Who’s afraid of Zohran Mamdani? The answer, it would seem, is the entire establishment. The 33-year-old democratic socialist and New York City mayoral candidate has surged in the polls in recent weeks, netting endorsements not just from progressive voices like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders but also his fellow candidates for the mayoralty, with Brad Lander and Michael Blake taking advantage of the ranked-choice voting system in the primary and cross-endorsing Mamdani’s campaign.
With the primary just around the corner, polls have Mamdani closing the gap on Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor of New York. This has spooked the establishment, which is now doing everything it can to stop Mamdani’s rise.
Take Michael Bloomberg, who endorsed Cuomo earlier this month and followed this up with a $5m donation to a pro-Cuomo Pac. The largesse appears motivated not by admiration for Cuomo – during his mayoralty, sources told the New York Times that Bloomberg saw Cuomo as “the epitome of the self-interested, horse-trading political culture he has long stood against” – but animosity towards Mamdani and his policies.
Mamdani wants to increase taxes on residents earning more than $1m a year, increase corporate taxes and freeze rents: policies that aren’t exactly popular with the billionaire set.
Because it makes their rich doners uncomfortable that they might have to lose a little money to fix the wealth inequality destroying global society.
They don’t see it as destroying global society, they see it as making a stateless system where the only metric of power is wealth
They’re getting everything they want time after time
Why should they ‘fix’ the thing that gave them their wealth?
with Brad Lander and Michael Blake taking advantage of the ranked-choice voting system in the primary and cross-endorsing Mamdani’s campaign
This is why shitheads in the Ohio State legislature just worked together to ban ranked choice voting. Almost universally bipartisan. The Democrat comments in support were extra nauseating.
dems just helped trump pass his massive crypto grift as well. Every week a new betrayal.
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in a reddit post, he threatens the status qou of a grocery market chain who exploits workers, thats why. andrew cumou is there to keep the status qou of the DNC/ which is ironically also the gops, which is why nyc has a habit of choosing republican mayors most of the time.
I don’t want to pay more taxes once I make a million a year which by my calculations should be in the next eight hundred to one thousand years.
Relevant:
I bet you one year’s salary it’s gonna take longer than that. You’re gonna be soooooo embarrassed when you owe me hundreds of thousands of dollars in a thousand years!
Which year’s salary?
The one in 3025, duh! You’re trying to trick me into waiting longer in hopes that I’ll forget. Joke’s on you, I wrote a reminder on my arm with Sharpie!
Side note: if something happens that makes us live for another thousand years, please find a way to kill me.
Hello, Michael Bloomberg here. If you would like your life span to be shorter, please contact my office. We are working on an experimental technology to transfer excess lifespan from unneeded people into job creators like me.
Gladly! I’m pretty sure I already exceeded my expected lifespan and am more than willing to transfer my debt to a billionaire.
Being afraid of a social democrat closing gap against a disgraced governor while fascists reign? Yeah that’s what I would expect.
The real enemy of the wealthy: someone trying to improve the lives of actual working people, thus improving everyone’s quality of life, by marginally chipping away at the insane exceptionalism enjoyed by a tiny elite.
I think you mean deceptionalism
Which, imo, progressive candidates should never run as a democrat, run independent. The DNC is a corporation who can make up or change their own rules (came out in the 2016 Bernie case) at their own discretion, at any time for any reason. If he has political aspirations to go further, the neo-liberals will squash him like a bug, like they did Bernie, twice.
Or do like Bernie does. Every Senate campaign I believe he runs as a democrat and after he wins the primary he switches to Independent.
Although now I’m looking it up he may have stayed democrat this last round since he was given the chairman of the labor committee in the senate
Nope, even “when he served as chairman of committees like the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, he did so while being an independent who caucused with the Democrats.” (Google ai answer)
Yes, he usually runs as a democrat and then once he wins, switches to independent, which makes sense to, I guess, abide by DNC rules and such. Won in 2024 senate race running as a dem. Currently, he is listed on Ballot Pedia as an independent, so once again, he switched it.
Totally I looked it up, Bernie is pretty bad azz… I wish he was younger….
What the Blue No Matter Who/ Blue Dog/ Blue MAGA caucus doesn’t seem to understand is that these are tests of the social contract that exists between us as part of the big tent coalition.
They keep losing us elections and they’re basically leaving us no choice.
Dems also dont understand that they dont have enough votes to win with just centrist votes.
“You helped us lose to a fascist twice, do it 2 or 3 more times & I may be forced to reconsider my choice”
What “social contract”? I don’t vote to punish or reward politicians, I vote whichever way is going to make life for me and other Americans suck less. Both popular options suck, but one sucks way more. No third party stands a chance until one of the main parties fractures, or we get RCV. My money’s on a Republican fracture personally, and the sooner they start losing the sooner that’ll happen.
Blue No Matter Who is just shorthand for those facts. Once the alternative isn’t worse, it can be discarded as a strategy. It is a strategy, not a “social contract”.
You’re part of the problem, you keep voting for the same dipshit the who got us here.
The dipshits that got us here are the Republican party and the Heritage Foundation. Not to mention all the “leftists” who never show up to Democratic primaries but complain endlessly about the candidate, then go on to vote third party or not vote at all. Bad Democratic candidates are a symptom of the dipshits responsible.
You’re the problem. I’m trying to do damage control to limit the scope of the problem. Did you have a proposed alternative vote that would have come closer to working out? Because not voting for one of the two major parties is counterproductive until one of them collapses. I don’t respect the electoral opinions of people who don’t understand elections.
I don’t support the electoral opinions who keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting change.
Keep casting your votes for pathetic, loser, corporate democrats even though they don’t give a shit about you and even though they keep lying to you again and again.
That’s what I just heard you say.
But I would prefer we blame the shitty politicians instead of each other.
Question: do you live in a red state or a red county or something?
I don’t support the electoral opinions who keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting change.
Like voting third party, or not voting? That has the same result every time, why keep doing it?
Keep casting your votes for pathetic, loser, corporate democrats even though they don’t give a shit about you and even though they keep lying to you again and again.
The most perfect candidate in the world is totally worthless in an election they have no chance of winning, and worse than worthless when supporting them splits the votes which oppose fascism, allowing it to take hold.
Lesser evil with a chance of winning is better than perfect with no chance, every single time.
The longer you treat Democrats as traitorous allies, the longer it’ll take you to understand. They are not allies. I don’t vote for them because I agree with them, I vote for them because the only alternative with any chance of winning is worse.
They are not your friends. They are temporarily useful enemies.
But I would prefer we blame the shitty politicians instead of each other.
And who nominated those shitty politicians in their primaries? We the people. If the politicians don’t represent your demographic, then there are exactly two explanations:
- Your demographic isn’t showing up to primaries
- Your demographic is showing up to primaries, but other demographics are more popular.
Voting third party is stupid, not voting is stupid. Voting in primaries is smart, encouraging others to vote in primaries is smart, educating people so that more of the voters in primaries agree with you is smart. Do smart things, not stupid things.
Question: do you live in a red state or a red county or something?
I do. So do many others. Third party might be slightly less stupid in a safe blue state, but it’s mind-bogglingly stupid as a general strategy.
If I lived in a red state in a red county and I knew the candidate was going to lose I would probably be more likely to vote third party….
I live in a blue state in a blue county where there is basically zero chance for a red candidate to win our districts… I can leave troublesome candidates blank.
The only time I would even consider voting for a candidate I didn’t like would be if our district has a reputation for being close to 50 50, and even then it would be a tough choice for me….
For national senate seats I do use different judgement calls but I really despise voting for neoliberals and centrists…
Thankfully our state has mail in voting for both primaries and the national election, so it’s super easy to vote in primaries….
I hear you it’s a tough call to make, but one thing I suggest we do is stop blaming each other…
I did it and you did it too, and it’s really dumb….
The blame lies with the shitty ass democrat party…
And fyi I don’t generally downvote folks I’m chatting with here fyi so, I do try to listen to folks I’m ranting and rave with and at
The contract is that because we share a party we share control of that party and it’s direction.
If that contract is breached, well we really don’t have a party.
The cudgel of “it rubs the centrist on the skin or it gets the trump again” only works if centrism can win elections, and that’s entirely the fucking point: it can’t. And when centrists occupy some of the most progressive districts to them cross the fucking line and vote with Republicans, what exactly is the fucking point?
Centrists do own the Democratic party, but if their business isn’t being responsible to the people in the big tent, they’ve violated the peace treaty the tent represents. If they’re going to demand that politics need to be done their way to win elections, they actually have to win elections. Otherwise there is no coalition worth having with having with them.
Internal to the Democratic party is a social contract between factions, and one of the parties in that faction seems to think they can violate that contract with impunity.
Uh, I don’t share the Democratic party. Sure, I vote any time I can to direct them to suck a bit less, but it’s not because I think they represent me. The treaty is that whoever votes in their primaries decides who their candidate is. If you’re not voting in their primaries, you have no control.
If the majority of the people really wanted a progressive candidate, they could get one by showing up in force to the primaries. Primary voting participation is like 15%, it would be easy to sweep that if people actually showed up. Get every leftist to show up to the primaries. If they still lose, that’s just democracy.
Stop treating the DNC as a traitorous ally. They are not an ally. They are a tool used to effect future material conditions. The tent represents a collection of demographics with a common enemy that they pool their votes to defeat. Leaving the tent only makes that enemy harder to defeat.
If the majority of the people really wanted a progressive candidate, they could get one by showing up in force to the primaries.
The primaries that the party successfully argued in court that they don’t have to run honestly.
The primaries they didn’t even bother to have last year.
Get outta here with that “pRiMaRy” shit. Democrats don’t do trustworthy primaries.
Uh, I don’t share the Democratic party.
You just got done saying you vote blue no matter who a few comments ago.
Frequently, answers are found by reading the entirety of a passage.
Stop treating the DNC as a traitorous ally. They are not an ally. They are a tool used to effect future material conditions.
We dont have platforms any more so how can you “vote whichever way is going to make life for me and other Americans suck less”.
And hows that working out for you?
Well, Biden was better than Trump before him, so that was nice actually. Didn’t quite have enough this time, and now the military is deployed in blue cities. I’d say it could’ve sucked a lot less.
Did you have a proposed alternative vote that would have come closer to working out?
Did you have a proposed alternative vote that would have come closer to working out?
That’s what honest primaries used to be for.
I agree, but NY is already RCV, which opens the door to better options
Agreed, that doesn’t generalize nationwide though
Are you telling me establishment democrats aren’t progressive?
never heard of them ever being called progressive.
They call themselves progressives all the time. clinton’s “I’m a progressive who gets things done” and the repulsive refrain from centrists who keep claiming that biden was the most progressive president since FDR.
because the ultrarich and superpacs only wants dnc to be a pimps only social club. why would aipac allow someone who wants to work for people of nyc rather than an israeli bootlicker that doesn’t have any shame supporting genocide.
Was Teddy Roosevelt the Mayor of NY city or Gov or NY? Either way good luck Zohran. We need another progressive trust buster out of that area now.
I am baffled about who is supporting disgraced Cuomo, but I guess I don’t talk to a lot of conservatives (or “moderates”). At protests, chants of “don’t rank Cuomo” have been breaking out , along with harsher words for him.
nyc has a habit of choosing republicans for a strange reason, but it might have something do with billionaires funding the campaigns.
They’re scared because they’re Republicans in sheep’s clothing. In fact, a majority of Democrats are. They just got done voting for more of the same genocide. Look how many of them have been calling for a war with Iran.
DINOS, democrats that couldnt get elected as a republican, because they arnt crazy enough or palatable to right wingers. Manchin is a fine example of that, WV will have a red senator next election.
Well they better take some Pepcid because there is a critical mass of people who got nothing left to lose
Because if he wins, þat make þree successful, highly visible progressives in government, and þat starts to look like a trend. Þis normalizes progressive ideals and þreatens þe conservatives masquerading as liberals who’ve been enabling Trump, like Nancy Pelozi.
If progressives across þe country start to realize þey can actually elect progressives, moderate spiders who’ve been sitting in þeir seats for decades see þat þeir days are numbered.
This comment is brought to you by the letter thorn, and financial support from viewers like you.
Your “th” seems to be autocorrecting to some symbol.
I wish. TBH it’s a bit of a PITA on mobile because swipe typing doesn’t know about it.
But I’m committed, now.
Wouldn’t PITA become PIÞA?
þ became th (voiceless, “thought, path”)
ð also became th (voiced, “there, the”)
t didn’t change
But it would be a pain in þe ass, no? The initialism would change when its constituent words changed, surely.
hmm. You have a point.
Very well. PIÞA. It looks more elegant, anyway.
p.s. as I’ve been corrected elsewhere, it’d really be “PIÐA” as “ðe” is voiced. I’d been incorrectly using þorns where I should have used eþs.
probably the th key is broken. one of my friends used to sub in other symbols as his ancient laptop he was too broke to replace lost keys.
Probably broke the ð key.
Th key?
I’m being silly, but in some languages some two letter pairs are treated as separate letters and even separately mentioned in the alphabet song for kids
Huh, cool. Which ones? And are they also sometimes written as a single character?
Old English, Old Norse, Old Swedish, Icelandic
