A Lesson for Democrats

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Several rows of empty seats, including one holding just a sign, which reads

Max Whittaker / Stringer

Denver’s Pepsi Center on the first day of the Democratic National Convention, August 25, 2008

Last month Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second-largest teachers union, stepped down from the Democratic National Committee, where she has been a member since 2002. In the aftermath of Kamala Harris’s defeat in the 2024 election, the party has come under intensified criticism, both internally and externally, over its failures to motivate young voters and mount a coherent opposition to President Donald Trump. Within the DNC, Weingarten had expressed support for David Hogg’s efforts to shake up the party by funding primary challenges against congressional Democrats. Hogg, a twenty-five-year-old who had just been elected party vice chair in the spring, was instead all but ousted from his position. (He decided not to run again after the party voted to redo his election.)

Ken Martin, the Democrats’ chairman since February, removed Weingarten from the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, the body that determines how the DNC elects its officers and on which she had served since 2009. In declining to instead remain an at-large member, Weingarten wrote: “While I am proud to be a Democrat, I appear to be out of step with the leadership you are forging, and I do not want to be the one who keeps questioning why we are not enlarging our tent and actively trying to engage more and more of our communities.” 

Last week I spoke with Weingarten over the phone to ask her about what the Democrats can do differently, the repeated cruelties of the Trump administration, and the promise and excitement of Zohran Mamdani, who just this week won the endorsement of the AFT-affiliated United Federation of Teachers, the union that represents New York City’s public school teachers and staff. 

Randi Weingarten

American Federation of Teachers

Randi Weingarten

Daniel Drake: Which communities do you think the DNC has been neglecting or failing to make meaningful overtures toward, and what might explain their reluctance?

Randi Weingarten: Democrats can’t just advocate for policies that help create a better life for Americans. Presence, communication, engagement, and trust are really important. As Democrats we believe in helping the working class; in helping people have economic opportunity, dignity, and justice. But what Trump’s election demonstrated is that too many people don’t believe Democrats when we say we want to help them, because they don’t see or feel it. Actions speak louder than words. 

Just last week the Republican-led House and Senate passed the reconciliation bill for Donald Trump’s budget, the biggest wealth transfer from the poor to the rich in generations. It is a real betrayal of the working class: millions will be sicker, hungrier, and poorer. Democrats in Congress have done yeoman’s work trying to make clear who this bill harms and who it benefits, but many people still don’t know what’s in it. The DNC should have been the infrastructure for that fight: knocking on doors, making the case that with this bill the Trump administration is hurting so many Americans.

So when I say we’re not expanding the tent, I mean that the Democrats need to be engaging with a bigger universe of working families; communicating to working people how terrible these Republican policies are for them. Democrats in Congress have done that. The unions have been doing that: in the streets, on calls, on Capitol Hill, in advertising and social media. We have publicized, for example, the deep cuts to Medicaid and education. AFT members were on the Hill, SEIU’s members were on the Hill, AFSCME’s members were on the Hill, working the phones, trying to stop the bill.

Now, between the job cuts, the health care cuts, the food assistance cuts, the education cuts, and so much more, the DNC and others should be trumpeting how bad Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” is and emphasizing the contrast with what the Democrats would do to help people, if they were governing. It has to be both: why this hurts people and what we would do instead. One of the things that the AFT is pressing for is a real working-class tax cut. This moment has to be about not just why Trump is wrong but what we will do to help working families thrive in America. 

Look what we achieved with the No Kings protests—all those millions of people on the street in every state. The DNC did some work, but the party apparatus should have been engaging every day in town halls or phone banks or at rallies across the country while the bill was still being debated, particularly in districts represented by Republican congresspeople who have talked about wanting to vote on behalf of their constituents’ interests, not Donald Trump’s. The DNC shouldn’t simply be out there during election time. You have to win hearts and minds year-round. 

This is something you learn as a teacher. It’s not what is said, it’s what is heard and felt. So even if you believe in workers and labor unions, if people don’t hear it or feel it, it’s as if you didn’t say it. That’s why it’s not just policy, it’s trust, it’s connection, it’s engagement. To create that kind of trust, to be believed, you have got to walk the walk. 

I think we have lost that trust. You may not like David Hogg, for example, but he had a point of view about how to appeal to young people. You may not think that a DNC officer should be challenging incumbents, but the DNC needs to figure out a way to keep him—and young people like him—in the tent. What happened with David is a symptom of the problems in the party, not a cause. 

Often the conversation about the DNC focuses on whether or not they should tack left or motivate the base or move to the center. But what do you think its internal problems might be, outside of policy?

That conversation misses the point. I find it exhausting. It should be: What do people need? What are people losing? What do we need in order to fight for a better life for folks? That’s not a conversation about left or right. If your kid is getting health care through the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and you’re about to lose that, nobody cares whether it’s left or right. A political scientist may care about the labels, but what matters is the effect. That’s what working people see.

That’s why I think Zohran Mamdani was right to zero in on affordability in his campaign for New York City mayor. He ran an inspiring campaign. I remember that when Bill Thompson was running, in 2013, he campaigned on affordability. But people did not hear him. People heard Zohran. He was able to activate young people and other disengaged voters. 

Trump ran on a populist agenda, too, and he also activated disengaged voters. Except Trump’s populist agenda is laced with anger: othering people, demonizing them and dividing them, telling voters, “It’s them, they’re the reason you can’t get ahead. Grocery prices are too high? That’s Biden’s fault, that’s the immigrants’ fault.” He never cared about the details or the truth; there’s no problem-solving in what Trump does. It’s just anger. 

Mamdani has a populist agenda, but it’s about aspiration and policies that might help improve lives. I’ve heard people say over and over again that he has ideas that will actually solve material problems. I can see it, I can connect to it. I need transportation to my job. My toddler needs childcare when I have to work late. Rent, housing, health care, safe streets, and schools are all real issues that affect people’s day-to-day lives, so Mamdani has focused on how to make necessities like transportation, housing, and groceries affordable, and he said, This is how I think you solve it, and if you elect me as mayor, this is what I’m going to be doing day and night. And he said it repeatedly and in different ways so that people all over the city heard him. He did it in person. He did it with shtick. He did it in videos online. He did it in a way that made people say, “That’s my guy.”

Mamdani understands that what people need from their leaders are practical ideas for how to address a really important economic issue: How do we afford to raise a family in New York City? How do we afford New York City at all? How do we afford to live the American dream? We—not just Democrats who are running for office, but the DNC—should learn from his campaign. Don’t just talk about what we stand for, act on what we stand for. Day and night. Engage, listen, communicate, create trust. Create community. 

What’s particularly frustrating is that, like you say, Mamdani has been evidently successful, he clearly appealed to a lot of voters and activated new voters or voters who were otherwise disengaged. But at the same time, in the days since he won, I’ve seen nothing from the Democrats but people going on the news and trying to distance themselves from him, or not even endorse him. 

Well, not everyone. 

Not everyone, indeed. 

Let’s give some of his critics a little grace here. While there are people whose criticisms appear very self-serving—like billionaires who are opposed to higher taxes—there are other critics whose objections are rooted more in fear, either real or perceived. It’s a big city, and many communities are just getting to know him. 

The business interests seem to be stoking class warfare. Remember, Bill de Blasio instituted rent freezes and introduced universal pre-K. I don’t recall this degree of a sky-is-falling campaign against him. If I remember my history right, mayors La Guardia, Lindsay, and Wagner did much to try to address affordability. The Mitchell-Lama affordable housing program was signed into law in 1955; tuition at the city colleges that eventually became CUNY was free from 1847 until 1976. These are all policies directed at affordability. Will some people leave the city? Of course. They always do. And will some people move to the city? I believe they will. I think addressing affordability, safety, and quality of life will only help our city. The smears against Mamdani from billionaires say a lot more about oligarchical interests and people who don’t want shared prosperity than they say about anything else. 

As for Mamdani’s record on Israel—look, all of us should be fighting for the hostages to be returned, for the war to end in Gaza, and for a surge in humanitarian aid. In the long term, both Jews and Palestinians need to have peace, security, and self-determination. So while I will keep fighting for a two-state solution, so both Jews and Palestinians have a homeland, with all due respect that is not an issue of NYC governance. What concerns many Jews in New York City is safety. Antisemitic incidences are up, and so are incidences of anti-Muslim hate. Like any other community that feels vulnerable, Jews need to know that any mayoral candidate understands that and will do what is necessary to protect them. That is the core issue—and I know Mamdani is working hard to connect with the community and with Jewish voters, working to earn their trust. 

The question, for me, is whether the lesson of his campaign—the focus on affordability and the coalition he built—is getting through to the DNC, to the organization, not to its voters or rank and file but to the leadership. 

I wouldn’t know, Dan, because I’m no longer engaged with the committee. 

That’s a great answer. 

I’m just telling you, the message is getting through to a lot of people I talk to. They see the lesson from the primary. 

Do you have any sense, from your previous experience with the DNC, of any specific internal structural reforms that might help expand the tent, or help redirect the party toward the affordability approach that candidates like Mamdani are taking? 

I had great hope, because Ken Martin is so close to all these state Democratic chairs, that the DNC under his watch would be engaged in all states and territories. He was the Minnesota state chair for fourteen years, and that is what his campaign for DNC was about—that the party has to be about all the states and territories, not just about where there’s density. Howard Dean started that push, back in 2005, and I thought he was right to pursue it. 

I’m sure Martin has governance changes that he wants, I’m sure there are things that he spent a lot of time working on in Democratic circles for all these years, and I’m sure there is an imprint he wants to leave on the party. But my point is that we are in a fight over whether this country will remain a democracy; over whether people will have a path to dignity and opportunity and basic liberty and justice. That’s the fight we are engaged in right now. 

What challenges are educators, teachers, unions, or parents of schoolchildren facing under the Trump administration? Are there any specific issues in education you’d like to call attention to?

Public schooling is absolutely essential for this country’s future, for our young people to grow up with the skills and knowledge they need. It is also where every issue affecting kids—every issue in the country, really—shows up. We need the powers that be to help us, not to make the situation harder. Unfortunately, it appears that every day the secretary of education, Linda McMahon, does something to hurt us. Just last week the administration withheld $7 billion in funds for after-school programs, for migrant kids, for teacher training, for English-language acquisition. 

And this has been the pattern since Donald Trump’s second presidency started: the attacks on the Department of Education, on public schools, and on higher education. Why would you resolve to get rid of the Department of Education, to spit on the future? Make the department more efficient, sure, of course—but get rid of it? What does that signal? That you don’t care about opportunities for children? 

Why move career and technical education responsibilities to the Department of Labor, and then cut their funding? Why get rid of the grants—bipartisan grants—that are intended to help kids in the aftermath of school shootings? Why try to stop states from regulating artificial intelligence when this and social media are two of the most consequential technologies for kids? Why is the push for defunding instead of funding? Why use public money as a piggy bank for vouchers? Why smear and slime rather than support our teachers as they try to help students? That’s what we’re seeing. Fragmentation. Defunding. Lack of support.

That’s why we’ve filed so many lawsuits. Even Betsy DeVos, back in 2017, called me to say that, although we might have different views on virtually everything, we ought to send a message to parents that education has to transcend party and ideology. We went together to a school in Van Wert, Ohio, to send that message. Now they’re cutting even things that McMahon and Trump say they really care about, like career and technical education. 

Do you intend to remain active in Democratic or, more broadly, left politics outside of the remit of the AFT? What other organizations do you want to be involved with? 

In a word, yes. I work at the intersection of the two main environments for opportunity in America, labor and education. I’m still working with lots of different organizations involved in civil rights and in matters of economic and educational opportunity, like the NAACP, J Street, the AFL-CIO. Last Sunday I marched with Kathy Hochul in NYC’s Gay Pride Parade. I am very proud to be a Democrat: I believe in trying to make the American dream real for people, to help our children thrive, to create safe communities throughout the country where people have the opportunity to prosper. That’s what Democrats have stood for since FDR. But how do we create that kind of pluralism and democracy? To do that, you have to widen the tent.

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