Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York Democratic mayoral primary has reignited a perennial debate within the party: Does electoral success lie in moving to the left to pick up otherwise unengaged voters or moving to the center to pick up engaged moderates?

To the Democratic Party establishment the choice seems obvious — move to the center. But the historical record suggests otherwise. The eras in which the Democrats moved to the right have rarely resulted in significant electoral success while the eras in which they have moved to the left have seen their greatest electoral victories.

The conventional wisdom that appealing to moderates is the key to winning is particularly tied to the presidential victory of Bill Clinton. A creature of the Democratic Leadership Council, created in 1985 to steer the party to a middle course, Clinton’s election in 1992 stopped the string of Republican presidential victories (five of the previous six). His explicit renunciation of progressive initiatives (e.g., “an end to welfare as we know it”) may have helped his election, but the turn to the center was hardly healthy for the party’s electoral fortunes as a whole.

On the contrary: between the 1992 and 2000 elections, Democrats lost control of the Senate and the House. This bears repeating: In precisely the years moderates point to as illustrating the electoral wisdom of moving to the middle, Democrats lost control of both houses. Although they won Senate control in 2006, Democrats never officially captured a majority of seats in the Senate until Barack Obama’s election in 2008 if you don't count independent Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Joe Lieberman (Conn.).

On the other hand, the greatest electoral gains of the Democratic Party for the last 100 years have invariably come when the party........

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