Obama official says Democratic Party 'afraid of its own future,' wants it to embrace Mamdani strategy

Ben Rhodes, a key former Obama administration official, believes the Democratic Party is "afraid of its own future" and needs to embrace the strategy of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who identifies as a Democratic socialist. 

Rhodes, who was deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, is perhaps best known for his advocacy of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. He has since emerged as a prominent figure in liberal media as a contributor to MSNBC and co-host of the "Pod Save The World" podcast. 

His latest work is a New York Times guest essay headlined "How Short-Term Thinking is Destroying America," which suggested Democrats are reluctant to "stand behind controversial positions or abandon language that polls well but sounds hopelessly inauthentic" because they don't want to alienate donors. 

"Even when presented with Zohran Mamdani's campaign in New York - an innovative example of fresh political tactics and policies - many party leaders recoiled. The party seems - quite literally - afraid of its own future," Rhodes wrote. 

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"It is past time for Democrats to do what Mr. Mamdani did in his campaign: get out in communities. Don't live in fear of bad-faith attacks. Mine cities and state legislatures for new ideas. Enlist civil society, faith groups, beleaguered universities and industry in envisioning an alternative future," Rhodes continued. 

"Abandon campaign financing that makes you beholden to donors who make you hypocrites. Make a concerted effort to facilitate generational change, so that the faces of the party are younger, different and more diverse," he added.

Mamdani is a Ugandan-born Muslim who won the Democratic Party's primary for New York City mayor in June. He launched a "Five Boroughs Against Trump" tour in the Big Apple on Monday.

Rhodes concluded his guest essay by writing, "Trump is a 79-year-old strongman nostalgic for the past. His domination of the present is not permanent, but it is leading many Americans to live in the status quo he commands while ignoring where we are going. To overcome that reality, Democrats must mobilize people to believe in the future."

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Rhodes became a nationally recognized name in 2016 after boasting in an interview with The New York Times Magazine that he and Obama's foreign policy team built an "echo chamber" of experts to help sell the controversial Iran nuclear deal. Trump later pulled the U.S. out of the Iran deal in 2018, calling it "defective at its core."

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Fox News' Brandon Gillespie and Deirdre Heavey contributed to this report.