Mamdani, a proudly socialist 33-year-old, holds a 44-36 percent lead over over former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo – who was hoping that New Yorkers had short memories, and were ready to re-elect the textbook centrist Democrat.
However, after the disaster of Trump’s first year back in the White House – with everyday American life interrupted by protests, immigration raids, corruption allegations and the unshakebale feeling that the nation is about to enter World War 3… It seems the pendulum is swinging back towards left-wing politics.
It appears that the success of Mamdani isn’t so much a vote against Trumpian politics, but more a vote against the stale nothingness of the Democrats top brass – who, while pitching themselves as the progressive option in America’s political system, very seldom action – or even – offer – left-wing policies.
There’s also kind of an answer here to why people voted for Trump.
People are angry. They don’t necessarily know the best policies to resolve the country’s poor direction, but it’s clear to so many people that what we have isn’t working.
Many of us have had a conversation over drinks with a confident person at a party who maybe has a job you don’t understand well, and who just speaks confidently about all the things that are fucked up, and what they’d do in charge. As long as they don’t make claims of “Things are mostly okay”, they can make up any target: Immigrants, trans people, government overspending on overseas programs. The key is, they have to match the voter’s anger. The rest follows naturally.
I’d also say that’s how Obama got elected. He had a message of hope and change.
I know people who voted for Trump specifically because they thought the best way to make things better in the long run was to elect someone who would make things drastically worse first. That it was necessary for him to win to teach a lesson to various dysfunctional parts of the system that would otherwise be complicit in a decline to the same destination, differing only in speed.
It’s unfortunate that fascists don’t give back power. I have a coworker who was getting fed up with people like Macron succeeding over here, and he was saying “sometimes I wonder about Le Pen getting elected, maybe it’ll work to show how bad they really are at doing anything and people will finally vote left” (he’s from Algeria, he absolutely 150% isn’t a far right voter or even heavily religious himself) and when he saw Trump the first time, on Jan. 6, it finally registered in his head that you really can’t give fascists a single step in the door, ever, even if they’re shit at doing anything, you have to erase them everywhere because they’re not shit at keeping and abusing power.
What’s even more unfortunate is that the other people who are in power most of the time (“center right”) don’t actually want to keep fascists out of power if doing anything costs them power.
I have two points to add to this:
1 - As a liberal, there was nothing more frustrating than having to vote for Kamala, a candidate who was aggressively “pro-cop”, especially as many in the country were protesting for defunding cops. Youre not going to energize most people with an angle like “You want us to vote to stop Trump?”
2 - As a person who is part of the black/immigrant community, the government has a history of ignoring us for decades. It’s not the federal government, but the local government too. Systematic racism has always kept us down. And I hate to say it, Trump got a wall going. Trump has ICE harassing immigrants. These are newsworthy events, even if they’re in the wrong fucking direction. But a Democrat has a history of never wanting to create a ripple as they appeal to all sides.