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THE DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT’S SHUNNING OF MAMDANI IS DISQUALIFYING
 
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Perry Bacon
August 20, 2025
The New Republic
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_ The shunning of Mamdani is an important illustration of the state
of the Democratic Party in 2025. It shows some unfortunate truths
about the party’s center-left establishment and points to some clear
steps progressives must take. _

Rep. Jerry Nadler speaks during a Zohran Mamdani press conference at
the 1199SEIU headquarters on August 11 in New York City., Photo image:
CNN

 

In the weeks after he won the 2021 Democratic primary for mayor of New
York City, Eric Adams was enthusiastically embraced by the party’s
establishment. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi posed for a picture with
Adams and described herself as “honored”
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him at a meeting of House Democrats. He was seated near President
Biden at a White House session. “Why Top Democrats Are Listening to
Eric Adams Right Now” was the headline of a _New York Times_ story
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Four years later, Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral Democratic primary in
the Big Apple by a larger margin
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Adams
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with far more overall votes, and on the strength of a spectacular
campaign that inspired young voters across the country. But the
party’s establishment is dissing him. Senate Majority Leader Chuck
Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, hugely influential
figures in both New York and national politics, have refused to
endorse Mamdani. Same for the state’s other senator, Kirsten
Gillibrand, and Governor Kathy Hochul. Many prominent national
Democrats, such as Rahm Emanuel and Cory Booker, are also
either criticizing Mamdani
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back him
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It was considered a coup for Mamdani when it was reported
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he and Barack Obama had a lengthy and positive phone call. But the
former president hasn’t actually publicly announced his support for
Mamdani, either. 

The shunning of Mamdani is an important illustration of the state of
the Democratic Party in 2025. It shows some unfortunate truths about
the party’s center-left establishment and points to some clear steps
progressives must take. 

Why are center-left Democrats so reluctant to endorse Mamdani? At
first, they hinted that he didn’t care enough about the safety of
Jewish New Yorkers, since he had refused to condemn the phrase
“Globalize the intifada” during his primary run. But now that
Mamdani has declared that phrase problematic
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the goalposts have moved. Jeffries claimed last week
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voters in his congressional district aren’t convinced Mamdani’s
ideas are achievable. (Mandami won Jeffries’s district
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the primary.)

I don’t buy the viability of Mamdani’s ideas as the reason
prominent Democrats refuse to endorse the winner of the Democratic
primary, particularly in a race against Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo,
who have long records of scandal and are in some ways trying to align
with
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Trump. If politicians only endorsed candidates who they were sure
could implement their campaign promises, there would be very few
endorsements. 

Let me move to what I suspect are their actual reasons for the cold
shoulder Mamdani is receiving. First, many center-left Democratic
strategists and lawmakers fear that prominent progressives tar the
entire party as overly left-wing
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So they don’t want a socialist to become mayor of New York City and
certainly would not endorse that person and encourage his victory.

There’s something to this perspective. Republicans do run ads
attacking moderate Democrats in purple and red districts and states
for what more progressive Democrats in very blue areas say and do.
Perhaps those ads work.  

But that’s nothing new. Before the arrival of “the Squad” made
her seem more centrist, Republicans constantly likened moderate
Democrats to Pelosi and other coastal figures in the party. In the
1990s, Democrats attacked moderate Republicans by suggesting that they
were clones of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. A political party will
almost always have some more ideological figures that the other side
can attack
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Also, the idea of local representation is important. New York City’s
electorate is to the left of say, Wisconsin’s. So it’s entirely
appropriate that the city’s leadership reflects that liberalism.
Zohran Mamdani is electable in New York City. Candidates there
shouldn’t be judged on their palatability in swing House districts
far away. 

As party leaders, Jeffries and Schumer in particular may view their
roles as appealing to the median voter across the country. That’s
reasonable. If their position is that they can’t associate
themselves with Mandami because he is too far left for swing voters
outside New York, they should state that explicitly (or at least have
their aides leak it). That way, they are not implying that Mamdani has
policies so radical that he can’t be endorsed even for New York
City. It would also end the drama around their refusal to endorse
Mandami. If their primary considerations are swing voters far away,
they have little reason to back Mamdani, no matter what he promises
them. 

But I doubt the wariness of Mamdani is entirely about electability and
party positioning nationally. I worry that Jeffries, Schumer,
Gillibrand, and perhaps more importantly their campaign donors simply
oppose someone as progressive as Mamdani holding office, particularly
one as prestigious as mayor of New York. 

One big piece of evidence for that theory is that Jeffries basically
did nothing as progressives Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman were ousted
from their U.S. House seats in Democratic primaries last year. Bush
and Bowman were not perfect politicians, but they were perfectly
electable in general elections in their districts. But more centrist
forces in the party, particularly pro-Israel donors, spent heavily to
defeat them. A similar centrist coalition is developing in New York,
egged on by the refusal of the city’s top Democrats to coalesce
around Mamdani. 

I’m really disappointed by what’s happening in New York. In my
view, the Democratic Party in the Trump era must be a true coalition
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ideological differences. That can’t work if the center-left rejects
progressives who win Democratic primaries fair and square (not to
mention in one of the more stunning upsets in recent New York
political history). Even if these party leaders end up endorsing
Mamdani before the election, they have damaged him and implied that
winning a Democratic primary alone is not enough to get support from
party elders. 

What should progressives do about the rejection of Mamdani? First of
all, progressive activists and non-politicians (me, for example)
should complain about the unfairness of it all. Most on the left got
behind Kamala Harris during last year’s presidential election, even
though we felt the Biden-Harris administration was facilitating a
genocide in Gaza. Surely free buses, rent freezes, and public grocery
stores (Mamdani’s ideas) are not more problematic than providing
arms to Israel as it kills Palestinian civilians. Jeffries and Schumer
perhaps have to consider swing districts and states. But there is
nothing stopping Cory Booker, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Biden,
Harris, Obama, Pete Buttigieg, and numerous other Democrats who
aren’t part of the party’s top current leadership from endorsing
Mamdani right now. Progressives should make the case that “Vote blue
no matter what” seems to be only respected by one side
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Secondly, progressive activists should acknowledge this reality and
internalize what it portends—that centrist Democrats have real
differences with progressives on many issues and aren’t going to
cede control of the party easily. A few years ago, I hoped and perhaps
expected that the Democratic Party would become a true progressive
party, in the same way that conservatives have captured the GOP. In
Republican politics today, the party usually nominates the most
conservative person who can win the election in a given area. (So in
Maine that’s Susan Collins, in Texas it’s someone like Ted
Cruz.) 

But Democratic politics are likely to be split along center-left
versus left lines for the foreseeable future. So Michelle Wu,
Boston’s very successful mayor, is facing a primary challenge
because there is a moderate faction in the city that views her as too
progressive. Progressive strategist Waleed Shadid argued in a sharp
recent piece
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the Democratic center is so strong and ready to contest the left that
progressives should for now retrench from trying to win primaries and
general elections in purple and red states and instead focus
exclusively on winning primaries in very blue areas. 

Progressive candidates, though, shouldn’t lead with their annoyance
with the establishment. Instead, they should follow Mamdani’s model:
Campaign hard to rank-and-file Democratic voters; meet with
establishment leaders and court their support; don’t complain about
establishment resistance even after those meetings. 

The average Democratic voter isn’t a committed progressive or
moderate. They want Democrats to win and stop Trump. They like
charismatic, inspiring candidates of all stripes. They aren’t eager
to hear Democrats bash one another. So Mamdani, by meeting with
Jeffries, Schumer, and the like, is doing his part. Those politicians
are making themselves look bad by refusing to endorse a Democratic
candidate who seems eager to build alliances across the party. Even
centrist voices such as the xxxxxx’s Tim Miller are questioning
why Jeffries
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senior Democrats won’t endorse Mamdani. 

But I don’t think progressive politicians should just let this
behavior slide, either. They need to recognize that they are in a
coalition with some allies who don’t respect them, and act
accordingly. Progressives have leverage, and they should use it. For
example, if Democrats win the House majority next year, progressive
members should demand, in exchange for voting for Jeffries to be
speaker, that he pledge to endorse the Democratic nominee for
president, whoever that is. That way, if somehow a progressive wins
the nomination, Jeffries won’t be able to repeat this dance of
bashing the candidate that the party’s voters support. If he won’t
make that commitment, progressive members should not give their votes
to Jeffries for speaker, instead holding out for another Democrat who
will make such a pledge. 

The Democratic Party is so ideologically diverse these days, from
Rashida Tlaib to Jared Golden, that there are bound to be conflicts.
But not every disagreement is legitimate. There is no good reason for
Jeffries, Schumer, or Gillibrand to refuse to support Mamdani, an
inspiring candidate who won the primary and is willing to work with
people to his right, particularly when his opponents are the ethically
challenged Adams and Cuomo. Party leaders are dead wrong here—and
their terrible instincts in New York are a reflection of their broader
shortcomings. 

_[PERRY BACON [[link removed]] is a staff
writer at The New Republic and host of the TNR show Right Now With
Perry Bacon
[[link removed]]. Prior to
TNR, he was a weekly columnist at The Washington Post. Perry has also
been a commentator at MSNBC, a fellow at New America and the
University of Chicago Institute of Politics, and a political writer
at Time, TheGrio, NBC News, and FiveThirtyEight. He has covered six
presidential campaigns and interviewed Joe Biden, Barack Obama,
Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Nancy
Pelosi, and numerous other prominent politicians. He is a graduate of
Yale University and lives in Louisville, his hometown.]_

* Zohran Mamdani
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* New York City mayoral election
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* Democratic Party
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* Andrew Cuomo
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* Eric Adams
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* New York City
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* 2025 Elections
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* 2026 Midterms
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* Elections 2026
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* Donald Trump
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* GOP
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* Chuck Schumer
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* Hakeem Jeffries
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* Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
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* Gov. Kathy Hochul
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* Rahm Emanuel
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* Cory Booker
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