Yogi Berra famously said that it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.

Well, here are two easy predictions. First, Zohran Mamdani will be elected the next mayor of New York City. Second, Trump Republicans will label Mamdani a communist.

Their goal will be to make him the poster child for the 2026 midterm elections. To distract from Trump’s deeply unpopular bill cutting Medicaid, Republicans will insist that every Democratic candidate for the House and Senate go on the record about whether they support Mamdani.

My crystal ball offers one more vision of the political future: Former President Barack Obama will emerge from behind the curtains of retirement as a master political operator in support of congressional Democrats running in midterm elections — and of Mamdani’s run in New York City.

Search your memory, and the parallels between Obama and Mamdani are hard to ignore.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A young progressive Democrat with an unusual name comes out of nowhere, topples an old-line opponent and wins the nomination for high office. Remember Obama vs. Hillary Clinton in 2008? It is now 2025, and the new version is Mamdani vs. Andrew Cuomo in the race for New York mayor.

As the saying goes: History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. Like Mamdani, Obama didn’t wait for his turn. At 47, he became the youngest elected president since John F. Kennedy, leapfrogging Clinton and an entire generation of establishment Democrats.

Now, at 64, with gray hair and unrivaled approval among Democrats across the nation, the former president has reached out to advise Mamdani as the 33-year-old campaigns to govern America’s........

© The Hill