Suozzi, describing himself as “a Democratic capitalist,” said he does not see eye to eye on everything Mamdani, a socialist running for New York City mayor, advocates. However, he urged others to recognize how Mamdani “tapped into” the concerns people have about the nation’s economy, saying this is what Trump also did ahead of the 2024 election.
“Affordability and the economy is the No. 1 issue in the country, and too often, Democrats are not perceived as being focused on affordability and the economy and the middle class and people aspiring to the middle class and their economic concerns,” Suozzi said on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. “They see Democrats as being primarily focused on reproductive rights and on LGBT protections, which are important issues, but they’re not the issues that people think about every night when they’re lying in bed thinking about paying their bills or when they’re talking about how they’re going to send their kids to school.”
Suozzi suggested Democrats need to look toward Mamdani and Trump for their “diagnosis” of people’s concerns about the economy. He further argued the public does not believe they can earn enough money to live a full life, and his party needs to “do a better job at communicating that.”
The lawmaker added that the Democratic Party needs to recognize the “media infrastructure is fractured,” in that there are more ways to reach voters now than on television or in newspapers. He cited how podcasts and social media are both popular avenues to communicate to voters, and his party must communicate on “all those platforms.”
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Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) has also called for the Democratic Party to take similar advice from Mamdani’s recent victory, which he said happened because Mamdani was “laser-focused on affordability.”
Khanna predicted that his party is “very capable” of delivering a “strong economic message,” saying the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will be a “key issue” for Democrats to focus on in the future.
