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WHAT THE POLLS ARE SCREAMING TO ‘MAINSTREAM’ DEMOCRATS  
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Harold Meyerson
September 9, 2025
The American Prospect
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_ The Democratic rank and file is much more aligned with Bernie, AOC,
and Zohran than it is with Chuck and Hakeem. _

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) endorsed Democrat Zohran Mamdani for New
York City mayor this week. The two are seen here at a town hall
gathering at Brooklyn College on September 6., Andrea Renault/STAR
MAX/IPx

 

Lately, the gap between what rank-and-file Democrats believe and what
many leading Democratic officials say and do has widened to Grand
Canyon dimensions. I’ve noted previously
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that while just a bare 8 percent of Democrats supported Israel’s war
on Gaza in a July Gallup poll, a substantial minority of Democratic
senators voted against a Bernie Sanders resolution in August to halt
our nation’s provision of offensive arms to Israel.

Now, two new polls reveal the core ideological beliefs of Democrats
and those of their top leaders are similarly dissimilar. A _New York
Times_/Siena poll
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released today shows that democratic socialist and Democratic mayoral
nominee Zohran Mamdani leads Andrew Cuomo in New York’s mayoral race
by a 46 percent to 24 percent margin, with Republican Curtis Sliwa and
incumbent Eric Adams bringing up the rear.

On a more fundamental, what-do-you-believe, who-are-you level, a
Gallup poll
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yesterday shows that nationally, the percentage of Democrats who view
socialism positively—66 percent—exceeds the percentage who view
capitalism positively—42 percent—by (using my powers of
subtraction) a 24 percentage point margin. At a less theoretical level
where the rubber meets the road, the _Times_/Siena poll of New Yorkers
showed that 37 percent of them (not just the Democrats) said having a
democratic socialist for their mayor would be good for the city,
against 32 percent who said it would be bad and 26 percent who said it
would be neither good nor bad. As well, the specifics of Mamdani’s
“affordability” agenda’s social democratic policies polled
considerably higher than his opponents’ stances.

Let’s back up a bit. From the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt
through that of Lyndon Johnson, the prevailing ideology of the
Democratic Party was a weak-tea version of social democracy. The
Carter and Clinton presidencies marked a clear switch to
neoliberalism, from which the Obama presidency never really shook
itself free.

Today, in a period when wage income lags hugely behind investment
income and when income inequality, consequently, continues to soar, it
shouldn’t be all that surprising that a substantial majority of
Democrats react more positively to democratic socialism than they do
to actually existing capitalism. Yesterday’s Gallup poll also showed
just 37 percent of the public, and 17 percent of Democrats, had a
favorable view of big business, in sharp contrast to a Gallup poll
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released just 12 days ago that showed that 68 percent of the public,
and 90 percent of Democrats, had a favorable view of unions.

So—by what standards, by whose standards, are Bernie Sanders,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani outliers from the
Democratic mainstream? In thus far refusing to endorse Mamdani, it’s
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul who’s the outlier among her fellow
Democrats. I understand Mamdani’s politics would likely pose an
obstacle to a Democratic candidate running in a swing district, though
Dan Osborn’s showing in Nebraska’s Senate election last year shows
that a progressive populist program may fare a lot better than is
commonly thought, even in nominally conservative climes.

Meanwhile, however, the politics of urban Democrats are clearly the
politics of, at minimum, anti-corporate, anti-bank social democracy.
Yet the Democratic leaders refusing to support Mamdani seem to believe
that urban Democrats should support establishment candidates who
don’t share those urban Democrats’ beliefs—beliefs rooted, I
should add, in the life experiences of those urban Democrats. Those
leaders’ position resembles what Bertolt Brecht famously
characterized as that of the East German Communist politburo when it
faced a mass popular uprising: that the politburo should “dissolve
the people and elect another.”

You might think that some leaders and pundits who pine for the days of
the centrist Democratic Leadership Council’s repudiation of both
minority rights and social democratic policies might realize that
Mamdani is running on the latter, and will make social democracy the
hallmark of his administration should he win. If that affronts the
strategic sense and ideological faiths to which these leaders and
pundits cling, they should at least ponder the question of how many
political parties stay in business when they reject the politics of
their base.

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* Democrats; Democratic Socialism; Bernie Sanders; Zohran Mamdami;
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