The Democratic Party Is at a Crossroads: Change, or Die

On Thursday, October 16th 2025, a palpable and fierce energy permeated the streets as supporters of the candidates for the New York City mayoral race gathered outside 30 Rock ahead of the scheduled debate. The people of New York City had taken the time from their midweek evenings—abandoned after-work drinks, put family dinners on hold, even capitulated to taking a late train from Penn to Long Island—to offer their voices, bodies, and spirits to what they believe should be the future of their city. And, possibly, of their nation.

The bid for Mayor of New York City falls squarely between two candidates: self-proflaimed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, and Andrew Cuomo, a leader as complicated as he is experienced, running as an Independent. The outcome of this mayoral race in New York City will validate one of two paths in the fork of a road at which it the Democratic  Party has been stalled, unable and unwilling to decide, for decades: to abandon incrementalism and gamble on radical progress, or to continue pandering to moderates and toeing the tried and true. This race is not merely about who will lead New York; it is the portrait of a Party that must choose revolution or complicitness, conviction or calculation. The party stands at the edge of its own extinction, and it has one choice left: change, or die.

For decades, Democrats have preached in the streets their colorful visions of progress and change, while practicing fearful pragmatism in the halls of legislation. What’s unfolding in New York is not new—it’s the same fracture that appeared in 2016 when the Democratic establishment turned its back on the movement that could have saved it. During the 2016 Presidential election, Democrats were presented with a rare opportunity: a populist insurgency that was reshaping the rules of engagement, pushing policy boundaries, and energizing the base. Two sides of this movement took shape as both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump gained momentum. When the Democratic Party dismissed Bernie Sanders, it taught millions of young voters that power was preordained and their vision for a different world was a mockery to the party establishment. An estimated 12% of voters who supported Sanders in the Democratic primary crossed over to vote for Trump in the general election, and another 12% chose not to vote at all. The Democratic Party treated their constituents like ignorant children, and the price was the presidency. 

No moment is ever isolated from its context, and this one is no exception. There have been many failures before and since that have contributed to the slow collapse of the Democratic Party, and my point here is not to perform a post mortem on what could have been, as tempting as it is. The fact is, our nation is bleeding out, and before we start excavating our mistakes we need to take critical action before it’s too late. 

The crisis of the Democratic Party has escalated from an inability to understand the needs, daily lives, fears, hopes, and dreams of its constituents to becoming an actual danger to the people it is trying to serve.  For decades, the Democrats have coasted by selling off the policies that they’d promised their constituents for the sake of fragile compromises. 

But, now, it is Judgement Day. 

The people are here, and we are demanding what we are owed: revolution, equality, and dignity. We have taken it upon ourselves to protest in the streets, to face-off with federal agents acting illegally, and to speak up when our leaders sit quietly in the halls of Congress. The future isn’t waiting for the Party to catch up; it’s already marching without it. America faces an existential upheaval, and every step that is taken at this point in its journey will have a formidable impact on the shape it takes moving forward. And if the Democratic Party is unable, or unwilling, to get down into the dirt with the people to build the new world, then it must accept its fate as the aging monument that it is, and quietly erode into history as the new order rises above it.