for people who are willing to work for it.”
Instead of dismissing Mamdani’s platform as unrealistic, unaffordable and anti-business, Democrats should learn from him, Axelrod said.
“I don’t know if Mamdani’s solutions are exactly the right solutions, but he got credit from a lot of voters for at least centering the issue that is on the minds of people. They’re struggling more and more to pay the rent, the mortgage, child care, groceries, the basic staples,” Axelrod said. “There are lessons from Mamdani for Democrats. Affordability is far and away the most important issue. It was in 2024. It continues to be.”
The party that “envisions itself, positions itself and believes that it is the party of working people has come to be seen by many working people as a party of elites and institutions that have failed them,” he said.
“Whether you like it or not, Trump is doing a teardown. And the question is, what are you going to build in its place?” Axelrod said.
Axelrod said there is “way too much hand-wringing” among his fellow Democrats and “not enough honest self-reflection” about where and how the party that has “become more and more of an urban, college-educated party” lost its way by becoming preachy and sanctimonious.
He added that the failed message to blue-collar, non-college-educated Americans was, “We’re here to help you become more like us and we know what you need … and then lecturing on cultural issues that have always been divisive in our politics.”
Axelrod’s pragmatic, tough-love message to his fellow Democrats mirrors the mantra of his longtime friend and former Obama White House colleague Rahm Emanuel.
The former Chicago mayor has been flirting with the idea of running for president in 2028, telling fellow Democrats that it’s not enough to, in a knee-jerk way, oppose President Donald Trump. Democrats need to stop harping on social issues and provide real solutions to the struggles of working-class Americans, Emanuel has said.
That’s a sharp contrast from Gov. JB Pritzker, who used his budget address to draw a parallel between the Nazi regime of the 1930s and the start of Trump’s second administration.
“JB is getting really strong reviews for the speeches he is making around the country. Talk about someone who has sort of leaned into the battle with Trump. JB has certainly done that, and … there are a lot of people who have responded positively,” Axelrod said. “Rahm is Rahm. He’s a font of ideas. He’s stirring the pot, and he loves to do that. He would play a different role in the race.”
Emanuel and Pritzker are longtime friends on the verge of becoming presidential rivals.
“They’re only on a collision course if they move up in the process, and it winnows down and they’re still in the hunt,” Axelrod said. “I trust they’ll remain friends. It’s going to certainly test that friendship if they get to that point. But we’re a long way from that.”
Axelrod told WBEZ earlier this year that it would be a mistake for Pritzker to seek a third term as governor because difficult and unpopular decisions await. On Wednesday, Axelrod said he was not surprised that Pritzker ignored the advice.
“He really likes the job of governor,” Axelrod said. “So, I’m not sure he is ready to say, ‘I’m ready to give that job up.’ It may be that this is the job I’m going to keep.”