New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) said Saturday that Democrats have lost sight of the important economic issues facing working-class Americans as the party works to rebuild itself after a devastating loss in the 2024 presidential election.
“The party, as a whole, has lost its focus on working people,” Mamdani said in an interview with MS Now.
“People want to know: What are you going to do for rent? What are you going to do for housing? What are you going to do for gas? What are you going to do for groceries? We have to have answers to that.”
Issues like housing affordability, the cost of healthcare and rising gas prices should be at the forefront of the party’s focus, according to Mamdani, rather than ideological battles that distract from what matters to most Americans.
The problem is not what policies I support.
The problem is aunt Ben that lives in the middle of nowhere. Who hates the gays and communists. But lives paycheck to paycheck.
The social left/social right split is about 50%. Some places higher, some lower. But there is a LOT of working people. And most of those will not vote against their own interests. It’s only when they have to choose between “not my best interest, but at least there won’t be drag queens in my son’s school” and “probably my best interest, but they also want to put drag queens in my son’s school. So they’re probably lying about the good things, politicians always lie”. They’ll choose the latter.
It doesn’t matter that there is no political party that wants to put drag queens in schools. It is only important that aunt Ben thinks that is true.
If you focus on the economy, and ignore the social left, will the left gain enough votes to have power.
Only when you have power you can slowly go for the social issues.
This is what the right has done in the US. They’ve been claiming they’ll bring the good economy, and just leave the social issues as they were before. Slowly the US economy has drifted rightwards. So much so that the only 2 parties are economic right. So now it is the time to turn the social right on. They went full fascism and are killing the minorities and whoever supports them in protest.
Just follow the same playbook. “We’re leaving the rules as they are, we won’t engage in discussions about culture wars”, “but we’re gonna tax the rich and give US citizens universal healthcare”. Once both parties are pro-universal healthcare, go for public transport, then anti-anti-union measures. And once the economy is leftwing enough, you can start with the culture wars.