Here's what the Democrats can learn from Zohran Mamdani [View all]

An interesting article on Mamdani. I didn’t know that some other cities are contemplating the city-owned grocery. His appeal to younger voters should have the traditionalists in the Democratic Party taking note. We do not need the same old tired election messages of the past, we need to reassure younger voters that they have a future.

“Mamdani’s ideas are not pie-in-the-sky. The rent guidelines board, appointed by the mayor, voted 0% increases on some leases in 2015, 2016, and on all leases in 2020, during the pandemic. Democratic mayor Bill De Blasio got universal pre-kindergarten staffed, funded, and full almost immediately upon election in 2014.

Chicago and Atlanta may be moving ahead with municipal groceries. A 2023 pilot program waiving fares on five New York bus routes was largely successful, and its failures can inform the next attempt.”

How would Mamdani pay for all this? Impose a 2% tax on the top 1%–residents earning more than $1m annually; and raise the top corporate tax rate to match neighboring New Jersey’s, to 11.5% from 7.25%.

Snip

“Their [young people] jobs are precarious, their credit cards overcharged. They have no health insurance and wonder if they’ll ever retire their student debt. They come from mixed immigration status families and imagine middle age on a broiling planet. And they are the young voters who turned out overwhelmingly for a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. If the Democrats want the same results, they need to offer these voters, who personify America’s troubled working and middle classes, a progressive vision.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/01/democrats-zohran-mamdani