What Democrats Can Learn From Steve Bannon

Mamdani Channels Trump

(Originally appeared In The Progressive Populist)

It was March 2013, and Barack Obama had been re-elected, having defeated Mitt Romney the previous November. Four years earlier, Obama beat John McCain, a war hero. A Black man with the middle name Hussein — even considering the full assault of Fox News and the concerted effort among the Republicans, including Donald Trump, to paint him as a Kenyan-born terrorist — was once again president of the United States. Republicans were not only furious and frustrated, they were in trouble. Their party was being characterized by many as a collection of God-bothering bigots who worshipped the rich — remember Romney’s comments about how 47 percent of the country feels like they are victims and pay no income tax? — and mocked the poor.

Since 1992, the GOP could point to only one election in which it arguably carried the popular vote: the 2004 election of George W. Bush over John Kerry. At a meeting of the National Press Club, then-Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus sought to address his party’s woes by promising that the GOP was going to change.

“We need,” he said, “to campaign among Hispanic, Black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them too. We must recruit more candidates who come from minority communities.”

Additionally, Priebus — his remarks were included in a 100-page report titled “Growth and Opportunity Project” — said the party needed to back “comprehensive immigration reform” and “put its cards on the table face up” if it ever hoped to win another presidential election. It needed to be open to women’s issues, minority concerns.

“Our message was weak,” he continued, “our ground game was insufficient; we weren’t inclusive; we were behind in both data and digital; our primary and debate process needed improvement.”

He added, “There’s no one solution. There’s a long list of them.”

He was wrong.

Steve Bannon was having none of Priebus’ “This is not your father’s GOP” rebranding. In an interview with PBS’s Frontline, after the release of the report, Bannon said, “I told Reince to his face it was a total joke.” Bannon went on to say there were no statistics that showed Romney lost because he didn’t attract those groups. The key to GOP supremacy in America, Bannon argued, was not to attract new voters, not to run to the middle, but to fire up the ones the party already had, especially angry White men. He sensed there was bubbling outrage in the country and that people like Romney, as well as former governors like Jeb Bush and John Kasich and Nikki Haley and, for that matter, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, were not reaching it.

He was right.

There was one solution, after all: Donald Trump.

What Bannon knew was that even if the Republican middle, back when there was one, didn’t approve of Trump, his style, his policies, his character, it wouldn’t oppose him enough to sit home on Election Night, much less vote Democratic, if Trump gave the GOP back the White House.

Which brings us to New York City’s mayoral election earlier this month.

A little-known state assemblyman, Zohran Mamdani, beat former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in every borough, but Staten Island, every ethnic group, and all voters 18-49. During the campaign, Mamdani spoke to hardcore Democrats the way Trump spoke (and speaks) to hardcore Republicans. Mamdani wasn’t trying to get Ezra Klein and Bill Maher to say nice things about him. Mamdani wasn’t showing pictures of himself at the Wailing Wall. Mamdani wasn’t trying to expand the Democratic base. He was speaking to the Democratic version of the GOP angry White man — those who see an active government as a force for good, for change. Meanwhile, Cuomo was like every Republican candidate against Trump who tried to sell the message that there was only one grown-up in the room, one who knew what was best — and he, Cuomo, was it.

Only this time, Cuomo was saying it was Mamdani who was inexperienced, untested, dangerous.

Mamdani, for his part, gladly took on the Trump role. He had no business running, no business beating Cuomo in the Democratic primary. He was an interloper, an un-welcome guest at the party soiree.

That was his strength.

To voters in New York City, especially young voters who eschew political labels and aren’t concerned with “brand” politics, a mayoral candidate who commits to affordable apartments in NYC is more important than one who commits to Benjamin Netanyahu. A mayoral candidate who endorses free childcare and bus fare is preferred to one who gets endorsed by the Clintons and Michael Bloomberg . . . and Donald Trump (as Cuomo did).

For the past few election cycles, Democrats in New York have been losing votes — not to Republicans, but to sofas.

In 2020, in NYC, Joe Biden received 2,321,759 to Trump’s 691,682; in 2024, Kamala Harris received 1,748,140 votes to Trump’s 786,294; in 2020,

Harris “lost” 573,619 Democratic votes; Trump picked up 94,612 of them.

Where did the rest of them go?

They never got off their sofas, that’s where.

Specifically, in Staten Island, New York, the most conservative of the city’s five boroughs, Trump gained only about 1,000 votes since 2020 — but Harris lost 25,000 compared to Biden that year.

Trump wasn’t winning — Democrats were losing.

As Steven Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service and co-creator of the NYC Election Atlas, put it, “New York got redder because it got less blue.”

That changed on November 4th.

According to The New York Times, the weekend before the election more than 735,000 New Yorkers cast early ballots ahead of Tuesday’s mayoral election, four times the number of early voters in 2021, making it the highest early in-person turnout ever for a non-presidential election in New York.

In total, the was the largest turnout in a NYC mayoral race since 1969.

Mamdani got Democrats off the sofa.