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5 questions about the Democrats’ Tea Party moment

3 8
06.07.2025
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, speaks during a press conference celebrating his primary victory on July 2. | Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

Last weekend, my colleague Christian Paz wrote about how the Democratic Party could be on the brink of a grassroots takeover, similar to what the GOP experienced with the Tea Party movement. It’s a fascinating piece that could have huge ramifications for Democratic politics, so I sat down with him to chat about his reporting for Vox’s daily newsletter, Today, Explained.

Our conversation is below, and you can sign up for the newsletter here for more conversations like this.

Hey, Christian, how are you? Remind us what the original Tea Party was. What is this movement we’re talking about?

The movement that I’m talking about started before Obama was elected. It was a mostly libertarian, grassroots, localized, not-that-big movement — a reaction to the bailouts at the end of the Bush administration. The idea being there’s too much deficit spending and government is becoming way too big and becoming unmoored from constitutional limited-government........

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