Among them: Is Mamdani’s success a glimpse into the party’s future? How much of it can be replicated outside of New York or on a national stage? And how much is the party willing to listen?

Ben Rhodes was a deputy national security adviser and close aide to Barack Obama. He’s now an author and co-host of Pod Save the World, a podcast about world news and foreign policy. Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram, asked Rhodes what lessons the party can draw from Mamdani and which candidates are sticking out as possible Mamdani-esque successes.

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. You’re here to help us understand how [Mamdani]’s being perceived within the party.

How’s he being spoken about inside that Democratic tent? It’s interesting because there are two cleavages in the Democratic Party. One is between left and center.

But the other is more about body language. Do you understand what is happening? Do you understand the scale of the danger that Trump poses?

Do you understand the scale of the disgust that people feel for the Democratic Party and politics in general? Do you understand the need for generational change? I think that Mamdani has excited just about everybody that is either on the progressive end of the spectrum in the party or who’s just eager for newer, younger faces who understand what’s going on, who do politics in a different way, who don’t feel like repurposing of the old talking points for the umpteenth time.

And so there’s a bunch of people that see him as an opportunity, someone to follow, someone to emulate. Then I think there’s Democrats that are terrified of Zohran Mamdani because of all those things. Let’s just take Chuck Schumer, who’s the stand-in for a lot of the Democratic establishment that people are frustrated with — who didn’t even endorse Mamdani, even though he is from New York.

Obviously he’s ambivalent about Mamdani’s politics on Israel and Palestine. He’s reluctant to let go of the reins to a new generation in the same way that we saw Joe Biden be reluctant in his time in office. He’s internalized these fights between the left wing of the party and the center and is worried about the ascendancy of a democratic socialist and losing control of an agenda that is usually dictated from Washington, not the other way around.

I think Mamdani has been — I don’t want to say polarizing, because the Schumers of the world can’t really speak out against Mamdani anymore because he’s so popular at this point. But I do think that there are people that are ambivalent and then there are people that are excited and the number of excited people is the growing quotient. Looking at him next to a figure like Schumer, the contrast is so apparent in two buckets: One, he’s a much better communicator.

And then two, he seems to be way better at dealing with the president. Are these the two buckets that Democrats who are in office or maybe even aspiring to national office are most focused on? Those are two of the primary buckets.

There’s obviously questions about what does the Democratic Party stand for on certain issues. But the standing up to the president, let’s just start there. Mamdani has proven what a lot of Democrats suspect, which is that our leadership has completely failed to figure out a way to deal with Trump.

They’re either railing against him in public and not able to do anything in private, or they’re trying to cut a deal in the old-fashioned way. “He’s singularly talented and he has that kind of uniqueness that Obama had.” That has not worked, and so I think Mamdani shows, “Hey, you can be smart about this and be completely uncompromising and Trump will actually respect you more.” On the communication side, it helps that Mamdani is a charismatic politician. It helps that he’s a very likable politician.

He speaks like a normal human being. And the Chuck Schumers of the world do not. It’s always some kind of seemingly poll-tested phrase about the middle class that is designed to offend the least people and therefore says absolutely nothing, whereas Mamdani just sounds like a normal guy, lik