Zohran Mamdani: The Democrats' new power broker?

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0:33Ben Rhodes:This is a global production. Mamdani speaking to that hunger that people have. That's when you kind of unleash a different kind of force. I think he's really got it. And I think the Democrats need to kind of learn more from him. There are bits of Obama that you feel coming through. The Mamdani campaign in New York reminded me of the 08 Obama campaign because they were having fun. People tend to get up there and rage about the thing that isn't working rather than explain the context of the problem they have. This is a political earthquake, not just in New York City, in the Democratic Party. Because the message that people keep sending, we don't want typical politicians.

1:07Ben Rhodes:We want people who seem different. He is doing for the Democrats what Trump is doing for MAGA. New York, we know anything's possible with a great team. I'm Brad Lander, and I'll block billionaires from buying our elections. I'm Maria Lisa Avila-Chevalier, and I'll defend New York by abolishing ICE. I'm Claire Valdez and I'll stand up against bad landlords and greedy corporations Get out and vote This is the team This is our year I'm Brad Lander I'm Claire Valdez I'm Maria Lisa Avila Chevalier And we approve this message That is an ad put out by Zoran Mamdani, the mayor of New York backing three hopefuls who want to run for high office It was done as a basketball ad leaning into the victory that the Knicks had in the NBA.

1:59Overnight, all three of the candidates he endorsed won the chance to run. Some of them unseated incumbents that had been in office for five terms. What is it about Mamdani's touch that just keeps on making things happen? Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. It's John. It's Maitlis. And I guess the question you have to ask now is, is Zoramandani one of the most powerful figures in democratic politics in the United States now? He is a kingmaker. He went in, put a lot of political prestige behind backing three candidates who don't strictly conform to the template of normal democratic politics.

2:54And yet they all came out on top. And Mamdani said a thing last night which I just thought captured so much about him. He said everyone wanted to know what we would do if we didn't win. I guess we'll never know. One of those who he backed was Brad Lander, the former New York City controller, who also ran for mayor last year before endorsing Mamdani himself. And this is what Lander said after his victory.

3:21Ben Rhodes:What a glorious time to be a New Yorker.

3:27These past few weeks, there has been a powerful energy moving through our city. a generosity of spirit, a refusal to give up even against very long odds, and a feeling of joy out in the streets, shared by every kind of New Yorker there is. Do not ignore that word joy. You keep hearing it on Mamdani's lips. You keep hearing it when he talks to New Yorkers. And last night, he also said, the old politics that got us into this crisis is not the politics that's going to get us out of this crisis. And I think he's tapping into something that you could argue the Democrats have forgotten about, certainly over recent years, maybe over the last decade, which is how to make people feel good about their tribe, good about their city, good about their sports teams.

4:25He gave a speech after the Knicks basketball team won some, what, 10 days ago, two weeks ago. And it absolutely encapsulated the sense of optimism that he is trying to re-inject into his city and arguably into his party now. Just have a listen.

4:44Ben Rhodes:New York City has just had two of the most magical months in as long as any of us can remember. Over these past weeks, as the Knicks kept winning, our city has come together as one. Neighbors invited neighbors over. Strangers high-fived one another in the street. Subway conductors sang their announcements and bus drivers danced behind the wheel. So often when this city comes together, it is because we are forced to, by a moment of tragedy or adversity. What a gift it is to be brought together by pure, unfiltered joy. you know sitting listening to that you realize the power of good oratory and how rare it is to find it i remember being in america in 2008 and going in new hampshire to see obama speak at some high school and i was just completely blown away by how good he was and how much there was to kind of you know to be able to marshal that sort of oratory so mandani has one thing which is you know he's a great speaker he projects hope he projects optimism but the other thing that i think is really interesting about the democratic party now is it's going for not identikit cut out models that have come off a production line it seems to be that last night if you look at Chevalier, the woman who stood there.

6:12I mean, she has said that Barack Obama is evil and that Joe Biden is a war criminal and a rapist and has said things on social media that you would imagine would get her into huge amounts of trouble. And sure enough, you know, the MAGAverse is already going after her big time. And she's going to become a huge target in the run up to the midterm elections. But it's almost like we were discussing it on the podcast the other week about this guy in Maine, Platinum. Graham Plattner. Graham Plattner. The oyster shucker. Who's also said some pretty disobliging things. And the Democratic Party is saying, yeah, no, but we're still going with him anyway.

6:50And is this because what we want now in politics is something or someone a bit different from the cut out cardboard that we've been having for so long? I guess you have to say that the starting points for the Democratic Party is it's trying to find its feet after so many losses, right? After losing to a man they didn't think it was humanly possible to lose an election to again, i.e. Trump. And so I think at the moment there is a certain amount of casting around, right? And all they know is that the old thing didn't work. And by old thing, they also mean the old people, whether it's the Chuck Schumers, whether it's the sort of the Nancy Pelosi's, the Joe Biden's, the Jill I'm not sure Jill Biden did herself that many favours in the memoir, sort of saying, oh, yeah, I was really worried about Joe Biden on the night that he did the debate.

7:41But I didn't sort of step in to say anything at the time or indeed until two years later. And so I think there is a tiredness that they're recognising amongst voters who just feel that their party is not speaking for them. Right. And so the question is, where do you go to replenish? Do you go for people who might be, you know, part of what we would call the awkward squad or part of what we would call the social media sort of, you know, on the cusp of the unthinkable squad? If it means that you wake up people who've never voted before because they see something in that person that makes them think politics isn't all the same.

8:19I think one of the huge differences between UK politics and American politics is the extent to which US politics for long periods is run by a gerontocracy. You know, these old people that have been there for a million years, that are in their 80s or even their 90s. I mean, you know, Donald Trump is now 80 years old and the president of the United States. You know, Joe Biden was ancient. Nancy Pelosi was ancient. Chuck Schumer is no spring chicken. and all these old people who look at the younger generation and think, oh, I don't quite understand what their appeal is. They're not part of a social media generation.

8:54They're not trending on Insta or TikTok. Yet these younger ones are and are galvanising a new generation who are just sick and tired of what they've had before. Fine. But what this suggests then is that we are starting a trend where we don't like incumbents, right? So if you are saying they represent the old guard and they represent experience rather than sort of novelty and they represent old media rather than new media. What happens when the young become the incumbents? Are they done for? Does that explain the speed of churn, the speed of... I mean, look at what's happened here this week. We are getting through prime ministers more quickly than ever before.

9:33We'll be talking about this on the News Agents episode today. But I guess my question is, if we're just sick of incumbency because it represents something staid and boring and sort of, you know, that we've heard before, does anyone ever get the chance to stay in their job enough to do it well? Well, it's a really good question. I think what I'm saying is something slightly different in that American politics allowed these people to get really ancient before they were challenged. And so there is a huge generational gap between a Zoram Amdani and, say, a Chuck Schumer, who's a New York senator and the leader of the Democrats in the Senate.

10:07And so much of that is down to do with money, obviously, and the amount of money that you can raise and the amount of money that you have at your disposal when you're running for president. And, you know, look, the Democratic Party has its spasms where it kind of kicks in and, you know, recognise that Barack Obama was a huge talent in 2008. But overwhelmingly, the people who have been the sort of run the party have been the elders. And the elders, I think their time has gone and the questions they are asking and where they assume they can win is maybe not where we are in 2026. Yeah. And some of that is political policies as well.

10:41For example, Mamdani, I think, represents a streak of the Democratic Party that does not want to be in bed with Israel in the same way that previous leaders definitely were. A lot of these candidates are much more pro-Gaza, much more outspoken about Gaza than those that have been before them. There is a question of whether they represent progressive versus, you know, sort of centrist. And I'm not sure it's as simple as that. But it is about certain policies that just chime with a new generation of voters. I think it's certainly true that the Democratic Party, which historically was, you know, fantastically pro-Israel, is not that party any longer and is much more sceptical as a result of all the things that have unfolded in Gaza since October the 7th.

11:29But I'm not sure it's quite you can categorise it as sort of left right or progressives versus old school. I think it's much more that they're just looking for maybe a different, fresh, new candidates who communicate in a different way. And it's not a left right split. You know, the guy that we've asked, another guy we've talked about on the podcast is James Tallarico in Texas, who, again, it doesn't I don't think, you know, he's a preacher man. He's a man of God. And yet the way he is communicating is frightening the hell out of the Republicans because it's a message that is resonating. He's not from the template of Democratic candidates in the same way that neither of these New York candidates who won last night are from that template.

12:17They're all slightly different. But I think that is the thing that is energising parts of the Democratic Party in the way that in the way that the old guard just isn't. So one of the questions that you raised was whether Mamdani is starting to echo some of the sort of hairs on the back of the neck speech making that you remember so well from the Obama days. And in a moment, we're going to speak to Ben Rhodes, who worked alongside Obama and has just written a book on how to give an extraordinarily good American political speech.

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14:01The News Agents USA. Well, joining us now is Ben Rhodes. He was the Deputy National Security Advisor and Strategic Commsman for Barack Obama. And he's recently become the author of All We Say, which charts around 15 great speeches in American political history. And I love this idea, Ben, that you say a speech is history in the present tense. And we are seeing we are feeling so much of that now. But if you'll forgive me, I'm going to start with the epilogue. Of course. Because the book, I guess, could have ended in a very different place. It could have ended on an upbeat speech about race and sort of the healing of racial divisions from Obama in 2015.

14:45And then you say, my God, I have to rethink this. We're at an age of sort of creeping white nationalism and the sort of hope and change goes out the window and the kind of scary stuff comes in. Yeah.

15:00Ben Rhodes:Well, the origin story of the book for me was essentially a belief that living the last decade in American politics, Donald Trump and Barack Obama, in their own ways, represent two stories that have always been in conflict in American history, like a kind of nationalism that Trump represents. It's really exclusionary. You know, it's a kind of white Christian inheritor of Western supremacy. Other people can be in the United States, but they have to kind of subordinate themselves to the predominant identity. Obama, obviously the more progressive identity of trying to live up to the idea of equality.

15:29Ben Rhodes:And I originally ended the book with a speech that Barack Obama gave. It was kind of the triumphant version of the progressive narrative. It's a speech he gave at Selma, where the march across the bridge led by John Lewis took place. And after Trump won the election, I had to rethink the ending. And one of the points of the book, which kind of traces this whole story of the argument we've been having, is that America is both things. You know, it's one story never wins entirely. And right now, Donald Trump, the twist ending for my book is that Donald Trump won and his second inaugural address is where I end my book.

16:03Ben Rhodes:That's where we are right now. And I think we have to reckon that. And with that and people like me that probably believed a little too much in the inevitability of progress, you know, kind of the end of the end of the end of history. The I came of age in the 90s, you know, the civil rights movement had succeeded. The Cold War had ended in. Well, can I throw into that, Ben, that off quoted line, the arc of justice? I mean, it was something that Obama fell back on. Yes. It was something that Martin Luther King used. I think it goes back even further. But this idea that justice is inexorable, you'll get there in the end, but it's a slow and messy process.

16:39Do you still think that?

16:41Ben Rhodes:I say at the epilogue, you know, I no longer believe in the kind of inevitability of that. and the quote is that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. I think what we've learned, it's not a clean bend. You know, like it bends back in the other direction. You take a step forward, you take a step back. However, like in the present, we're so trapped in the present, it's hard to find hope in the present. When I go back into the American past, I actually do find hope because in the end, we do end up moving forward. You know, there's the arc of the whole history of the country is, yes, the wave crashes for progressive change and then it recedes each time it moves a little further.

17:23Ben Rhodes:And so I think by going into the past, I was able to kind of take a perspective that as dark as this moment is, this is not the end of the story. It may be where I ended my book. And I believe, yes, that in the end, we'll end up moving past this. Something that might surprise people, you also explain the anatomy of an Obama speech, which is fascinating, a simple formula. He didn't just tell you what he wanted to do. Instead, he told you the history of a particular issue. So he goes back, he then explains it, he gives the context, and then at the end he sort of sets out what happens. I mean, do you think that is the secret to sort of bringing people with you?

17:59Or do you think, I mean, because that doesn't really happen now, right? People tend to get up there and rage about the thing that isn't working rather than explain the context of the problem they have.

18:07Ben Rhodes:Yeah, I think so. I mean, because what Obama did and what a lot of the speeches that are effective that I write about do is they don't just tell you what you want to do. They tell you why you want to do it. You know, what about you individually motivates you? Or what about the history of a particular issue leads you in a certain direction? And I think we've been so algorithmically polarized, quite literally, by social media. We don't consume whole arguments anymore, right? We consume snippets that either make us really assured in our beliefs or really angry at the other side. And we've lost that capacity.

18:38Ben Rhodes:I think, you know, if I look at the Democratic Party in the United States, or if I look at like the problems that Keir Starmer had here, people are so focused on delivering the talking points or so focused on, you know, not offending a certain group or so focused on trying to get the social media right, that they forget the story itself, that taking people along and that idea of not just like, what's my plan, but why do we have to do this? And how can I make you believe that we can get to a different future? I'm interested in what you just said about the sort of story of America's story, if you like, because of two rival forces, a progressive, a reactionary one.

19:16And that I just wonder whether you think that Donald Trump's victory in 2016 was a reaction against Obama, a reaction against the White House being in rainbow colours when the gay marriage ruling came out, that people just thought, enough, we've gone too far. We need to pull it back.

19:35Ben Rhodes:Yeah, I think I think there are really two factors, like one structural and one more like you're identifying. I do think quite obviously the message from electorates, not just in the United States, but here in Britain, too, is that changes that have been building for decades now with globalization and free markets and the free movement of peoples, that was upending people's sense of traditional identity. You know, they felt under threat even without Barack Obama. The economy is changing. The culture is changing. The society is changing. That creates fear. In some ways, Barack Obama captured that sentiment in 2008 when he won.

20:11Ben Rhodes:I also think if you look at American history, whenever there's some kind of breakthrough in terms of racial progress, right, reconstruction after the Civil War, that's when blacks got the right to vote after emancipation, that's followed by segregation. You know, the civil rights movement is followed by Richard Nixon. And so it's actually not as strange as it felt at the time. It's not that big of an aberration to think that you have this barrier broken in Barack Obama being elected president. But also, yes, societal change, you know, gay marriage, an increasingly diverse country. it is very much in line with American history that there's some retrenchment after that kind of advance.

20:49Ben Rhodes:And I think we're still living in the competition between the future that Obama represents and the kind of reactionary force that Trump represents. So let me bring you to the present day. And if you were writing the book, if your publisher's deadline was 2027 rather than now, would there be a 16th speech? And would it be Zoram Amdani when he was talking after the Knicks won the NBA. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I just wonder what you think of him as a historic, because it's, you know, there's, there are bits of Obama that you feel coming through. I do. I think it's interesting to me that it's younger Democrats and progressives who are turning to storytelling, political storytelling, which takes place through speeches.

21:30Ben Rhodes:And I do think what Zora Mamdani represents that is effective is he's, he's unafraid, you know, he's unafraid of the people that attack him. He is joyful, which is like a common thread. I think Democrats have been too angry and kind of grim in this Trump decade. That doesn't work for attracting people to your cause. The Mabdani campaign in New York reminded me of the 08 Obama campaign because they were having fun, right? Like people wanted to be a part of it. As to be fair, they were in 2016 with Trump. You know, when the despicable thing came out, you just saw the t-shirts with the minions all over them, right?

22:08Ben Rhodes:So this is a really important point you make because I say this to progressives all the time. If you looked at a Trump rally, not my idea of a good time, but they're having fun, right? They're part of a movement. They don't mind queuing for eight hours. They don't mind queuing. It's a party atmosphere. It's fiesta. It's wearing weird costumes. Again, it's not what I would do, but we looked angry and upset and they looked like they were having a good time and they also felt like they were part of a movement. That's another thing in the book that was so important to me is that when you can capture the power of a movement, it's different than just building a campaign.

22:40Ben Rhodes:If you look at Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, it was like, we're going to build a campaign and we're going to have the right talking points, but you never got a sense. Bernie Sanders was getting the tattoos. I remember the Vermont tattoo parlor that was just doing the little Bernie glasses. Well, and a great what if of history to me is 2016. What if it had been Bernie? Like it may have been actually, that was a better person running against Trump because Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and for all their qualities, were kind of designed in a laboratory to represent a certain establishment or to represent the past.

23:11Ben Rhodes:And Trump ran as a movement politician. Again, not my idea of the right movement. But I think we progressives need to remember people that we see as reactionary, well, they can also capture the energy of movement too. And MAGA is a movement. Now, I think it's a movement that is losing steam here. So there's a real opportunity when you look at Mamdani or other younger politicians like John Ossoff in Georgia. There is an opportunity, I think, to catch the next wave. Well, let's just play a bit of Zoramandani, that speech at the Knicks after they'd won the NBA. For as long as we live, we will remember this feeling of a city together, a city alive, a city overcome by happiness.