What Democrats can learn from the Mamdani & Spanberger campaigns

While there are real differences in their politics, such a framing is reductive, and glosses over crucial commonalities in their campaigns. As such, none of the politicians provide perfect templates for the Democratic Party to follow nationwide.

Party at a crossroads

The elections of last November saw the Democrats lose the White House, and both houses of Congress to the Republicans. With the Supreme Court also having a conservative majority, all three organs of the federal government are with the GOP or aligned to its politics.

At the national level, the Democrats have failed to find a political idiom to take on Republican dominance, even as Trump’s policies have unleashed chaos across the country. The party’s leadership is deeply divided on multiple issues, and there is no unified vision of how to proceed in the face of Trumpian excesses.

State-level and local politicians, however, have been more promising.

Arguably the biggest political star to emerge this year has been Zohran Mamdani, a political newcomer who elicits polarising reactions, but is likely to win New York’s crucial mayoral elections. Notably, Mamdani’s victory will come against all odds: he defeated heavy-weight Andrew Cuomo in the party primary in June, and is once again set to best the veteran politician, who is now running as an Independent, despite having a fraction of Cuomo’s resources at his disposal, and receiving only muted endorsements from top Democrats.

Mamdani, 34, is a self-described socialist whose campaign has revolved around economic problems afflicting the average New Yorker. His proposals include making buses free, providing free child care, a four-year rent freeze, and raising the minimum wage to $30. These are ambitious, yet easy-to-understand and digest, a throwback to Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal that responded to the economic crises of the 1930s.

Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer, has been another rising star in the party. The Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia, Spanberger’s politics is more muted than Mamdanis’ — and that’s by design. She refrains from making apocalyptic statements about American democracy under Trump, nor does she promise “radical” changes.

Spanberger is betting that the antidote to Trumpism is unflashy competence and — this is important — a focus on cost of living. She did not make tall promises which will be difficult to deliver, but rather insisted instead that by simply running a steady ship things will be better for the disgruntled masses.

‘Cost of living’ a common thread

Spanberger’s understated approach is in sharp contrast to Mamdani’s force of personality. And their politics is indeed marked by major meaningful differences, most notably regarding law and order. But pitting them against each as polar opposites misses a simple fact: both have focussed on economic issues throughout their campaign, even if their prescriptions may vary.

It is this economic focus, and an unwavering commitment centring cost of living that, experts say, has been key to their success. Even as older Democrats call for moderation and younger voters seek radical change, the successes of Spanberger and Mamdani are testimony to the fact that what matters most is speaking to the issues that affect the average Democratic voter.

Since the time of Bill Clinton, when Democrats made a rightward economic turn, the lines between the two major parties in the US have been blurred. Today, both party establishments stand for the interest of capital and big corporations; they have failed to address fundamental economic issues ailing the American working classes, turning to culture wars instead.

The cult of Trump captured deep grievances in the American body politic by channeling people’s economic anger toward the Other: immigrants, leftists, trans people, and so on. The Democrats’ doomsday messaging and a focus on culture wars has failed to provide an effective political alternative in the face of Trumpism.

Both Spanberger and Mamdani, who are running for office in two distinct settings, provide this alternative. The takeaway from their campaigns is not that the Democrats need to pivot to the left or the centre, whatever that means, but that their messaging needs to be clear, on the point, and resonant with the disaffected masses.

At the end of the day, the US is a massive country with a diverse population. There is no right campaign strategy that works in all settings. Instead of quibbling about specifics, Democrats need to look at the big picture: that the current American generation is not as well off as the ones in the past.

Both Mamdani and Spanberger, in their own ways, have done that. This is not to say that their differences do not matter. But in the grand scheme of things, these differences may also simply be reflective of their respective political settings, with Mamdani running in the bluest of blue liberal cities, and Spanberger running in the more conservative American South.

What unites the American people today, across settings and their own differences, are economic hardships: wages have stagnated, prices have skyrocketed, and social safety nets have been progressively gutted. To regain its lost footing, the party needs to recognise this reality, and speak with clarity and conviction on these issues.