Beware the Centrist Dweebs Trying to Ape Zohran Mamdani

But Hornedo has much more in common with Schumer and Jeffries than he’s letting on. His website lashes out at a “small but vocal faction on the far left,” smearing them as “agitators” and “unserious people.” Instead of embracing popular ideas like Medicare for All or universal childcare, Hornedo doesn’t go further than tired talking points about a “public healthcare option” and “childcare subsidies.” He insists, “This campaign isn’t about ideology. It’s about direction”—but hides pages on his website promoting his pro-genocide and pro-cryptocurrency agenda.

Hornedo has a political soulmate in another young candidate, 26-year-old nonprofit CEO Liam Elkind, who is running to replace retiring Manhattan Representative Jerry Nadler. Just like his Indiana counterpart, Elkind’s launch video tries to tie Nadler (who was still running for reelection at the time) to congressional gerontocracy and this year’s string of Democratic deaths in office. He commits to “building a new generation of leadership in the Democratic Party” and lists “Actually Fight Trump” as his top priority.

But being young and throwing the word “fight” around a lot doesn’t entitle you to a congressional seat—especially when you’re running to the right of the person you’re trying to replace. Elkind opposes freezing rents and opening municipal grocery stores, two extremely popular proposals among New York City Democrats. He also opposes ending the flow of weapons to Israel and insists that we must “stand with Israel, our democratic ally”—yet another position that puts him well out of touch with Democratic voters, who are increasingly sympathetic to Palestinians.

Democrats like Martin, Hornedo, and Elkind don’t represent the party’s future; they’re emblematic of its past failures. Deprioritizing policy and ideology in favor of empty appeals to the rich and powerful is exactly how Biden and Harris lost the White House to Trump last year. When you’re taking advice from your Uber executive brother-in-law (or, in Elkind’s case, financial backing from LinkedIn cofounders and Michael Bloomberg staffers), your campaign is going to reflect their values and interests, not those of working-class voters the Democratic Party needs to win back.

A superior approach, espoused by Mamdani, Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner, and other left-wing candidates, is running economically populist campaigns that are unapologetically anti-establishment and anti-capitalist. These candidates are exciting the grassroots, bringing in disillusioned voters, and building working-class coalitions that can withstand right-wing smears and millions in attack ads. (A Data for Progress poll released yesterday found that Democrats prefer political figures similar to Mamdani, AOC, and Bernie Sanders over the likes of Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Nancy Pelosi by 20 points.) If we want to defeat Trump and his fascist Republican allies, the “fighters” we elect in the next few years must be socialists and progressives—not the same centrists who’ve driven the party’s reputation into the ground.

Many Democratic candidates are learning this lesson the hard way. For example, 25-year-old Deja Foxx (named “the Next AOC” by national media outlets) recently sought an Arizona congressional seat, but was defeated by the late incumbent’s daughter, Adelita Grijalva. That sounds like a typical defeat for an underdog progressive by a product of the establishment.

But in reality, Grijalva was the candidate with progressive bona fides, endorsed by AOC, Sanders, and the Working Families Party. On the other hand, Foxx is a former Kamala Harris staffer (twice over) who emphasized empty rhetoric over concrete policies; one local reporter noted that Grijalva took a harder line on issues such as ICE. (Both Grijalva and Foxx placed well ahead of a third candidate, “pro-Israel activist” Daniel Hernández.)

And of course, there’s Andrew Cuomo, who’s now running what might be the most pathetic campaign in American history after his primary loss. The former governor’s third-party strategy for the general election (besides seeking advice from far-right Twitter posters) appears to be copying Mamdani’s videos, without any of the charisma or populism that has attracted universal acclaim. Instead, Cuomo is betting on dry clips of himself pretending to care about helping the homeless or what his campaign song should be—all while he attacks the city’s working class with a proposed means test for rent-stabilized apartments and condemnation of a potential four-day workweek.

Cuomo is now doing so poorly in the polls that he’s banking on Trump clearing the field for him. Meanwhile, Democratic leaders are sitting on their hands and refusing to endorse their party’s nominee for mayor, with Jeffries claiming that his constituents just don’t care, even as Mamdani rallies thousands in Brooklyn with Sanders and local leaders.

If Jeffries and Schumer truly wanted to rebuild their party’s crumbling national brand, there are a few steps they could take. They could move beyond the same tired playbook that lost them the White House, and instead embrace an economically populist agenda that’s laser-focused on affordability. They could ignore pundits like Lakysha Jain who encourage Democrats not to worry about their voter base, and instead listen to the overwhelming majority of Democrats demanding an arms embargo and an end to genocide. And they could leave behind the centrist grifters and disgraced governors of the past, and instead take notes from the actual “fighters” who are energizing Democratic voters: Zohran Mamdani, Graham Platner, Omar Fateh, Rashida Tlaib, and hundreds of candidates at the state and local levels.

Will the Democratic establishment heed these words? Probably not. That’s why over the next few years, the left needs to take on the establishment’s empty suits in Democratic primaries across the country—and win. Opponents of Trump and the rising tide of fascism don’t have another choice.