If Democrats do not take up a populist strategy, they will continue losing to those on the right who do. Despite positioning themselves as the left-wing choice, they have continued to withhold support for policies that help working class citizens, social programs like public transportation, and popular progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani. While this was not a problem in the static political environment that establishment Democrats and Republicans upheld for the last century, the rise of candidates who run on populist platforms within the GOP has presented a significant problem for the establishment Democrats.
This was first seen in the 2016 Presidential Election, and to a shocking degree. The two candidates — the GOP’s Donald Trump and the Democrats’ Hillary Clinton — represented opposite ends of the political spectrum, and not just one drawn by party lines. Trump truly was a bold but necessary choice for the GOP after the disastrous 2005-2009 term of George Bush, and the loss of the two subsequent elections to the underdog Barack Obama.
Unlike the past two Republican presidents, Trump had little political background, instead relying on his reputation as a businessman for influence. In contrast, Hillary Clinton was heavily connected to the Democratic political establishment, through her husband Bill Clinton, and her previous political occupation as senator.
However, Clinton seemed to embody the Democratic establishment, a direct result of the previous Obama administration. In Obama’s 2008 campaign, he cashed in on the optimism and hope for systemic change that was in the air after the housing bubble popped. This farce was quickly seen through by many leftists in the party. In both of his terms, Obama deported record amounts of immigrants, increased drone strikes to extreme numbers while downplaying civilian casualties, and failed to halt military involvement in Afghanistan., This left many of his more politically conscious voters feeling disillusioned, both with Obama and the Democratic establishment he had come to represent.
Trump capitalized off this distrust. He ran against the Democrats intelligently, emphasizing his differences, lack of political connections, and capacity for change. The Democrats were unprepared, and despite decisive cultural dominance and an incumbent status, narrowly lost the election.
The Democrats had a candidate who would have been a much more effective response but chose not to nominate him despite a strong voting record: Bernie Sanders. Unlike Clinton, Sanders was a populist candidate seeking reforms to a variety of issues, including healthcare, minimum wage, corporate bailouts, tax rates, and other quintessentially progressive policies.
Sanders had a solid political record as a Vermont Senator, a position he has held since 2007. While not as strong in urban centers, he polled much better than Clinton in rural white communities, a stronghold for Trump. Sanders was the best of both worlds: progressive enough to challenge Trump’s position as “change” candidate, but with enough of a political resume to maintain longstanding and important Democrat voting blocs. However, his rhetoric was unpopular with establishment Democrats, and he lost the nomination.
Fast forward to 2020, when after a rather ineffective four years in office and two impeachments, COVID-19 was quickly becoming a major force with political ramifications. While many former Trump voters spoke out against him after seeing his style of governance, the real reason incumbents lost was the massive change that the pandemic forced on everyone. After two years of self-isolation, complicated disease control policies, and vaccine misinformation, people craved stability. Understanding this, it’s clear why Trump was going to lose.
Obama’s former Vice President Joe Biden was a clear choice for the Democrats. Biden represented everything Trump was not: stable and clearheaded with a long political history. Not only this, but both his age, gender, and race made him an even more attractive candidate for former Trump voters. In essence, he occupied the role of “America’s Grandfather.”
Another four years later and this very fact was used against him. Biden’s term was moderately successful, if relatively uneventful. Trump used this to his advantage in the 2024 elections, occupying a familiar role. Once again, he was the “change” candidate in contrast with the establishment Democrat Party. While Biden had a solid record as president, he typified the Democratic Party’s aging establishment, having been a senator from 1973-2009 as well as Vice President for both of Obama’s terms.
While this was symbolically important for many progressives, more important was Biden’s physical age. Videos of him seeming frail, stumbling over his words, and poor debate performances all went viral. Like his 2016 campaign, Trump let his opponent make mistakes and then applied great pressure to those weak points.
This was used to such a devastating extent that Biden pulled out of the race on July 21, 2024, after a disastrous debate performance that led to many sitting Democrats to call for his withdrawal. Biden left only five months for his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to campaign for election. Trump, after seemingly vanquishing the incumbent, now faced a new threat. Harris was 18 years his junior, a person of colour, a woman, and had only a short political career before becoming vice president.
While at face value Harris seemed like a far-left-winger’s dream, she was anything but. Before becoming a politician, she was California’s Attorney General, a position which many on the far left held great contempt for. While she was publicly in favour of Roe v. Wade, several of her other positions seemed vaguely establishment Republican: throughout her campaign she was pro-fracking, pro-war, anti-immigration, and generally pro-Israel.
Embodying this was the endorsement of the Harris campaign by Dick and Liz Cheney. Dick Cheney was George W. Bush’s Vice President from 2001-2009, and an important player behind the widespread imperialism that impacted the Middle East during those years. He commandeered an unprecedented level of power in the administration, and while largely unknown at the time, many now consider him the architect of the many wars in the Middle East. So, while his endorsement might have been welcome from some disaffected Republicans, it was a clear red flag for many progressives.
Alongside Republicans like the Cheneys, the Democrats ran a very expensive and short campaign for Harris. Celebrity endorsements from the likes of Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, and Arnold Schwarzenegger abounded. Massive, star-studded campaign rallies became the norm. All told, the Democrats spent 1.5 billion in just 15 weeks.
Despite their flashy endorsement, Republican appeals, and incumbent status, the Democrats lost, and in a glorious fashion. Not only did Trump win the house, as he did in 2016, but the popular vote as well, beating Harris by seven million votes.
Strikingly, the Democrats did not only lose in demographics they usually would, like among white male older voters, but in both Black and Latino demographics as well. More importantly, the Democrats lost the under-30 demographic in key states, a long-time staple for their party.
After the monumental 2024 loss, it may seem clear that the Democratic establishment needed a change to remain a viable party. However, despite what seemed like an obvious solution, many within the party did not agree. Instead, they pointed at would-be Democrats for the loss, decrying them as racist and sexist for not voting for Harris. They blamed other leftists for not endorsing a campaign that went against their fundamental values, one that seemed to embody the establishment that had long forsaken them.
In October 2024 Zohran Mamdani announced his candidacy in the mayoral race for New York City. While a member of both the Democratic Socialists of America and the Democratic Party, Mamdani chose to seek candidacy with the Dems. Unlike typical Democratic establishment candidates he was firmly a populist candidate. His campaign promises included universal childcare, city owned grocery stores, and a $30 minimum wage, all of which differ starkly from the maintenance of established norms which typified party politics for generations.
During the Democratic primaries many establishment Democrats were staunchly against Mamdani. Initially, the Democratic party backed the deeply unpopular incumbent mayor Eric Adams. This unpopularity, especially concentrated in groups situated to the left of the Democratic Party and in concert with New York’s 2021 switch to ranked choice voting, led to a rapid swing in election results.
After Adams lost the Democratic primary, he ran as an independent in the mayoral race and garnered little of the vote. Mamdani’s Republican opponent Curtis Silwa ran unopposed, but was not seen as a threat, dually because he is not taken seriously by many, and because Republicans do not represent the same power they hold nationwide within northern urban centers like New York.
Disrupting this, and giving Mamdani a formidable opponent, was disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo received millions from New York’s wealthiest, including former Republican mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Despite this, Mamdani won the mayoral election and was sworn in on January 1.
If the left learns lessons, his victory should mark a shift away from the moderate and indecisive politics that are hallmarks of the Democratic establishment for the past two decades. For many people, candidates like Mamdani represent hope in what they see as a failing electoral decision. He is a candidate that people can be proud of and stand behind, not just another least-bad politician in what seems to be a race to the bottom.
This is all to say that the democrats must become populists if they wish to remain relevant in electoral races across the U.S.. While populism has become somewhat of a dirty word among leftist circles, used in conjunction with words like fascism to describe the Trump administration. Instead, Democrats need to see it for what it truly is, a winning political and a necessity for the future.
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