Mamdani says DSA pushes party to working-class roots

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Friday that democratic socialists running as Democrats are “going back to what the party used to be,” arguing their rise reflects a return to the party’s working-class roots.

Speaking to SiriusXM’s “Urban View,” Mamdani said the current wave of democratic socialist candidates—like Summer Lee in Pennsylvania and Jamaal Bowman when he first ran in 2020—reclaims the Democratic Party’s 20th-century identity as a coalition of factory workers, union members and Black and Latino voters. He contrasted this with the party’s later shift toward corporate donors and neoliberal policies under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist who won City Hall in 2021 as an outsider backed by the Working Families Party, said the resurgence reflects frustration with decades of economic inequality and corporate influence inside the Democratic Party. He pointed to polling that shows younger voters and nonwhite voters increasingly rejecting centrist Democrats, especially on issues like housing and healthcare. “This isn’t radical,” Mamdani told host Clay Cane. “It’s what the New Deal coalition looked like.”

The remark comes as progressive groups prepare to back more democratic socialist candidates in 2024 and 2026 primaries, aiming to shift the party’s platform on Medicare for All, rent control and climate policy. Mamdani’s comments signal growing confidence among democratic socialists that they can remake the party from within, despite resistance from party leadership. If successful, the strategy could redefine Democratic priorities nationwide—or deepen internal party fractures ahead of the next presidential election.