Is there a Democrat out there who is smart enough to seize it?
Noah Rothman is no doubt correct that we will hear a lot about Zohran Mamdani as the bright new “face of the Democratic Party” over the next few months and years. There are three distinct groups in American politics who are happy to promote this narrative: Progressive activists are of course thrilled that one of their own is emerging as a major figure of resistance to Donald Trump. Republicans can’t wait to campaign against a Democratic Party in the 2026 midterms while constantly insisting that Mamdani-ism is its new governing ideology. And the mainstream press will eat the whole thing up as the Big Apple — the capital of the media universe — also takes center stage in politics for the moment.
“Mamdani is keen to play possum — at least, for now,” Noah writes. “But he will be as full-throated an advocate for socialism in the mayor’s office as he was on the campaign trail and in the New York state assembly.”
And that’s why, to any Democrat with presidential ambitions who wants to seize the chance over the next two years, Mamdani also represents a fantastic “Sister Souljah opportunity.” Remember the origins of the term: In 1992, then candidate Bill Clinton strategically used an appearance at Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition to criticize the rapper and political activist Sister Souljah. The criticism was pointed at Souljah specifically, for her answer to a question in a Washington Post interview about black-on-white violence in the Los Angeles riots — but it was widely understood that Clinton was attempting to put some crucial distance between himself (and his new, third way, moderate persona) and the failed liberal Democratic Party of the 1980s, which had been trounced three times in a row by the Reagan coalition. Though it caused Clinton to take some short-term heat from his left, the stratagem was successful and it was an important moment in his rise to the presidency.
The 2028 Democratic primary will be crowded with candidates who want to argue that the only reason Joe Biden and Kamala Harris failed is that they didn’t embrace progressivism enough. There will be Democrats who argue that the way to beat Trump and his successors and win back the White House is to go still further left. There will be candidates fueled by the new socialist energy.
But there will also be a few candidates of the center-left who will want to pull the Democratic Party back toward the political center that it has so dramatically ceded during the Great Awokening. And that’s why Mamdani — his fame, his office, his socialist ideology, and his likely coming failures and scandals in America’s greatest and largest city — will provide the perfect opportunity for a brave but ambitious Democrat to show centrist swing voters why he or she is different from Trump’s MAGA coalition and from the Mamdami–AOC–Bernie Sanders socialists. If there’s a comeback in store for Democratic third-wayism, its candidates will need to show Americans that not all Democrats are committed to open borders and mass immigration, trans ideology for kids, and the bleeding edge of woke identity politics.
At least one Democrat ought to realize that just because something is popular in progressive New York City, that doesn’t mean it’s a path to success in Michigan, South Carolina, and Nevada.
It’s an opportunity as clear as day. The question of course is: Is there a Democrat out there who is smart enough to seize it?