Messaging Isn’t Just What We Say — It’s What People Remember

In politics, the message isn’t what you write in the press release. It’s what people repeat at the barbershop. It’s what your abuela remembers when she closes the voting booth curtain. It’s the sentence that sticks long after the ads stop running. And for too long, the Left has gotten this part wrong.

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign is a wake-up call — not just because he won, but because he won while saying things we’re told voters don’t want to hear: public housing expansion, free buses, childcare as a right. He said it all — clearly, confidently, and without flinching. He didn’t run away from being a democratic socialist. He made it feel like common sense.

That’s the power of disciplined, values-based messaging. And it’s what the Left needs to re-learn if we’re serious about governing — not just resisting.

Too often, progressive politics gets wrapped up in maximalist language that energizes the base but alienates the very people we’re trying to bring along. When we say “abolish the police” without a plan, or lead with terms like “anti-capitalist” rather than “pro-worker,” we let our opposition define us before we’ve even made our case. It’s not about watering down the vision — it’s about translating it.

Mamdani didn’t abandon principle. He translated it. He spoke about affordability, not just redistribution. About freedom — freedom to raise your kids without going broke, to take the train without skipping meals, to live in the city where you were born. That’s democratic socialism made real, not rhetorical. And it worked.

The hard truth is this: most voters aren’t living on Twitter. They’re living at the edge of eviction. They don’t care if your theory of change cites Marx or Madison — they care if they can afford their MetroCard. And if you can’t meet them there, with plain language and grounded solutions, you lose them before you start.

The Right understands this. They’ve spent decades laundering extremist ideas through patriotic language: “family values,” “small business,” “law and order.” They make their ideology feel familiar — even when it’s anything but.

It’s time we do the same for ours.

That starts with owning our values, not our labels. Voters don’t need “socialism” on a banner — they need to know we’ll fight like hell for affordable housing, good schools, public transit, and health care that doesn’t bankrupt you. We need to meet them with empathy, not ego. With clarity, not code.

Let’s be honest: our ideas are popular. What’s unpopular is how we package them.

So let’s stop leading with identity and start leading with impact. Let’s trade the jargon for stories, the slogans for solutions. Let’s build a language of working-class power that sounds like something you’d hear at the kitchen table — because if it doesn’t land there, it won’t land at the ballot box either.

Mamdani showed us the playbook. Now it’s up to the rest of us to run the next campaign like we mean it — not just to win elections, but to win people.