As a humidity-cursed resident of a Florida swamp, I didn’t get a say in New York City’s Democratic primary contest, didn’t know very much about the contestants and have no idea what will happen in the general election. Nonetheless, I take great joy in my fellow Democrats showing a gross, corrupt, belligerent sex pest the fucking door last night.
James: His critics said that he should wait his turn. His critics said that he did not have the experience. His critics said they did not have the right name. Well, now all of them know his god damn name.
Also of note: several prominent billionaires set piles of cash on fire to try to stop Mamdani and got nothing for it. Great job, y’all!
Open thread!
On The Road – 🐾BillinGlendaleCA – Galaxy Season
Baud
Congratulations to the winners.
Who did the Republicans cough up?
Van Buren
More of this, please.
Let the other guys be the party of corrupt old white guys.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: The beret-wearing weirdo from the 1980s, I think?
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Curtis Silwa got the GOP nod unopposed, I think.
Nettoyeur
If it takes a Muslim Democratic Socialist to make NYC a tad more livable than the overpriced Gotham it has become, I’m for it.
Suzanne
Fuck yes. It has been really disappointing to see how many Dems see serial sexual harassment in the course of exercising government power as… maybe not okay, but something compromise-able.
Also, there’s been a fair bit of Islamophobia thrown at Mamdani, and that’s gross.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
The only beret wearer I know is Monica Lewinsky.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Anyone who has tolerant of people who didn’t vote for Harris is tolerant of sexual abuse. It’s ingrained in the broader culture.
chemiclord
My first worry, that New Yorkers would eventually reject a more progressive candidate because of vibes, has been assuaged.
It also seems to me my second worry, that Cuomo would run as an independent spoiler if he did indeed lose the primary, has been assuaged. The way he fairly readily conceded tells me he’s not particularly inclined to fight on.
So, now I’ve skipped to my third worry, that impatient voters will turn on Mamdani in a New York minute when he isn’t able to immediately implement every part of his platform… because it turns out the mayor isn’t a king and the civil structure isn’t going to be budged easily, knowing that voters are short-sighted, ill-tempered, and profoundly incurious about how city politics work.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Thanks. Assuming Cuomo stays out of it due to the thumping, I assume it’s a three way race between Mamdani, Adams, and Silva. Can some new billionaire enter as an independent? Is the general election also ranked choice?
Questions for the group, not just you.
Suzanne
@Baud: Yes, agreed. It’s always telling to see what people are willing to compromise on when values come into conflict.
As I noted in a thread some days ago, I completely understand the concept of harm reduction when choices are effectively binary. But this race wasn’t a binary thing.
Baud
@chemiclord:
Your third worry should be his winning the election.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Yeah, I know very little about the other candidates, aside from Lander(?) being arrested.
Betty Cracker
@chemiclord: Yeah, from what little I’ve read about it, city politics are positively byzantine. Maybe the alliance with Lander will be helpful in that regard, if Mamdani wins.
YY_Sima Qian
@Suzanne: Brad Lander enthusiastically endorsed Mamdani on the evening go the primary, & Mamdani surely will endorse Lander for whatever office the latter chooses to run for.
Geminid
@Baud: I’m pretty sure the genaeral election will not be Ranked-choice. Some of the polling for the primary showed either of Cuomo and Mamdani winning the general election with a plurality, and there was no mention of a runoff or RCV.
Betty
It’s kind of interesting that this election has a few parallels with Obama’s. He was called a socialist and a Muslim and told to wait his turn rather than challenge Hillary. Of course, the differences are that Mamdani is a self-described Democratic Socialist and a Muslim and is only 33 with even less time in public service.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud:
We had a good run, Baud, but it looks like we are no longer welcome in the Democratic Party….
Jeffro
I think it was Jamelle Bouie who, post-Senator Hollen’s visit to El Salvador, said something like “let’s see more Dem politicians with naked ambition, please”
(which I took it to mean, ‘let’s quit playing it safe here, folks’)
And he’s right. And Mamdani was right to not ‘wait his turn’. Many other examples come to mind.
I’m encouraged that the Democratic Party just might be figuring out that our voters, at least, are not ok with corruption and don’t give a damn about name recognition. Our party still means something.
Suzanne
@Baud: Of the people I know in NY, most favored Lander, some favored Zohran, and most felt some degree of positively about some of the other candidates. I’ve never lived anywhere where I did ranked-choice voting, so I don’t really grok the dynamics, but it seemed notable to me that people may have had a favorite but that didn’t imply that they thought the other choices were bad. Which is nice.
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne: next time they’ll run Bernie Goetz. Or perhaps they’ll join the 21st century.
I feel old just knowing who these people are.
Geminid
Besides Mamdani, Ranked-choice voting may have another winner in this primary.
Not that the result neccesarily vindicates the system, but a Cuomo victory could have soured opinions on RCV.
chemiclord
@Baud: Silwa isn’t going to win, and the way that Cuomo readily conceded suggests to me he’s not particularly interested in trying to be a spoiler/win as an independent. Adams at this point is a non-factor.
Unless Mamdani does something absolutely Trumpian-level dipshittery, the office is his for the taking.
Baud
@Geminid: Thanks.
@Steve in the ATL:
I’ve never liked the term sex pest. It seems too playful a term for what is pretty heinous behavior.
Jeffro
related: Cheryl Rofer has an interesting post up that references a tweet-thread by someone (Rosemary Joyce) that I’d never heard of before. It’s worth checking out when you have a minute:
It’s a good pair of points: the GOP is dead as a party; the Dems are being ‘led’ by their own voters.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
That’s good, because I can’t answer any of them.
Baud
@chemiclord:
Thanks for the info.
Baud
@Geminid:
Yeah, people pissed all over ranked choice because Adams won last time.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Mamdani was a prominent voice in the Uncommitted campaign and refused to endorse Harris.
Kirk
@Baud: Well, there’s that girl over there. The one in the raspberry beret.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Did Cuomo use that?
Suzanne
@Jeffro: I read that thread yesterday and it gave me a lot to think about. So something I’ve been thinking about…. I have thought for a while that a lot of people don’t really have any conception of the underlying values of being a Democrat, what genuinely differentiates us from the GOP. I have said that here, and the response is often that “Dems are the party of civil rights”. I don’t know that younger people think that. I don’t know that we’ve passed that value down. Might be time for a new “social conversation” around values, and how that manifests in a new generation.
Geminid
@Baud: I liked the old-school term, “Masher.” .
Another Scott
Things don’t change until they do.
Campaigning is very different from governing. They’re different skill sets.
People can grow into the job.
Who knows what will happen – certainly not me! My prognosticating skills are really, really bad.
Here’s hoping that Mamdani is a good mayor for NYC, and is perceived as a good mayor for NYC by enough voters to get the job done.
Fingers crossed.
Forward!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
Pshaw! I know folks who don’t even know who Richard Jewell was.
satby
We’ll see what happens. After Johnson won in Chicago and has done between mediocre to poorly even with the Democratic base, I’m not sure mayor of a huge city is a job for a neophyte.
I was hoping from afar for Lander. Progressive but a bit more experienced. Since they cross endorsed each other, Lander could be a valuable ally.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I have no idea.
No One of Consequence
This pleases me to no end. The fact that billionaires exist is testament to the moral failure of our society, and the common person’s inability to comprehend medium to longish periods of time.
Or math.
-NOoC
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I hadn’t heard if he did. Too late now.
CaseyL
@chemiclord: I dunno. There’s an awful lot of PAC money behind Cuomo, not to mention his own sense of ambition and entitlement. If he runs as an Independent, he has to contend with Adams, who is also and already running as an Independent, and who is already pretty pissed at Cuomo horning in on his grift.
I guess any number of people can get onto the ballot as “Independent.”
Bupalos
@Baud: This is about a half step from calling everyone “pedos” like Musk does.
Baud
@Bupalos:
Not everyone shares my disdain for sex pests. To each his own.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: According to many NYers in my feed, Cuomo ran a lackluster campaign.
PatD
@schrodingers_cat: 99% of people here had likely never heard of Mamdani before 2025. In any case, let’s see the receipts.
Young people are showing us how to move the country past the turn to fascism and are bringing new energy and life to the Democratic Party. Let’s be part of the solution.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
It is what is what is. I respect the outcome of the this primary like I have every other.
schrodingers_cat
@PatD: Google is free, and I am not your assistant.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby: Yeah, my Chicago homies are none too impressed with Johnson. Managing a big city is an enormous and exceedingly complex job. Bright ideas and good intentions are not enough. I wish Mamdani the best, though, assuming he wins the general. VERY glad that Cuomo lost.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yeah same. But I am going to spend zero energy to defend a guy who organized people to not vote for Harris.
eclare
Oh that photo today, it’s gorgeous. Thank you WaterGirl.
Layer8Problem
@schrodingers_cat: For what its worth, Harris’ stepdaughter endorsed Mamdani.
PatD
@schrodingers_cat: No, but evidence of Mamdani being a prominent uncommitted member seems to be buried on Google. Assuming this repeated claim is even true it seems that it didn’t matter a bit or the billionaires backing Cuomo couldn’t make it stick.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: Ugh. Then not interested in his further career. NYC mayors are always trash anyway.
NotMax
Did someone say Noo Yawk?
;)
Steve in the ATL
@Kirk:
here are the two best covers of it:
The Derailers and Hindu Love Gods
The latter is REM – Stipe + Zevon, to put it into mathematical terms. shrodingers_cat can expalin where the name came from. I can’t post it because of my delicate sensibilities.
Bupalos
@Betty: The parallels are fairly superficial I think. What’s most distinctive about Mandani is that he’s actually running on a policy slate. His call and response at rallies is policy, at least according to him. He says “we’re going to have free…. “ and the crowd yells “BUSSES!”
This is the kind of politics Dems need to get in to. Trump beat us to this delivery mechanism with pure uncut poison. We need to figure out how to use it to deliver the antidote.
Jackie
@Van Buren:
Kirk
@Steve in the ATL:
What, did JD take your fainting couch? again?
Soprano2
I think it’s up to the voters of New York who their mayor is. I’ve seen a lot of people online hyperventilating about this result – some are going so far as to say this probably lost the mid-terms for Democrats! Remember when the election of Eric Adams was supposed to signal a new direction for the Democratic Party, the people were speaking to tell Democrats they were too extreme, blah, blah, blah. I think most people don’t know or care who the mayor of New York City is. Let’s see first if he can get elected, and second what kind of job he does. He might flame out spectacularly, like Adams did, or he might do a great job. People are already writing the obituary of someone who hasn’t even been elected yet, that seems CRAZY to me.
I always think it’s funny when people say things like “Democrats need new, fresh, young, inspirational candidates” and then when one comes along it’s always “but not like that!”. *rolling eyes emoji here
Bupalos
@Baud: Your disdain there is for anyone who didn’t vote, and your method of attack is to accuse them of being proponents of sexual violence.
It’s the living-on-the-screens thing, which seeps out, and is a big part of why we lose.
prostratedragon
@NotMax: The people ride in a hole in the ground.
PatD
@Bupalos: I think many Dems can take something away from how he ran his campaign. Relentlessly positive and focused on improving quality of life. Everything Dems say they want by focusing on “kitchen table” issues.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia/a>
“Always” is quite encompassing.
DeWitt Clinton? Seth Low? La Guardia? O’Dwyer? Wagner? Lindsay? Even Koch?
(And I’d lay good folding money on the table no other burg has had a mayor with the same first name as Cadwallader Colden.)
;)
Harrison Wesley
I haven’t followed this race much, but I find it remarkable that someone so young could pull off the win. Maybe my perception is skewed because I’m an Old.
Splitting Image
@schrodingers_cat:
Not exactly a feather in his cap, in my opinion, but I think that sticking a fork in Andrew Cuomo’s career has to go some way towards making amends.
NotMax
Oh my stars and garters. Linkage gone wild. Fix.
@zhena gogolia
“Always” is quite encompassing.
DeWitt Clinton? Seth Low? La Guardia? O’Dwyer? Wagner? Lindsay? Even Koch?
(And I’d lay good folding money on the table no other burg has had a mayor with the same first name as Cadwallader Colden.)
;)
Geminid
@CaseyL: There is an Independent candidate named Jim Walden who’s polling at 6 to 7% in general election matchups. I don’t know much about him.
A recent Emerson poll tested both Cuomo and Mamdani in a general election. Emerson polling chief Spencer Kimball:
This Emerson poll understated Mamdani’s primary election support, and they weren’t the only one. I’ve seen criticisms that these polls were modeled on the 2021 electorate, and that year saw a low-turnout primary. Now I want to find turnout numbers for this one.
RevRick
@Baud: Curtis Sliwa, who was unopposed. Eric Adams is running as an Independent
Soprano2
@Baud: I agree that tolerance of sexual abuse is still ingrained in our culture, in spite of “Me Too”. There are still too many people who believe men have the right to “misbehave” sometimes (that’s how they characterize it), and that when they do it’s the woman’s fault for somehow being “wrong” – wore the wrong clothes, wore the wrong makeup, moved in the wrong way, or said the wrong thing. It’s actually insulting to men, because it implies that they just cannot control themselves under the right circumstances. Women, OTOH, are expected to always control themselves no matter what the circumstances are, then we’re told we’re “too emotional”. If you think these things are contradictory, you’re right.
UncleEbeneezer
@schrodingers_cat: And don’t forget his signal boost of “Globalize the Intifada” which really should be a deal-breaker for truly Progressive people in a time when antisemitic hate-crimes are rampant. I really hate the fact that antisemitism is now being completely ignored (or worse, celebrated) on the Left. It’s wrong, gross and shows just how easily manipulated our side can be.
LAC
Nice! Good to see that the power of voting, rather than hashtagging oneself into irrelevance, can work. May it become a habit. And ridding NYC of the Cuomo clammy hand curse is a much needed. reprieve.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
O. Felix Culpa
@NotMax: I’ll never forgive Koch for his stance during the AIDS crisis.
rikyrah
Really am interested in the details of how and where he got his votes.🤔
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Uh huh😠
Soprano2
@UncleEbeneezer: So explain how a Jewish candidate united with him in this race if he’s anti-Semitic. I saw them both on Colbert earlier this week, and they both seemed like great people. Of course, it’s hard to tell from just a short appearance like that.
Baud
@Bupalos:
I think it’s hypocritical to challenge people not to vote for Cuomo because he is a sex pest if you’re excusing people who didn’t vote for Harris even though Trump is a rapist. I get savvy people think they can draw fine lines between voters engaged in similar behavior based on their political strategy, but I’m not one of them.
Of course, if any Cuomo or Trump voter wants to join our fight in the future, we have an open door policy.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
I know that’s right😒
NotMax
@Geminid
Sliwa has been yesterday’s bird cage liner for quite a while. If Dolt endorses him, kiss what’s left of his meager support sayonara.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Suzanne
@Baud:
Agreed. A fly is a pest, a minor annoyance.
Cuomo is a serial sexual harasser, which represents contempt for women, abuse of the power of his office, and it creates a workplace culture of fear for the women who worked below him on the org chart. It’s essentially a low-grade hate crime. Not a minor annoyance.
UncleEbeneezer
@rikyrah: I’m gonna guess he didn’t get most of his support from Black or Jewish voters. More likely white, trust-fund progressives. But we’ll see.
LAC
@Baud: open door, but keep your yap closed.
catclub
Sliwa, not Silwa or Silva
Steve in the ATL
@O. Felix Culpa: and he was gay!
NotMax
@O. Felix Culpa
Thus the qualified use of “Even.”
oldster
I think Mamdani is likely to be an embarrassing failure, and I am *still* glad he beat Cuomo. Let the next generation have their shot, for better or worse. I never want to hear from Cuomo again — or from Bill fucking Clinton. One aging predator supporting another was just too gross.
Good luck to the kid with the funny name. At least his foreign birth means we don’t have to worry about presidential ambitions.
UncleEbeneezer
@Soprano2: When people defend Trump’s racism/misogyny by holding up endorsements from Black Republicans and MTG, we rightfully mock it as the stupidest argument/logic possible. People who spread isms/phobias can always find token members from those marginalized groups that support them for various reasons. That doesn’t magically erase the ism/phobia.
NotMax
What I lament most about Andrew is how he’s sullied the family name of father Mario.
Another Scott
@catclub: SLIWA [ /zhena gogolia ]
Best wishes,
Scott.
Steve in the ATL
@NotMax: I’ll never look at plumbers the same way again.
Geminid
@rikyrah: There was a lot of good analysis of the 2021 Mayoral election. It should be no different this time, so in a week or so we ought to get a decent sense of who voted for the various candidates
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: I’m talking about Giuliani and after.
Soprano2
ITA. It was gross and horrifying to see prominent Democrats endorsing Cuomo, trying to resurrect his career. We’re supposed to be the party that believes sexual harassment is wrong, what they hell are they doing? We haven’t moved that far past the idea that “boys are going to be boys, it’s not their fault” in spite of all the progress it seems we’ve made.
Soprano2
@UncleEbeneezer: So you believe Lander is a token Jew?
I’ll be interested to see the breakdown of who voted for who. Again, remember when the election of Eric Adams as mayor was supposed to signal a whole new direction for Democrats? How did that turn out?
brendancalling
@Steve in the ATL: i just got off the phone with Schumer’s office—if you press “4” at the prompt, you get a person—and made sure they knew I was:
NotMax
@UncleEbeneezer
Posit there’s not a single mirror in the residences of Log Cabin Republicans because they cannot bear to look themselves in the face.
//
Another Scott
@Soprano2: +1
(I’m not accusing anyone here of anything – just giving my views.)
Everyone has their buttons, for good and bad reasons.
Personally, I’ve learned to try to slow down when I hear someone say some statement by someone else is disqualifying.
People are complicated. Issues are complicated. It’s far too easy these days for someone to weaponize almost any statement. 3 words (“globalize the intifada” – which according to the headlines he “appeared to support”) on their own are almost by definition taken out of context. We need to not let our lizard brains get outsourced to outside actors in the business of keeping us outraged for their own ends.
FWIW. YMMV.
Best wishes,
Scott.
NotMax
@Steve in the ATL
is that a crack?
:)
Suzanne
@Soprano2:
I saw a fair amount of sentiment with the theme of “he’s been punished enough”. Which…. WTF? This isn’t about punishment. Punishment is imprisonment or fines or flogging or whatever the hell. It’s a position of public trust.
PatD
@Soprano2: There’s a lot to challenge there. 1) We’re supposed to take it as a given that Mamdani uses this slogan 2) Using the slogan means you’re an antisemite 3) Mamdani is an anti-Semite 4) Some bad and misguided Jews support Mamdani 5) If you truly oppose antisemitism then you would oppose Mamdani 6) All the right people voted for Cuomo, the morally and ethically compromised sexual harasser.
It’s a terminal case of right wing brain. They want people to follow them down the rabbit hole to bitterness and anger.
schrodingers_cat
If Mamdani’s becomes the mayor, his economic agenda is going to run into a wall, because his math doesn’t add up.
What the rest of the Ds can learn from Mamdani is how to woo the South Asian demographic. Mamdani won them over by releasing ads with him speaking in Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi etc
Cuomo’s running for mayor stopped a credible alternative for Mamdani emerging.
Ohio Mom
@satby: I was also hoping for Lander.
But am used to having my favorites lose, and also used to my hometown having ineffective and/or awful mayors — I’m not expecting Mamdani to accomplish much (will be happy to be wrong).
Bupalos
@UncleEbeneezer: if we’re desperate to do the identity thing, the map looks like Cuomo overperformed with older black and Jewish voters. Mamdani blew the doors off with Latino, Asian, and younger voters. As did a couple downballot progressives.
looks like a straightforward win for the AOC wing. It’s NYC, but the degree of movement here may have national repercussions. Demsocs look like they’re delivering the operative swing groups that pushed Trump to power.
schrodingers_cat
@Another Scott: Check out his Bulwark interview where he defends the Globalize the Intifada, slogan. He was not taken out of context.
TS
@Suzanne:
Ranked choice means one candidate cannot be a spoiler. You can vote for someone who you know cannot win, but you have to then chose your next best, who will get your vote when your 1st candidate loses.
In theory Cuomo could still win, but he seems to realise that he would be below Mamdani in the ranking for a majority of the voters who did not vote 1 for either of them. In RCV, candidates can get together & recommend each other as the next in line. This often means you can determine the winner after the primary count, if the numbers are not too close together.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
The housing justice people I network with in NY mostly ranked Mandami/Lander, a smaller subset the opposite and a few were really anti Mandami but then wouldn’t say who they ranked. I haven’t figured out that last bit.
Chris Marte of District 1 won reelection, a good thing.
The jury’s still out to an extent on RCV since we don’t have the final tally. One interesting thing is that if this were a jungle primary with a run off, we all might be surprised (and many disappointed) at the eventual outcome, ie., Cuomo winning in the run off.
I’ve seen it twice here in Denver as all the people who voted for their favorite in the jungle eventually didn’t pick the opponent who might have actually pulled in the most in the jungle.
RCV gets rid of that, again, may or may not be a good thing, RCV has it’s own oddities and is no silver bullet to “fix” whatever shortcomings certain people have at a certain point in time about how elections are run.
Ohio Mom
@UncleEbeneezer: Better buckle your seat belt because we are entering an era of rampant anti-semitism. The left will be louder (as usual) but the right will be more dangerous to us.
Did you read Eric Alterman’s piece, The Coming Jewish Civil War over Donald Trump?
Chief Oshkosh
@PatD: Uh…Isn’t that what Harris and Walz ran on?
Belafon
@Nettoyeur: New York will only become cheaper to live in if a third of the population leaves.
PatD
@Another Scott: The right wing line is that “globalize the intifada” is an incitement to violence against Jews. In the Bulwark podcast Mamdani actually says he doesn’t use this phrase because some interpret it that way. But the smearing will continue.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: I think the *Democratic* Party may be the one that’s dead. They’ve got something very definite now: a fascist, xenophobic party devoted to cruelty and violence. What we’ve got is an anti-Trump activist movement that doesn’t necessarily agree on goals or even values, except for a resounding “not that”.
I’ll take it for now. Does it win elections? Maybe, who knows. It’s susceptible to every kind of fratricidal fracturing. I’m not sure it’s the same thing as the Democratic Party.
Trivia Man
@chemiclord: we know voters expect immediate success, no matter how revolutionary or systemic the change, and that is further enhanced because the very powerful have a vested interest in seeing his radical change thwarted
PatD
@Chief Oshkosh: sure, they did. I’m talking about the “Abundance” project and what the pundits are saying Dems should be focused on instead of culture war issues.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: Thanks for the pointer.
It won’t change my view on the benefit of the general approach of slowing down.
What matters, in my mind, is what he does going forward, not opinion pieces about what he said during the campaign. Campaigning isn’t governing.
YMMV.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Belafon
@Chief Oshkosh: They also ran on the threat that the upcoming Trump administration would be, which no one liked to hear.
schrodingers_cat
@Ohio Mom: That antisemitism is tolerated and celebrated among the self anointed progressives now gives me a pause. I don’t want to associated with a party that tolerates antisemitism and ageism.
schrodingers_cat
@Another Scott: How is his interview and his own quotes an opinion piece?
Omnes Omnibus
People should look up Daniel Webster Hoan.
Belafon
@Matt McIrvin:
That has been the Democratic party since at least the time of Will Rogers.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
The nature of political realignment.
Matt McIrvin
@PatD: Every call of “Democrats should stop harping on culture war issues” ignores that the opposing side gets a vote on what’s being talked about.
Democrats didn’t make the 2024 election campaign about trans rights. Transphobic Republicans did that. Democrats’ choice was to fight back or throw people under the bus. It’s like running against Hitler and trying to neutralize him on the Jewish Question by not bringing it up.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
In a dictionary?
Trivia Man
@satby: and that is the crux of the matter. New ideas and new energy are fantastic. We need more of that! But unless you burn everything down you need to know how the system works – on paper in theory and in the ground in practice. Nobody can do it alone; you need a wise choice of allies, humility to accept advice, plus wisdom and courage to know when to give in and when to insist.
Guarantee: every battle is not worth fighting to the death.
O. Felix Culpa
@Omnes Omnibus: I just did! Thanks for the tip. I hope that NYC’s next mayor is equally successful.
Betty Cracker
I don’t know if Mamdani voted for Harris or not. Haven’t seen any evidence that he said he would withhold his vote and/or encouraged others to withhold theirs, and I did look for it. (Could be down to Google’s degraded state or my shitty search skills.)
So, I don’t accept an assertion without evidence. That said, hypothetically, if Mamdani did do that, he made a huge fucking mistake. I think the Democrats who endorsed serial sexual harasser Andrew Cuomo made a huge fucking mistake too, but I don’t assume they are objectively in favor of sexual harassment.
They did something dumb, so I question their judgment, just as I’ll question Mamdani’s if it is revealed that he did in fact refuse to vote for Harris. I won’t write them or him off forever on that basis — I’ve fucked up at the ballot box myself. The important thing is to learn from it and try not to screw up again.
satby
@Soprano2: well, fresh new, and young isn’t always effective. And in the end, if an elected official is ineffective or downright sucks at the job it doesn’t just discredit that person, it discredits their policy positions as well. Which sets progressive policies back, because they’re associated with the failed politicians who advocated for it.
JML
@Matt McIrvin: The Democratic still has a pretty coherent ideology overall. Dems are mostly unified on things like civil rights, tax policy, health care, social security, labor policy, tec. It’s a fairly big tent, so there’s always some disagreement, but most of the arguments over policy in the Democratic party are over degrees and tactics. That’s not a party that’s dead, even if we’re a party that’s out of power. The GOP is in much bigger danger, because there’s no coherent core ideology any longer: what few policy positions they stake out change at the whims of the leader and there’s very little identity outside of Cult of Trump.
But I could be wrong.
PatD
@Matt McIrvin: I agree. By the way, Mamdani’s campaign didn’t steer clear of culture war issues (immigration and trans rights came up) but the focus was largely on housing and quality of life. But, as you said, in a contested general election the other side gets a say too.
O. Felix Culpa
FWIW, my NYC son and DIL are happy with the results. They said that the Islamophobic ads have been off the charts.
Layer8Problem
@Omnes Omnibus: I just did. I don’t get it. Everybody knows youngish socialists can’t do anything! That Wikipedia entry must be from an alternate timeline, yeah, that’s it.
Matt McIrvin
Are we *sure* Curtis Sliwa and/or Adams can’t beat Mamdani, with a campaign focusing on culture-war stuff and accusations of antisemitism? I don’t have enough of a feel for NYC politics. Suppose one of them drops out and endorses the other?
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Are we ever sure of anything?
Not that proud
I live in New York and had the pleasure of voting against both Cuomo and Anthony Weiner who sprung up out of nowhere. City politics generally are Byzantine. That’s how we got Bill De Blasio. He was the most “progressive” candidate in the 2013 election, but he also came up out of the democratic machine. The machine is good and bad. It’s hard to explain because it’s not topdown in many ways. It’s not Tammany hall. But there are a lot of like minded people and they work together. The candidate funding is top down a lot of the time, but NYC also has a public funds matching program to help candidates who don’t have rich donors.
I personally favored Brad Lander due to his experience, his liberal positions, and the need to stop Cuomo. Cuomo is old and already got pushed out of government. He began his campaign by claiming that all the city’s problems stemmed from defunding the police. But the police were never defunded. He was just hippy punching, staking out a centrist position. It was apparent to me that if he were elected, he would run for president in 2028 as a centrist Democrat.
The sexual harassment allegations are disgusting and disqualified him in my view. He also covered up the deaths of elderly people during the pandemic and used public funds and resources to bring writing a book about his response to COVID, again, to position himself for future elections. While he was governor, he also supported the so-called Independent Democratic Caucus, a group of 8 Dem state senators who caucused with Republicans in the general assembly. This slowed down if not prevented Democratic/liberal priorities in the legislature. They were broken in the 2018 when they started to lose elections. Andrew Cuomo did do some good things as governor. That’s tough to deny. But he also didn’t do everything he could. After the presidential election, one knock on democrats has been that blue states can be tough places to live, and if we are so good, why aren’t they better? The answer in NY is Andrew Cuomo. He won three elections as governor, serving from 2011 through 2021. He was responsible for a lot of the problems we currently have.
Even if you don’t agree with that, there is no justification for him as a candidate for mayor. He is not so special, so good, so unique, that he deserves to be elected despite all his personal and political problems. We have other people who can be mayor and who don’t have a history of sexually harassing women. We can and should expect our candidates to be better than him.
At the end of the day, I decided to rank Mamdani no. 1 and Lander no. 2, precisely so this would happen. It became apparent that Lander wasn’t going to win in the RCV. His votes would go to Mandani in the last round. So, I decided I would just make it the first round. I didn’t expect Mamdani to win so decisively, but I’m glad he did. It’s a new day. The Democratic Party doesn’t have to be terrible.
New Deal democrat
There hasn’t been a pandemic update in a few weeks, but since it is Wednesday morning, let me do a brief one here.
There is more or less good news as to both measles and COVID.
As to measles, there have only been about 20 new cases in each of the past two weeks, bringing the total to 1214 cases in 36 jurisdictions, compared with an average of 50 or more cases per week earlier in the spring. Most of these have continued to be concentrated in west Texas. 12% of the cases have required hospitalization. There have been no new deaths in the past month. 95% of all cases have been among the unvaccinated.
While measles is not seasonal, to the extent unvaccinated children are not in close indoor proximity in classrooms may be playing a role. There are also reports of formerly “free riding” parents rushing to get their children vaccinated.
The news continues to be excellent as to COVID. Per Biobot, for the week of June 14, “National SARS-CoV-2 concentrations are holding steady at very low levels.” The CDC’s wastewater report showed a trough at 1.46 particles per mL during the week of June 7, rising to 1.58 as of June 14, vs. the all-time low of 1.13. All 4 Census regions, and especially the West, participated in the increase. This is consistent with the start of a summer increase beginning with Memorial Day weekend gatherings. JP Weiland concludes, “Slight uptick this week, as XFG and NB.1.8.1 grow. Still at low/very low levels across the US, but that is expected to change in the next month, especially in the South and West.”
Deaths preliminarily were only 58 for the week of June 14, an all-time low. The latest final weekly number, for the week of May 24, was also an all-time low of 181. The 52 week total, again set an all-time low of 35,500.
JP Weiland is skeptical of the CDC’s latest variant update from last Friday, which indicated that variant LP.8.1 is becoming dominant, writing that the CDC probably “accidentally included inbound international travel seq, of which a large portion from Asia,” where that strain is dominant.
All in all, good news.
Matt McIrvin
@JML: My reading is that the younger left want capitalism eliminated (why wouldn’t they? it’s only screwed them over), and dislike mainstream Democrats because they won’t commit to that. They also believe Democrats are in favor of genocide in Palestine. These things are deal-breakers for them.
The younger right, on the other hand, are completely on board with Trumpism, whatever that means at any given moment. The very lack of a definite ideology gives them flexibility to follow the leader as his mind changes and his attention wanders. The constant is cruelty and tough-guy posturing.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Mamdani has not done well among Jewish voters and Black voters. Unless he wins them over I see stiff competition from the current mayor Adams who is running as an independent.
Anonymous At Work
What makes this so satisfying is that the NYTimes announced it wouldn’t endorse in local elections anymore AND THEN said it would offer “advice” on how to properly fill out ballots in the Mayoral Democratic Primary.
glory b
@Jeffro: Political scientists say that our election system, first past the post, winner take all, always devolves into two parties.
Even when other parties (Whigs, etc), rose and fell, the members of one previous party migrated to the new one, resulting in the same split, with different names.
Trump and the Republicans got their winning streak due to the large numbers of former non-voters, who registered to vote and joined the Republican party after Trump called Hispanics a bunch of drug dealers and rapists and promised mass deportation of Muslims.
Rachel Maddow did an ongoing thing about it, noting many more voters voting in the Republican primary in order to elect Trump, than were voting in the Clinton/Sanders primary.
TONYG
@SiubhanDuinne: I actually cracked up laughing when I saw that Curtis Sliwa will be the Republican candidate for mayor. Curtis Sliwa??? I guess he travelled by Time Machine from 1985. I’m old enough to remember Sliwa and the Guardian Angels from the eighties, but I’m an old geezer aged 69. I think of Sliwa as being the political equivalent of A Flock of Seagulls — a pop-culture phenomenon from four decades ago that people my age might vaguely remember. I guess the Sliwa was the best that the GOP could come up with. Pretty funny.
chemiclord
@Baud: They pissed on it because it was a convenient scapegoat for addressing the actual problem.
A shitty electorate that starting wringing their hands fearfully over “crime,” and spooked themselves into electing the big, tough, lawman to handle it.
Thank God it appears voters in NYC are capable of learning. Here’s hoping it’s not too late for the rest of the country.
BellyCat
Nominated.
Splitting Image
@Matt McIrvin:
They’ll rally around Adams if they have to rather than Sliwa, but based on what I’ve seen so far, the Republicans are likely to go so deep into Islamophobia that they will increase Jewish support for Mamdani. I think most Jewish Americans understand that whomever the bigots are frothing at the mouth about today, the one constant is that the fucking Jews will be next. That train is never late.
Also, when mapping out the remainder of this election, don’t underestimate the likelihood of Donnie making New York his next target after Los Angeles. That will pretty much kill the chances of whomever Trump chooses to endorse.
schrodingers_cat
So you are saying that the Democratic party is terrible and can absolve itself by voting for DSA candidates
geg6
@Baud:
From what I read, it’s that nutcase Curtis Sliwa. He never completely fades away apparently.
Barbara
It’s infuriating that “mainstream” Democratic politicians vocally supported Cuomo. The thing is, once Cuomo entered the ring no other big name Democrat was likely to follow suit. I have positive vibes about Mamdani, but obviously, think he might turn out like Icarus, with ambitions that simply can’t be achieved, with any achievements then classified as failure simply because they didn’t scale the heights he set out for himself.
But I go back to my first point. This isn’t a fucking club and too many Dem players operate as if it is or should be. To be blunt, Cuomo had his turn at the helm and he used it mostly to concentrate power in his own hands while marginalizing any Democrats who might have competed with him, and at the very same time mistreating the women who worked for him as sex objects.
And yet a lot of prominent Dems did not see any part of that record as disqualifying.
Torrey
@NotMax:
Can’t let a challenge like that go unanswered. Seems Rock Hill, South Carolina, just over the line from Charlotte, NC, had a postmaster who rejoiced in the name Cadwallader J. Pride. ‘Twas back in nineteen aught-one.
Notes: (1) A postmaster is, of course, not a mayor, but we have to give them credit for trying, at least. NotMax’s folding money is in no danger from this quarter. (2) I do not know if Cadwallader actually rejoiced in the name in the strictest sense of that term. He may never have forgiven his parents. (3) “Cadwallader”–there’s a fine old name. Wonder why it fell out of fashion.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Barbara:
Crypto bill supporter Gillibrand publicly endorsed Cuomo.
After helping oust an actual liberal Senator.
Some of Hogg’s primary monies need to go to whoever’s gonna challenge her next time around.
Sure Lurkalot
@O. Felix Culpa:
Obama was considered an aspirational candidate, especially compared to Hillary. I remember when he told her she was “likable enough”—some people gasped. A cabal of republicans met on the night of his inauguration to plan how they would thwart everything he tried to do.
Sure to hear screams that Mamdani is no Obama but it has done the Democratic Party little good to consider Obama a once in a lifetime politician with no equal. Sometimes people rise to the occasion when it’s least expected. And if the entrenched power of the rich and the NYPD crush whomever advances to be mayor, it certainly won’t be the first time.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Matt McIrvin:
Some breakdown of the vote:
https://x.com/briebriejoy/status/1937707602957279652
The comments are worth reading as they discuss the black vote and how it appears to have divided among generational lines.
Nothing definitive there, just a snapshot.
schrodingers_cat
Our candidate for mayor of NYC is a guy chastised by the US Holocaust Museum. Self anointed progressives ignored the warning bells black people sounded about Fetterman. They are doing the same with Mamdani and ignoring the warnings of black and Jewish voters.
I see now why Joe Biden had to go, so that a Democratic defeat could lead to a DSA takeover of the party.
p.a.
Good on him. And 🤞🏻 the NYPD, FDNY, developers, BigMoneyBoyz etc don’t shank his admin. which happens so often when many lib/prog pols win local elections.
NotMax
@geg6/a>
It was either that or Boilermaker Barney, the guy who sleeps under a dumpster in The Bowery.
//
N.B.: Sliwas’ run before though I forget if it was for mayor or City Council.
NotMax
Dammit. Did it again. Fix.
@geg6
It was either that or Boilermaker Barney, the guy who sleeps under a dumpster in The Bowery.
//
N.B.: Sliwas’ run before though I forget if it was for mayor or City Council.
PatD
The freak-out is only going to continue as we see so-called Democrats start sounding like they’re members of Bibi’s press staff.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@schrodingers_cat: What you describe as wooing a demographic, I would describe as “displaying authenticity”. And yes, Democrats can learn from that – authenticity woos all demographics!
But what is authentic to each candidate is not the same, and it is very different from the pandering approach we see from too many politicians who act inauthentically to woo various demographics of their electorates.
chemiclord
@Barbara: Something like 37% of New York Democratic voters didn’t find it disqualifying either.
That’s kinda the problem facing progressives in this country. The number of pissheaded fuckwits we have to have on board just for the somewhat kinda left to have the thinnest of majorities is inherently going to slow progress. Especially when different groups of assholes will insist on throwing other groups under the bus to get their support (I see you “white working class” voters, you ain’t slick).
schrodingers_cat
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: I was born in India and it felt like pandering to me. I was not impressed. It was quite clear to me that he is not fluent in any of those languages. His speech was stilted.
But he did make the effort and that helped with many South Asian voters. Other Democrats can do the same.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Since it seems you would not have voted for Mamdani had you been a NYer, who would you have supported?
NotMax
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
“Which is it tonight, Jimmy? The Save Medicaid speech or the Slash Medicaid speech? I swear all these podunk towns look alike.”
//
zhena gogolia
@Chief Oshkosh: Yes. Yes, they did.
Harrison Wesley
Mamdani wants buses to be free? Already have that in the very red county in the very red state where I live. Good idea but hardly radical.
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin: Absolutely.
Matt McIrvin
@TONYG:
Like Donald Trump, before “The Apprentice”.
TheronWare
Curtis Sliwa is a Bob Grant protege , need I say more?
Suzanne
@Barbara:
SAY IT AGAIN.
Matt McIrvin
@Harrison Wesley: My city (and the sub-regional transit authority it’s part of) has had free buses for a while, after a study that concluded that any revenue they were taking in by collecting fares was far outweighed by the social benefit of not doing so.
The buses are still far less *frequent* than I’d like them to be–using them requires planning ahead and being careful about the schedule, but at least they’ve mostly gone from hourly to half-hourly.
laura
@rikyrah: ttify330 had a post on the vote breakdown. https://xcancel.com/tify330/status/1937862164145901911#
Voters were white, asian and latino with enough working class and black voters to win. Cuomo got stuffed in a locker.
geg6
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t give a shit if people want DSA candidates/elected officials. That’s their choice and I support their choice. And I think it’s pretty fucking clear that the Democratic Party is terrible right now. It sucks, their leadership sucks and their messaging sucks. It pretty much sucks in every way. That doesn’t mean all Dems suck. There are great ones out there. Dem voters, for the most part are also great. But the party is horrible and I don’t see how anyone can deny it. Any time we can put a new, bright face out there, I’m happy. Yes, they will make the mistakes of youth but I can live with that if they learn. As of right now, the people in leadership haven’t learned a damn thing in at least a decade and, in many cases, two or three decades. They need to go. I’m an old and thoroughly sick and tired of these dinosaurs and their outdated and cliched ideas. I shun seeing Schumer or Pelosi or even Jeffries on tv or online almost as much as I shun Cheetolini.
sab
My little city elected a youngish Muslim guy as mayor a couple of years ago and he is doing a fine job as mayor so far. But our politics aren’t Byzantine.
Old Man Shadow
“Democrats choose candidate out of touch with centrist voters, spell disaster for midterms.” – media
chemiclord
@geg6: Until minorities are allowed to be visibly angry without it being a career killer, you’re not going to find Dem leaders much more fiery than Jeffries.
You can fuck off with that particular bullshit.
Captain C
@Steve in the ATL: There will always be room for a pantsless plank in the platform.
geg6
@chemiclord:
Jasmine Crockett and Maxwell Frost beg to differ. And you can now fuck off.
chemiclord
@Old Man Shadow: Until we can accept that regardless of who wins a primary, roughly 10-15% of the other guys voters are going to get pissy and walk away from the general or try and be active spoilers, that narrative is going to find at least some fertile ground with the idiot masses.
The sooner we are able to shrug off that reality, say “Well… bye,” and move on without further comment, the better off we will be.
chemiclord
@geg6: How many of them have any chance in an election outside of their specific districts?
Fuck off and get pied, asshole.
Tom Levenson
@oldster: It’s my hope that the speculation I’ve seen–Lander as Deputy Mayor–will address some of the risk in electing someone with basically no exposure to the impossible task of governing NYC.
It is also worth remembering that NY has had a pretty consistent run of shitty mayors recently, including several of much greater age, experience, and time in city gov’t.
Sure Lurkalot
@schrodingers_cat:
What the flying fuck? Joe Biden was the most progressive president of my lifetime, after being in the pocket of the banksters for a good deal of his political career. No one would call Biden a socialist but he ditched a lot of his centrist bonafides and pissed off the billionaires on several occasions, you know, the wing of the party that pushed him out.
chemiclord
@laura: A “socialist” candidate losing lower income voters by double digits to someone like Cuomo is still a bit of an “oof” moment.
Not exactly beating the allegations that Dems are steadily becoming the party of money out of touch with “the working man.”
Not that proud
@schrodingers_cat:
A couple quick stories. First, one thing that Mamdani campaigned on was making it easier for people to establish small businesses in the city. This is an issue because there are a lot of empty store fronts around and they really should be filled with something. His position was the city should reduce penalties for violating regulations and make it easier for businesses to be licensed. This is fundamentally a “conservative” position. I happen to agree with it. City and State governments should be working to make things easier for people, not imposing burdens on them. Whether DSA or machine, we should elected people who actually want to solve problems for their constituents.
Second, here in NYC, we have Democratic Clubs. They really are clubs–self-organized groups, you pay dues to participate–that typically represent the establishment. I went to a meeting in April and then missed the May meeting for my local club. Nonetheless, there was a question of whether the club should endorse a candidate in the Mayoral election. One man raised his hand and argued that we shouldn’t endorse, because he didn’t want to be put on an enemies list. I asked if that’s really who we were, afraid of being on an enemies list. I asked him if he was afraid of being put on Trump’s enemies list. He said, “Yes.”
I came away from that meeting thinking the Democratic Party might not survive.
MazeDancer
Did not realize that Mamdani’s mom is Mississippi Masala film director Mira Nair.
His dad is a noted Columbia professor who has written 7 books.
And that, basically, he is an UWS privileged kid.
Bupalos
@schrodingers_cat: I do encourage folks to listen to this. I completely disagree it in any way helps make the point you’re pushing, but it’s a pretty good interview, considering how dismissive Miller is of the entire project. He brought on an employee who is a supporter to help balance things out.
Regarding the 2 minutes at the end that you think makes your point, Mamdani does 3 things when confronted with this “defend people who say ‘globalize the intifada'” thing:
1, he affirms the reality of antisemitism and is committing an 800% expansion of the office of hate crimes specifically citing stories of Jewish friends being fearful in their places of worship
2. he says this particular saying is reflective of a deep desire for justice wrt the Palestinian cause.
3. He says (as the question of whether “the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada” are different sentiments or the same) that different words mean different things to different people. In trying to illustrate that “intifada” doesn’t just mean “terrorism” to everyone like it does to some, that the holocaust museum used that word in their translations for arabic speaking audiences as the best word they could find for Jewish resistance to genocide.
JML
@Matt McIrvin: well, that’s what happens with younger voters on the left: they get seduced by the purity left who would rather look down on everyone else than win an election and/or accomplish anything.
I have trouble taking people seriously who equate not being willing to allow Israel to be wiped off the map with supporting genocide, but when people want to play geopolitics as a zero-sum game (while pretending that Hamas hasn’t committed atrocities and is perfectly fine with genocide when it applies to Israelis and Jews) then this is what you get. Purity politics with people that lose a lot and look down on anyone else.
But the corrupt and evil Netanyahu government may have doomed everyone.
O. Felix Culpa
@MazeDancer: If a privileged kid wants to go into public service, then more power to him/her. None of us gets to choose our parents; it’s what we do thereafter that counts.
stinger
@JML: Thanks for this list: “things like civil rights, tax policy, health care, social security, labor policy, tec”. Imma bounce off it below.
Apparently people don’t know what Democrats stand for, so here’s a plan to counter that. If the Democrats had a central organizing body, which the DNC is not, this is what their marketing plan should be, at a national level and tailorable for local. Slogan/tagline:
Democrats: Making Your Life Better
Each word for a reason. “Making” in the present tense. “Your”, not “our” or generic. “Life”, with specifics in the rest of the ad. “Better”, which is aspirational AND achievable. Short enough for a bumper sticker and branded materials.
Then, two series of ads. In the first series, each ad focuses on one specific Democratic accomplishment. Don’t name Biden, or Obama, or Clinton, and don’t use broad terms such as “civil rights” or “health care”. Simply describe in plain language a specific change championed by Democrats and give a concrete example of an American whose life was improved by it.
Short, one-issue ads, lots of them, TV and print. Make it unavoidable for people to identify with the idea that Democrats improve your life.
In the second series, each ad focuses on one specific proposed law or issue, both during campaign season and afterwards. We have to campaign year-round.
Local Democrats can then grab onto the slogan and use state/local examples.
YY_Sima Qian
@Another Scott: +1
Geminid
@geg6: I have not seen Jasmine Crockett or Maxwell Frost trashing their leadership team of Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar. Journalists give them plenty of chances too, but they won’t take the bait.
JML
@Tom Levenson: this is certainly one of the bigger concerns about the NYC election. The city is really really hard to govern from the Mayor’s office, there’s a lot of pieces the mayor doesn’t have nearly as much control of as people think they do, and of course…there’s the goddamn NYPD. The position is an incredible lightning rod that has an illusion of more power than it really has, I’m afraid.
satby
@Tom Levenson: That could possibly be the best outcome.
I want more progressive policies to be successful, and that means the people running on them need to be effective and successful at their jobs. And even then there are those who will be ready to undermine them, like what happened with Biden. And then those policies themselves get debated as worth doing, in spite of positive outcomes.
Bupalos
@Sure Lurkalot: Biden support died hardest among the DSA aligned reps. AOC and Bernie were backing him after the writing was on the wall (while also negotiating for policy I think).
dnfree
@Sure Lurkalot: You are responding to a sarcastic comment by schrodingers_cat, who agrees with you that Biden was unfairly pushed out.
Jackie
@schrodingers_cat:
Why do you think voters would embrace the Corrupt Mayor Adams, yet reject Cuomo?
jowriter
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: She doesn’t come up again until 2030, sadly. In the pocket of the big money boyz. Did not have a credible opponent in 2024.
JML
@stinger: I don’t hate this. one of the things Democrats have sucked at for decades is taking credit for their accomplishments that have actually made people’s lives better.
But it’s hard whenever you do pass something or change policy in ways that are better any you get almost as much crap from your own team for it not being even better than what you actually accomplished than you get from the opposition calling you godless commies that are here to ruin America.
Barbara
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: And yet it was Gillibrand who led the charge against Al Franken. I am not sold on David Hogg’s approach to moving the Democratic party forward. I still believe that true leaders grow from the ground up. New York, in particular, seems to be very clubby at the upper echelons and maybe this is due to the fact that it is a very expensive media market. Whatever.
Baud
@Jackie:
I don’t know what voters will do, but the general election has a different voting profile than a primary.
Captain C
@PatD: Also, as noted on Bluesky, he ran as a proud Democrat. To quote Bobby Big Wheel, “Cuomo spent the whole campaign trashing the Democratic Party while Mamdani never shied away from being a Democrat. For both centrists and leftists it’s an important lesson: if you want to win a party primary you should outwardly like the party.”
Not that proud
@schrodingers_cat:
A couple things. First, one of the policies Mamdani ran on was making it easier to establish and maintain small businesses in the city. There are a lot of empty store fronts, and there really should be something filling them. His proposal is to simplify the licensing regime and reduce penalties for violating regulations. This is a fundamentally “conservative” proposal. It would be helpful to people and the city. I don’t love DSA people because they get up their own ass about so much stuff. I do think, though, that people should vote for candidates who are working to make their lives better in their place. City and state governments should be working to reduce burdens on their residents to make their lives better.
Second, here in the city, we have Democratic Clubs. These really are clubs—self-organized groups you pay dues to join and participate. They meet once a month or so and do petitioning, GOTV, etc. I went to my club meeting in April and then missed the meeting in May. At the April meeting, there was a question of whether the club should endorse a candidate in the mayoral race. One member raised his hand and said he didn’t want to endorse because he didn’t want to be put on an enemies list. I raised my hand and asked if that’s what we’re doing now. I asked him if he was afraid of being on Cuomo’s enemies list, I asked if he was afraid of being in Trump’s enemies list. He said, “Yes.”
I came away from that thinking the Democratic Party may not survive. I can overlook DSA membership if the candidate is practical, will work to help people, and can breathe some life into this party. If we don’t have these candidates, we won’t have anything when it’s all over.
Steve LaBonne
@JML: The cop and firefighter unions, the landlords, and the developers will be out for his blood. He’s going to have to be something special to accomplish anything meaningful in the face of their all-out hatred. I hope he really will be something special.
Suzanne
The Islamophobia exhibited toward Mamdani is really upsetting. And I expect that from MAGA, but there’s been some from Dems.
Someone on Xhitter yesterday pointed out that the photo selected by The Atlantic for a recent piece negative on Mamdani was notable for being darkly lit and taken at a weird angle “to make him look like Jafar” (from Aladdin).
Geminid
@Captain C: My impression was that the more New Yorkers saw of Cuomo during this campaign, the less they liked him.
geg6
@Geminid:
Who said they should be trashing their leadership? I certainly never did. Quit putting words in my mouth that I never said or even implied. I’m the one trashing leadership. Because they are mealy-mouthed, out of touch dinosaurs. It’s my job as a party rank and file member to do the criticizing, not theirs. Their job is to do what is right for the American people the best they know and can and show the GOP for the trash they are in ways voters can relate. Apparently, that’s too difficult for most of my party’s leadership.
Bupalos
This is a false choice. The most successful and rapid political formalization of rights occurred while Dems were basically meeting questions about those rights with answers that spanned from “Don’t tell me about it so we don’t have to talk about it” to “hmmm… ask me later.”
If we want to make real progress, we’ll drop the moralization of politics that makes us feel good about our sports team but in fact stops it from winning and making progress. “Under the bus” is the most overused and thoughtless phrase you see around these here parts.
Sarah McBride does the 101 on this, people should listen.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Omnes Omnibus:
We’re still waiting for an answer and I doubt we’ll get one.
But yeah, that question went thru my mind.
Steve LaBonne
@Geminid: Nah, they always hated him. As governor he screwed the city every chance he got. It’s comical that the Bill Ackman wing of the party thought he could be foisted on the city.
Barbara
@Geminid: Cuomo is a divide and conquer kind of guy. He assumed a role in politics way above his natural skills because he was the son of Mario Cuomo, who truly seems to have been a remarkable person and politician. And then he married one of Robert Kennedy’s daughters, although they are now divorced. When he became governor his most notable accomplishment was to retain a heavily gerrymandered legislature — especially in the Senate — so that he could decide what passed and didn’t. When that tactic stopped being effective he didn’t have much else to fall back on. I really, really don’t see his appeal and that was true even before his utterly demeaning and humiliating treatment of women came to light.
Baud
@Captain C:
I didn’t watch the campaigning up close, but that’s one of the things I look for in choosing among different primary candidates. I’m not into self-hate.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
The most important thing for Mamdani to do now is abandon his Troskyite policies and listen to Larry Fucking Summers:
https://x.com/Econ_Marshall/status/1937883196143882379
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Good point.
YY_Sima Qian
@Steve LaBonne: Bill Ackman is still part of the Dem Party? If so he should be cast out.
Captain C
@Matt McIrvin: Adams is so loathed in NYC that he could probably only win a 2-person race if his opponent was one of the Trump failsons, or maybe a visibly drunk Rudy Giuliani. Maybe. Also, there are a lot more voters who would vote for Mamdani and hope for the best than would vote for a Republican windbag like Sliwa, who kind of codes as “Staten Island reactionary who hates New York City” than there are, “well, since I can’t have Cuomo I might as well vote for the annoying Republican.” Unlike Bernie Sanders and the like, Mamdani seems to have a good understanding of what to emphasize in his campaign.
Bupalos
@schrodingers_cat: You’re just repeating a fox-news level distorted smear. I seriously doubt you’ve bothered to listen to the interview you’re offering as your proof, because it would be flatly ridiculous.
JML
@Barbara: Gillibrand saw an opportunity to get herself on the national stage and set up a run for president and she took it. She was more than willing to pile on to a right-wing operation to take out Franken (which had allies in parts of the DFL in MN from people who were mad about him getting the nomination for senate in the first place). It makes Gillibrand not a trustworthy partner when the politics get hard, but she’s at least a reliable vote.
schrodingers_cat
@Sure Lurkalot: Please check which Democratic representatives voted against his initiatives and badmouthed him 24/7 for the entirety of his term.
Geminid
@Captain C: Westchester Democrat Tom Watson (guitarwatson.bsky.social) had this take on the election:
West of the Rockies
@Steve in the ATL:
Looks like you won’t have Baud to kick around anymore…
Jeffro
agreed
now…how to break that down into three quick bullet points…
schrodingers_cat
@Jackie: He is the best bet for voters who don’t want Mamdani to become the mayor.
Barbara
@JML: Yes, I agree with your analysis. But really, I do not understand Cuomo’s hold over Gillibrand or others in New York’s current delegation. She didn’t need to endorse anyone. Schumer apparently did not. Now she just looks stupid and out of touch, not to mention like a big fat hypocrite on something that was supposed to be important to her.
Occam’s Razor? Maybe she was told by some in her “donor class” to endorse him or suffer the consequences?
Bupalos
@Captain C: Mamdani will win. Mostly because he has an actual political platform that he seems to be earnestly committed to and that people can understand, and because he has real political talents and most of the time sounds like an actual real person talking trying to communicate with you. Instead of a semi-human approximation of a robo-call.
These candidates are going to overperform consistently in the new era.
Jeffro
This sounds right. Now…how to condense that into a handful of short phrases/bullet points…
I dunno
schrodingers_cat
Some white people on this blog think that they are so exalted that if we don’t follow their lead we are unprincipled. If they do something or say something by definition it is for the greater good.
Jeffro
110%
Democrats on the Hill know the good thing they’ve got in Jeffries/Clark/Aguilar
Baud
The die is cast. When is the general election?
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: Sorry, that’s pie worthy, at least without some specific call outs that back up your statement.
ema
Now that an inexperienced Trump supporter (twitter link)* won the Democratic primary for mayor, I for one look forward to his competent management of my beloved city.
* I am aware of the existing “must cuddle, hand-hold, look deeply into their eyes and try to understand and give them the benefit of the doubt” position. I disagree with this position. If you did not support Biden/Harris you intentionally hurt the country, period. No excuses, no justifications.
For the non-clickers, Mr. Mamdani in his own words:
Geminid
@geg6: You trashed Democratic leaders, someone defended Hakeem Jeffries, and you replied “Jasmine Crockett and Maxwell Frost beg to differ.”
I thought my inference was fair. If you had said Jasmine Crockett and Maxwell Frost show the kind of leadership you want to see, I would not have disputed that.
But I will dispute your assertion that Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar are “mealy-mouthed dinosaurs.” I know you did not name them but they represent the leadership of the Democratic Party as much as anyone does.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: What does it matter what the Bulwark published?
You don’t like him. That’s fine.
My basic opinion on this is that beating up on people who have won elections on our side – especially those who haven’t even taken office yet – isn’t going to solve any of the problems we have.
Eyes on the prizes.
YMMV.
Best wishes,
Scott.
NotMax
@Barbara
Their first (and only) album never rose above 50th spot in the top 100.
:)
YY_Sima Qian
@schrodingers_cat: So, who among the Dem candidates in the NYC Mayoral primary would you have supported? Clearly not Mamdani. I assume you would not have supported Andrew Cuomo, given his raft of disqualifying attributes. That leaves Lander, & yet Lander enthusiastically endorsed Mamdani on election night (would that show a disqualifying level of poor judgment from your view, given what you think of Mamdani?), & will probably receive Mandani’s endorsement for whatever elector pursuit he chooses. Who is left?
Now that the Dem primary is settled. Who would you vote for in the general, if you lived in the NYC? The thoroughly corrupt Adams? The Gooper Sliwa? Or Mamdani?
Betty Cracker
@Captain C: That’s a great point. I didn’t follow the campaigns closely, but the snippets I saw seem to bear that thesis out. Optimism and people power vs I alone can fix it. Do Dems need their own Trump? Nope!
@Bupalos: I’m so sick of the word “authenticity,” but yeah, it sure seems to be an important attribute. It’s not a left vs center vs right thing either. Winning candidates who talk like actual human beings hail from all points on the ideological spectrum.
Bupalos
@Jeffro: The problem is the lack of specifics.
You need max 3 things, probably composed of 3 words each, ideally that people can chant. That are policy, that themselves tell a story.
Trump used build the wall/send them back along with “Lock them up” and MAGA. They tall a story of America corrupted and under siege from enemies, that we’ll defeat as we run backwards to the glorious past.
You can’t do vague stuff like “hope” or even “support for the middle class” or whatever anymore, that stuff is now a marker for “I’m not going to do anything, I’ll wander off into the byzantine halls of power and get lost.”
Lumpy
Most of the hot takes here from the non-New Yorkers are absolutely clueless, and mostly terrible.
It’s not just that your hot takes are so wrong, it’s also the decisive way you bloviate about things you don’t understand. Baud, Schrodinger’s Cat. etc… Just clueless about New York politics.
Mamdani is a slam dunk for the general election. Voters didn’t buy the transparent “he’s anti-semitic!” attacks because he addressed them. Brad Lander is NYC’s highest-elected Jewish politician, and he endorsed Mamdani. The Mamdani campaign outworked and out-organized everyone. He’s also a good candidate who can think on his feet and has real empathy for people, including the people who won’t vote for him. Cuomo ran a terrible campaign (he forfeited millions in early matching funds because of incompetence). The idea that other viable candidates were kept out of the race because of Cuomo’s presence is laughable; I would have been okay with any of my top 5 picks.
Will Mamdani be a good Mayor? It remains to be seen. DiBlasio ran as a progressive then tacked to the center as mayor (and was mostly terrible, including on the some of the issues he campaigned on).
Captain C
@Geminid: That tracks. He really can come off as your annoying, abusive boss who gets stuff done, kind of, but would get it done much better if he would just stop trashing the people actually trying to get it done and stop making all about himself.
PatD
@Captain C: Yeah, that makes sense. Cuomo was running to be the Mayor for people who hate Democrats and hate the Democratic Party. That wasn’t going to end well.
YY_Sima Qian
@ema: Leave it Blank in the NY Dem primary, not the general. Makes all the difference.
Captain C
@Baud:
NYC is a big enough city that there’s clubs for that if that’s what you’re into.
dnfree
@schrodingers_cat:
A lot of people, white or otherwise, express their opinions on this blog. I don’t see anyone who thinks “they are so exalted that if we don’t follow their lead we are unprincipled “. I’m sorry you feel that way. It seems to me that most commenters, including you and me, are trying to promote the greater good. Some are less tolerant of differing views than others.
schrodingers_cat
@Another Scott: It doesn’t matter what Bulwark published. I referenced Bulwark because It featured an interview with Mamdani, so you can hear what Mamdani says unfiltered. His own words from his mouth.
I think Mamdani is personable and charming. I don’t think he would be a good mayor. YMMV.
Lumpy
@Baud:
“I didn’t watch the campaigning up close…”
That is quite obvious.
Paul in KY
@chemiclord: They will try to ratfuck him. Tie him to ‘defund the police’ and crap like that.
O. Felix Culpa
My DIL works in the NYC public library system, which is one of the jewels of the city. Adams tried to cut it badly. Hopefully the next mayor understands the value of their public libraries.
NotMax
@Lumpy
Yup.
Magic 8-ball keeps showing “Chill. Go have an egg cream.”
:)
Captain C
@Lumpy:
Agreed, there were plenty of good candidates. I had no problem picking out 5 whom I thought would make good mayors.
Bupalos
@Another Scott: I’m going to weigh in on this every time. SC is simply misrepresenting or misinterpreting the exchange. The Bulwark (Tim Miller) didn’t bat an eye when Mamdani defended (on demand) the slogan. Because the defense was simply “different words mean different things to different people” with a particular example that unfortunately (or possibly intentionally, if he has Trump’s genius for amplifying media where he thinks he has an advantage) was ripe for twisting and smearing.
Trollhattan
New York being the only US city I can name that has an income tax at least some of this dude’s economic platform could have teeth, presuming the mayor has actual powers and it’s not run by the city council (like mine happens to be). It and LA are probably the only US cities where the mayorship gets international scrutiny. Okay, bone thrown to D.C. for times your mayor is videoed smoking crack.
But damn, does your election process have to be so bloody complicated? And lengthy?
Captain C
@O. Felix Culpa: As someone who also works in one of NYC’s public library system, I’m very glad the city council loves its libraries and will push back hard against library budget cuts.
ExPatExDem
Whatever Mamdani’s political future may hold, it was gratifying to see his supporters stick a thumb in the eye of the billionaires who tried to buy Cuomo the primary, and another thumb in the eye of the Dem Party gerontocracy who want to stamp out any young whippersnapper who generates genuine enthusiasm.
The most ridiculous part of the NYC primary by far was that the media considered it controversial that Mamdani said he would be focused on the Five Boroughs, and had no plans for a performative loyalty trip to Israel.
Sure Lurkalot
@schrodingers_cat:
No one is lording anything over anyone. It’s a blog where people are expressing their opinions about a current event.
Another Scott
@Omnes Omnibus: +1
Thanks very much.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Trivia Man
@Sure Lurkalot: look at Zelensky in Ukraine. I bet few people expected his competence
zhena gogolia
@ema: Thank you.
Baud
@Lumpy:
Ok.
Harrison Wesley
Aside from food,pets and travel,are there any post topics that don’t result in inter-commenter sniping? If someone writes something I disagree with, I don’t find it difficult to move on to the next comment. I can find plenty of conflicts in real life.
zhena gogolia
@YY_Sima Qian: Not really. Everyone needed to be balls to the wall supporting Biden-Harris if they wanted to save the country. They didn’t. The country wasn’t saved.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker:
Agree. We could dismiss it as vibes or rizz or likability, but talking like a normal person is a basic component of cognitive empathy, which is…. an essential quality in public governance.
zhena gogolia
@Harrison Wesley: It’s politics!
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
I’ve heard this before but here in CA things seem to run a bit different. rethugs do not seem to get a lot of attention or votes here. It’s not that we never have any run it’s that we saw a rather long time ago that their concept of politics was about them, not the people they work for. And of course that’s not to say that there aren’t dems who really aren’t, we see them on occasion. But in the last 50-60 years we’ve been a rather strong democratic state because that works best for the most people. Or works at all.
Baud
@Trollhattan:
Voter input in primaries and fundraising are the two main causes of delay. Party nominees have to be selected somehow, and they unfortunately have to raise funds from somewhere.
Anyway
Given the way antisemitism was used as a cudgel to get rid of presidents of elite universities and then by the GOP to beat up higher education I don’t immediately jump on the bandwagon. It’s also used a lot as a way to mask islamophobia and express anti-Muslim sentiments. YMMV. Mamdani was asked a lot about this during the debate (and campaign). It’s not like it’s being brushed aside.
Anyway
Dogs r00l, cats not so much
Harrison Wesley
@zhena gogolia: I guess I’m a bit taken aback by the way people on the same team approach each other with guns blazing.
Captain C
@Anyway:
You’re just trying to start a rumble, aren’t you?
ema
@zhena gogolia:
Agree.
Kirk
@Harrison Wesley:
@Anyway: cleared pets. I’ve got food – Pineapple is a viable choice for pizza, and there is such a thing as too much garlic.
Anybody got travel?
Soprano2
@Harrison Wesley: It does seem counter-productive, doesn’t it? I think that’s what happens when one side loses like Democrats did last fall.
schrodingers_cat
@Harrison Wesley: If only some members of the team get to define what it means to be on the team and people who don’t agree are othered. What do you expect?
Lyrebird
I agree with this concern you state, and your comments over the last few months have helped me keep reading. We see Mamdani’s campaign differently, though. I find it interesting the unquestioned “YAY AGEISM RULEZ” choruses in some of the comments on the Tish James link, when AG James is actually part of the same “establishment” that some rail against. To me, the social media success of boosting both anti-Jewish and ageist views are maybe not the top pernicious reason for Trump 2.0 but they’re in the top 5.
Mamdani came in with recommendations from many more seasoned NY pols, he’s built an ongoing collaboration with Lander, who has been out there fighting for people, and Cuomo is not fit for office
Sorry@Soprano2: I type 2 slow, but I tip my hat to you.
Lander is a shining example of something many commenters here don’t believe exists, a middle aged white (?) Jewish guy who is living his values of restoring justice, that wasn’t his first rodeo with Immigrant ARC, and wasn’t his first challenge to Noem
ETA: some may not know that AG James actually endorsed another candidate, and she apparently gives a darn about democracy! She rocks.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: I have been fucking sounding this alarm bell since Bernie Sanders ran for President in 2016.
twbrandt
Interesting that some are labeling Momdani a failure as mayor and he hasn’t even won the general or taken office yet.
Steve LaBonne
@Kirk:
The first thing a new NYC mayor should do is travel to Israel.zhena gogolia
@Harrison Wesley: This is pretty tame compared to last summer.
schrodingers_cat
I care little about Cuomo. But it is funny that someone who urged people not to vote for Democrats when Trump was the other choice is considered a principled Democrat. And they have the temerity to define those who don’t see their way as lacking in principles.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
Haha. You should be a front pager.
YY_Sima Qian
@zhena gogolia: They weren’t backing a challenger, they wanted to register a symbolic protest on an entirely irrelevant primary vote (because Biden/Harris faced no challengers). Not one of them suggested that they would not vote for Biden/Harris in the general, & the NY primary was 7 months before the general election.
For all of criticisms heaped on critics of Biden’s policy toward Israel-Palestine, for hurting the Dem’s chances in the Nov, election, can anyone explain to me why Biden stubbornly sticking to his strategy of “hugging Bibi close come what may”, despite the transparent bad faith on Bibi’s part, despite complicity in Israeli war crimes & crimes against humanity in Gaza (& the WB) being damaging from both moral & realpolitik perspectives, & arguably electoral perspective? Why was this not self-harming to both Biden & the US?
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
I was on vacation! Best vacation of my life, apparently.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: At LGM. Loomis thinks he’s a shit-stirrer? He’s a piker. I can show them how it’s done. ;)
zhena gogolia
@YY_Sima Qian: Everyone needed to be balls to the wall supporting Biden-Harris to save the country (and the Palestinians, by the way). Balls to the wall. And I don’t even like that expression. But that’s what we needed. Anyone who wasn’t was a Trump supporter. As it turned out.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
There will be no one left to comment here after you’re done with the ban hammer.
Belafon
@geg6: You mean that Jasmine that had to back out of her bid to be committee chair?
Steve LaBonne
@YY_Sima Qian: Especially with Bibi never missing a chance to display his support for Republicans.
zhena gogolia
I’m so impressed with how Trump is helping the Palestinians!!!!! And the Ukrainians!!!!!
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: That’s it, you’re gone.
Suzanne
On the topics of ageism and Islamophobia, it should be recognized that much of the young progressive left sees much more support for Israel/Netanyahu/occupation of the West Bank/war on Gaza among older people in this country, and some of that has been expressed in Islamophobic ways. So the age divide is not just an age divide…. It’s also an Israel/Palestine divide and an antisemitism/anti-Islam divide. So it’s much more intractable.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: But it was a principled stand, to be admired. Or so we are told.
Sure Lurkalot
@Kirk:
Travel: worst possible thing a human can do WRT the environment and anyone who goes further than a 10 mile radius around their home is a monster.
However, pineapple on pizza is so much worse.
//
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Many people do not think about politics all that much. Some of it I imagine is that people only have so much time in a day and so many politicians seem to be not worth the time of day. On the other hand politicians are a necessary part of a democracy. I think that what many people fail to understand is that a democracy takes work from more than just the politicians to work. It takes at least a majority of citizens to participate. Which is one of the actual advantages. We don’t necessarily get a big voice but we get one. I recommend that people work in the party to help elect people that they have at least a modicum of respect for. I did when I was far younger and it does open the windows to allow one to see what is going on, to see what the people that we are electing are like, why we want to support them – or not. This is supposed to be a democracy after all and that takes participation.
We can/do have a voice but we have to use it.
Sure Lurkalot
@Soprano2: I don’t think a blog thread with people expressing their opinions is counter productive.
Trollhattan
@Harrison Wesley:
You monster!
Some wardrobes are stuffed to the gills with strawmen to toss into virtually any topic (pets and travel excluded) and until the strategic strawman reserve is depleted we’re going to be thus entertained. My theory is November 2024 PTSD.
Another Scott
@Ruckus: +1
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Anyway
That’s huge – thanks for the clarification
zhena gogolia
@Anyway: Not that huge.
Any behavior within a year of the election that didn’t support the ticket THAT WAS TRYING TO STOP TRUMP AND WHAT WE ARE EXPERIENCING NOW was, to quote a commenter from yesterday, MALEVOLENT.
Kirk
@Steve LaBonne: applause!
Suzanne
@Harrison Wesley:
There you go showing off your fancy-schmancy high-falutin’ locus of control and positive outlook on life and social skills.
;)
Anyway
@zhena gogolia:
in the Dem primary?! C’mon – I never participate in the Dem primary and am a balls-to-the-wall D voter in the general.
YY_Sima Qian
@zhena gogolia: So you are saying no one can criticize any policy promulgated by Biden/Harris, no matter how bad the policy was, or one is a Trump supporter?!
Sorry, that is not a line of reasoning I find reasonable.
Biden had agency on the matter, more agency than anyone is US politics. He could have just done the right thing wrt Israel-Palestine from a moral & policy perspective, & that right thing was to minimize US complicity in Israeli war crimes & crimes against humanity in Gaza (& the WB). He chose not to, for reasons unfathomable to me & many others.
“Balls to the wall” in the general election, absolutely. Primary season is for the intra-party differences to be hashed out, & again, the Leave it Blank local pols were not supporting a challenge to the Biden/Harris ticket.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Emma Fitzimmons, the NYT’s City Hall Bureau Chief, posted takes on the primary from two unexpected sources. The first was Curtis Sliwa:
And Fitzimmons reposted this by political consultant Neil Kwatra, who worked for the Cuomo campaign:
@Suzanne:
Steve LaBonne
@zhena gogolia: SHOUTING DOESN’T MAKE YOUR CASE ANY STRONGER.
Ohio Mom
@Splitting Image: American ultra Orthodox Jews are staunch Republicans. They will never vote for a Democrat, let alone a Muslim Democrat.
I just googled, the ultra Orthodox are 20% of NYC’s Jews, and I am pretty sure they never miss voting. Now how this plays out in the general election, I can’t say.
zhena gogolia
@Anyway: Quietly not voting is not the same as publicly exhorting people not to vote because the candidates don’t meet your demands.
zhena gogolia
@Steve LaBonne: My case is strong. I can see the evidence for it every goddamned day.
MazeDancer
@O. Felix Culpa: Totally agree.
Actually, think being an UWS privileged kid is a good thing. Usually means supporter of leftie politics, Farmer’s Markets, the NYPL, Zabars, and the Museum of Natural History.
Lived on the UWS for a long time. It’s great.
YY_Sima Qian
@Anyway: One can certainly criticize the Leave it Blank promoters for frivolous grand standing, since an irrelevant NY Dem primary where there was no contest was a nearly meaningless platform on which to register protest.
Then again, they were local pols., they didn’t & don’t have many platforms to work w/.
Steve LaBonne
@zhena gogolia: There are some missing steps in the chain of inference from sitting out the primary in a deep blue state to the general election result. And repeating that claim over and over does nothing to fill that gap. We heard you, we know your opinion, perhaps it’s time to move on.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: He also refused to endorse Kamala Harris for the general election. I haven’t seen an endorsement. So if anyone else has, please link it. We are turning into Labor under Corbyn.
O. Felix Culpa
@MazeDancer: That’s where I’d live in a heartbeat if I had the $$$. (Darn my parents for not being rich!!!) Love the UWS.
ETA: Plus Barney Greengrass!
schrodingers_cat
@Steve LaBonne: Trump increased his vote share in NYC in 2024 compared to 2020. California used to be a strong Republican stronghold. Nothing is set in stone.
If NYC tips towards Rs its game over for Ds.
zhena gogolia
@Steve LaBonne: Thanks for telling me to shut up.
Belafon
@Steve LaBonne: Just upper.
Ruckus
@YY_Sima Qian:
I believe that we do have to understand that a person at the top has different information than the average. And this is true in almost all or possibly all human interactions. We are electing a person to work for US, not for themselves, although that is not totally out of the question that they do. We voted for them, now they have to prove it was worth our vote. Many do, some do not. But we also have to remember that this is a big country with a lot of citizens that have differing views of who, what, when, where, why and how and that we elect someone to see and make those choices for us.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: Hey, Sliwa has some self-awareness & a modicum of sense of humor. That beats 99.99% of Repub pols.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: Trying to find out, I discover that CNN, Wapo, and NYT are all fluffing him. Not a good sign. I still haven’t found out whether he endorsed her, but he wasn’t high-profile enough for that to be covered, I assume.
Belafon
I wonder if we always interpreted all upper case as shouting or did someone suggest that’s what it meant and we’ve all internalized that.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, the idea that the State of New York is deep blue (I see that italics are all right, if caps aren’t) is ludicrous.
zhena gogolia
@Belafon: Caps are louder than italics, I guess.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: He was an elected council man IIRC.
satby
@twbrandt: name one person already labelling him as a failure. A few people, including me, are cautious about electing inexperienced people into challenging positions and, in my case, noting that it can set back progress on their stated goals when they don’t perform well in the job that they may not have been qualified for. But I’m not a NYC voter, so my comments are academic anyway.
Lumpy
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m not going to do your research for you. Have you heard of Google?
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Its the blueprint for Ds according to our MSM.
Steve LaBonne
@zhena gogolia: LOL. 56% for Harris vs. 61% for the paradigm deep blue state, Massachusetts. You really don’t know what you’re talking about.
Trivia Man
@Anyway: team cat! Fight me!
zhena gogolia
@Lumpy: I googled it and could not find any evidence that he endorsed Kamala Harris.
schrodingers_cat
@Lumpy: No such endorsement exists. I have looked for it. You don’t have to do anything for me.
Spanky
@Geminid:
Curtis Sliwa is 71 years old.
zhena gogolia
@Steve LaBonne: Please stop addressing me.
schrodingers_cat
@Steve LaBonne: Upstate NY is very red. NYC is what keeps NY in the D column. And Ds lost ground to T in the last election in the city. She knows what she is talking about.
Timill
@Belafon: DEATH HAS ENTERED THE CHAT.
Steve LaBonne
@schrodingers_cat: I grew up in New York State and I am perfectly aware of its political geography as well as where most people actually live.
Steve LaBonne
@zhena gogolia: I will address anyone I damn please. Do you think you’re Loomis now?
sab
@Harrison Wesley: I can tell by this thread that the eastern half of this country is having a serious heat wave.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Yeah, that was good, candid analysis on Sliwa’s part.
Lumpy
@schrodingers_cat: Ok, cool.
Carry on trying to explain why a Democratic victory by a young and exciting candidate with popular ideas is actually a really bad thing.
zhena gogolia
@Steve LaBonne: Have fun in church on Sunday.
Harrison Wesley
@sab: It’s a double whammy – global warming and blog hot air.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I think Mamdani represented a Queens district in New York’s State Assembly last year. At least, he does now.
Ed. But I think Mamdani knew last year he’d be running for Mayor, and I’d be surprised if he did not endorse Harris.
PatD
I think it’s pretty clear by now that Trump did what he needed to do to win the election, riding a wave of economic discontent aided by a media narrative. There wasn’t much else Harris could do and she managed to make it close given that Biden was on track to lose 400 EVs.
Belafon
*shiv here*
.
. *shiv there
twbrandt
@satby: Oldster at 86 and Barbara at 145.
schrodingers_cat
@Steve LaBonne: Point taken.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: I think you are right. Thanks for the correction. I haven’t been able to find the endorsement.
NotMax
@O. Felix Culpa
Could be worse. Could be Claude.
;)
Geminid
@Spanky: Yes, Sliwa is 71 years old. Not sure what your point is.
Ed. But thank you for the oportunity to correct my comment. (I left some quotation marks out):
Baud
@Geminid:
Meh. Republicans are ageless.
NotMax
Ack. Wrong linky above.
@O. Felix Culpa
Could be worse. Could be Claude.
;)
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid:
@schrodingers_cat:
For what it’s worth, neither ChatGPT nor DeepSeek could find evidence that Zohran Mamdani endorsed Kalama Harris for President in 2024 from their web searches. However, as a lowly assemblyman, not sure he was expected to endorse the national candidate for president in general election, nor would a local Dem endorsing the Dem candidate be newsworthy. It would only have been newsworthy, & even then only to a very local paper/news site, if he had refused to endorse Harris for President in the general.
NotMax
@Baud
So are Twinkies.
:)
tobie
@YY_Sima Qian: Did Biden sanction Israeli settlers in the West Bank? Hell yes, until Trump lifted the sanctions.
Did Biden limit weaponry sold to Israel? Why, yes.
Did Biden force the Netanyahu govt to send food and medical supplies into Gaza when Netanyahu had stopped shipments? You bet.
Did Biden criticize Israel repeatedly quite publicly? Sure did.
Did Biden tell Israel from January to April 2024 not to attack Rafah or other southern sites in Gaza? Absolutely.
Maybe this was not enough for you but to suggest that Biden didn’t try to rein in Netanyahu or work to broker a ceasefire is false. The fact that situation has gotten so out of hand since Biden left office says a lot about how much he was doing both publicly and behind the scenes.
O. Felix Culpa
@NotMax: Lol. Well-played.
Soprano2
@sab: So is the middle part of the country! They call it a “heat dome”.
Steve LaBonne
@Soprano2: Here in NE Ohio a series of thunderstorms have been followed by around 10 degree cooler temperatures today.
Matt
Pour one out for all the “Cuomo’s victory means national Dems should keep pushing right” reactionary-centrist pundit columns that were prepared and will never see the light of day
Also, brace for an all-channels freakout from those same folks. I’d say “drink every time one says ‘anti-semitism'” but it’d be irresponsible to encourage alcohol poisoning.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Think this thread is rough? Imagine if Cuomo had won…
PJ
@chemiclord: A lot of Cuomo voters will go for Adams, as will a lot of Republicans. I don’t think a Mamdani victory is a done deal.
sab
@Soprano2: Right now Akron is 90° and Cleveland 35 miles north is only 79°. I guess the lake effect is real.
sab
@Harrison Wesley: That made me laugh.
BellyCat
Here’s another possibility: “Making Immense Leaps Forward”
MILF
Oh…
YY_Sima Qian
@tobie: Biden sanctioned groups & individuals among settlers in the WB, but was never prepared to pressure the Israeli government for its state sanctioned ethnic cleansing there.
Biden halted one shipment of bombs, only to release them weeks later. & that was one shipment halted amongst dozens sent, & those shipments to Israel received the kind of priority that Ukraine never did.
Bibi consistently used hunger as a weapon against the Gazan population, & Biden never used the leverage he had to end this practice.
Biden supposedly drew a red line against the IDF entering Rafah, & then did nothing when the IDF rolled in guns blazing, anyway. & the weapons shipment kept going.
What the IDF is doing in Gaza now is a continuation of what it has been doing in Gaza since the invasion. Things got well out of hand a year & half ago.
Israeli Channel 13 published an investigation in Apr., translated by Drop Site. Read the whole thing.
The most damning statement? By former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Herzog:
Barbara
@twbrandt: Not naming him as a failure at all. Just nervous for him. Those are different things.
Spanky
@Geminid: My point was, heart-of-baby-boom babyboomer sez
While running for mayor.
PJ
@Harrison Wesley: Free buses are radical when it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars ($652 million according to this estimate: https://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/estimated-cost-of-free-bus-fares-letter-february-2023.pdf,) is completely dependent upon approval by the Governor and Assembly, and there is no plan on how to finance it. Not to mention a dramatic increase in bus ridership (because the subway costs money), which will increase global warming, etc.
Captain C
@PJ: I don’t think too many will; Adams is hated and/or considered an incompetent laughingstock by too many New Yorkers of all stripes.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Biden was right not impose a “ceasfire now” on the Israelis. A durable ceasefire required agreement by both parties. Hamas, the party that started the war, would not agree to one. They put their own political goals ahead of the welfare of the people they controlled. You’re treating Hamas like it was just some irrelevant bystander.
Biden’s error, in my opinion, was not to pressure Israel harder to accept an Arab peacekeeping force in Gaza. But Hamas was dead set against that solution as well.
Geminid
@Spanky: I took Sliwa’s statement as descriptive, not normative.
Darkrose
@schrodingers_cat: He ran on “Ooh scary brown Muslim!” His ads and mailers darkened Mamdani’s skin and made his beard look thicker and longer. He also proudly talked about his support for Israel, though he didn’t mention his comments while governor complaining about “those people and their tree houses”–i.e., the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
PatD
@PJ: the NYC budget is over $100B and ~10% goes to the NYPD. If they want to they can decide how to fund free buses. There’s nothing particularly radical about it and it’s been done in other cities in the US. It’s more imperative, in my mind, to make the buses operate faster and get more cars off the street.
PJ
@Lyrebird:
Lander was my councilman. (He replaced De Blasio, but he is much savvier than De Blasio.) He is extremely ambitious, and has had his eye on being mayor since he first got elected to city council. He will say and do whatever he thinks it takes to move himself higher up the elected ladder. At the moment, that’s aligning himself with Mamdani. If Mamdani, for whatever reason, falters, Brad will position himself so that he escapes damage.
Which is to say, he is a skilled politician. Personally, I find him disingenuous, and, given that he got little traction in the mayoral election, his appeal seems to be limited, but working as, say, Deputy Mayor under Mamdani will raise his profile, and I would not underestimate him.
PJ
@zhena gogolia:
Mamdani has praised Trump for his “limitless imagination.” https://x.com/daveweigel/status/1933194826977353909. Among other things, this really makes me question his judgment. Trump has zero imagination, what he has is a willingness to shamelessly break the law and do whatever it takes to feed his own ego.
RaflW
@PatD: Google sucks ass. I can’t seem to find things that point to Mamdani actively opposing Harris, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Interesting Name Goes Here
The Uncommitted/Abandon Harris bullshit should not be rewarded in any way, shape or form. Every single one of those people who contributed to it helped create this shitty-ass world that exists today, and they deserve scorn, shunning, and ridicule (and worse), not seats in government.
tobie
@YY_Sima Qian: When Biden left office, a ceasefire was in effect. He brokered it in the final days of his administration. Netanyahu took Trump’s arrival as a sign that he no longer needed to follow this agreement. War has resumed under Trump, not Biden. That to me is a sea change, not a continuation.
The military strategy has also changed decisively since then. No doubt this is due in part to Yoav Gallant’s firing Nov 2024 and Herzl Halevi’s resignation in Jan 2025. The IDF is now run by Netanyahu appointees. But it’s also due to the fact that Biden made clear to the Israeli govt that they couldn’t block the delivery of food and medical aid to Gaza and that the IDF could not launch an attack against Iran.
As for Rafah: your timeline is simply wrong. Blinken was working feverishly to get a ceasefire from mid Jan 2024 onward and between then and May 2024 any invasion of Rafah was put on hold.
You can disagree with the previous admin’s approach but to say that what’s happening in Gaza with Trump at the helm is a continuation of what happened under Biden strikes me as wrong. Do you seriously believe Witkoff is working just as hard as Blinken did to get a ceasefire? If so, well, wow. There’s no point continuing this discussion.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Which contains neither egg nor cream.
PJ
@zhena gogolia:
43% of NYS voters chose Trump in 2024; upstate is majority Trump country.
Steve LaBonne
@PJ: Obama famously said positive-sounding things about Reagan and was reamed for it by some. This is a pretty silly game.
Omnes Omnibus
@Harrison Wesley: People here absolutely snipe over food, pets, and travel as well.
PJ
@Captain C:
We’ll see. I would bet Mamdani will win, but I think NYC as a whole is a lot more conservative than many here. When faced with the pie in the sky “defund the police” socialist or the ineffectual crook, many will choose the crook.
PJ
@PatD: This is absolutely not true. NYC does not control the MTA, the Governor and Legislature do. They decide how the MTA is funded and whether or not any part of it is free.
ETA: Making buses free will not eliminate cars from the streets, it will only transfer ridership from the subway to buses and make the buses more clogged and slow.
PJ
@Steve LaBonne:
Unlike Mamdani and Trump, Reagan wasn’t busy destroying the country when Obama praised him. And I think there is a world of difference between the damage Reagan did and what Trump is doing.
Ruckus
@JML:
Many, most? people do not like change when something is working, even if it could be slightly/moderately better. A lot better? Quite possibly then. Because if something CAN be made better, it is possible that it can also be made worse. Many things in life do not affect everyone the same and sometimes change is good for some and not so good for others. I’m an old and have followed politics, even working within the system for a while long ago. I’d bet there will always be at least 2 sides to most every issue. And more often than one might imagine, more than 2 sides. As the population has grown the needs and desires of a lot of people have changed, sometimes for the better and sometimes not. Politics is power and some do well at it and some do poorly. What’s worse is that both well and poorly can be true at the same time, depending on the change and the why. And the bigger the population the more often it can be both.
Steve in the ATL
@Trollhattan: “Bitch set me up!”
Ah, memories….
Steve in the ATL
@Harrison Wesley:
Shoot, that’s like 90% of my job!
PatD
@RaflW: Yeah, I couldn’t find anything either. It won’t stop the committee from repeating unproven claims or finding something else they find damning.
PJ
@Steve in the ATL: And it was true. Barry wasn’t a drug addict, he was a sex addict, and the FBI used that to bring him down. He was absolutely targeted as the black mayor of DC, and, despite his incompetence and corruption, that’s one reason he got re-elected when he was released.
PatD
@PJ: “They” are all the groups involved from Gov to legislature to city council who can improve the transportation infrastructure.
There are already fewer cars on the road due to congestion pricing. I’d like to see that expanded and some streets reserved for buses and pedestrians. I’m very skeptical of the cannibalization argument.
Anything that encourages public transit usage is a plus in my mind. Even so, free buses is simply a slogan for now. It seemed to work for him. Will it turn into policy? Who knows?
Geminid
@RaflW: Anti-Mamdani people had months to find evidence that he opposed Harris. They were highly motivated, and if there was any I think they would have found it.
Lyrebird
Thanks for these details. It’s not likely that I’ll make the kind of salary leap that would be required to move south a few counties to NYC, but it’s possible, gotta stay at least somewhat informed.
Closer to the capital, all I’ve heard about Cuomo on the other hand is that he’s a controlling autocrat. When he finally got brought up on charges, many people were heard saying, “oh thank goodness, no not thank goodness he harassed those women, but oh thank goodness there’s something to pin on him.”
PJ
@PatD:
You don’t need to encourage public transportation usage in NYC – everyone (except the very wealthy) uses it. What you need is more of it and to make it actually function well. All of which means more money, not less. If you think Hochul and the Legislature are just going to turn to Mandani and say, “Sure, free buses, we’ll find the money for this”, you are living in a different world than I am.
One of my problems with Mandani is that he just says, “I’ll give you free stuff!” without any plan as to how to provide it. You think that’s good, I think it just means he’s a bullshitter. And I am absolutely tired of the bullshit in this world.
Omnes Omnibus
I didn’t vote for Mark Pocan in my primary because of his call for Biden to step down. I did vote for him in the general election.
PJ
@Lyrebird:
Cuomo running for mayor screwed up the election for sure – it would not have turned into a national issue, and lesser known candidates like Lander would’ve had a better chance.
I should also say that despite my personal dislike of him, I think Brad would’ve been a competent mayor (which is a very good thing!), and much more likely to succeed at advancing progressive policies in the city than Mamdani. We’ll see what happens. Fingers crossed.
satby
@tobie: 👏👏👏
Seriously, people can think that Biden didn’t do enough, but he did quite a bit to try to rein in Israel. Which all went straight to hell the minute Trump won last November, because Netanyahu knew he just had to wait Biden out.
Trivia Man
@sab: maybe its because they are much closer to the North Pole?
Geminid
@PJ: I want to see how Mamdani campaigns now that he’s won the nomination. That’s what will condition my judgement of him, and I think that’s what will condition the voters’.
I agree that New York voters including Democrats are likely more conservative than the people here. This is a by-and-large a liberal bunch here, I think more liberal than Democrats are as a whole.
But I don’t assume Mamdani will campaign as a pie in the sky, defund the police socialist. He strikes me as a smart guy who knows his biggest challenge will be running the City– as much as the Mayor can run the City– once he’s elected, and I suspect he’ll campaign accordingly.
Anyway, we’ll get to see between now and November.
lowtechcyclist
@chemiclord:
That’s pie-worthy afaiac. Bye.
Paul in KY
@Trivia Man: Team cat here! Represent!
Paul in KY
@Lumpy: Don’t worry, she will…
PatD
@PJ: Of course you do. That was one of the points of congestion pricing. There were absolutely people driving in to work who could have used public transportation instead. There is evidence of reduced commutes as a result.
I’m not particularly invested in free buses so they can decide to fund it or not. I do not care. It’s a fringe issue at best. But, I suspect most people agree with you. Make the existing infrastructure work better and more efficiently and then expand.
twbrandt
@Barbara: thanks for clarifying.
Darkrose
No, we’re rapidly turning into Labour under Starmer: the party of invertebrates whose only selling point is “We’re not the other guys!” Cory Booker got up and filibustered, and then proceeded to vote for Jared Kushner’s dad to be an ambassador. Adam Schiff keeps voting for Trump nominees and bullshit like the GENIUS Act to please his cryptobro backers.
Party leadership seems to be going all-in on “do nothing and hope people are mad at the midterms.” I have been a Democrat all my life, and right now I have absolutely no idea what the Democratic Party stands for other than, “We’re not Trump.”
Ruckus
@YY_Sima Qian:
Why was this not self-harming to both Biden & the US?
In 2 party politics the answer is always Which is worse, the devil you know or the devil you know is worse?
None of us will like everything a president does. But it is always a choice between better or worse. Not bad or perfect. And in my 3/4 of a century, it’s never been not crystal clear which side makes the better decisions for all of us. Which is the basis of the office. One side is what is the best or the least worst decision. The other side is always ME, ME, ME. ME…….. Your guess of which is which is up to you.
Omnes Omnibus
This is a lot of sturm und drang for a primary. When is the last time an NYC mayor rose to higher office?
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Didn’t Lindsey become Gov of New York back in early 70s? Not many, I’ll say.
Marcopolo
@Omnes Omnibus: No kidding.
Some folks here really need to touch grass (and possibly examine the utility of holding grudges). Am nowhere near nyc but happy to see Cuomo lose (big time), happy to see the generational dynamics at play (go younger voters!), and though Mamdani is to the left of me and it’s unlikely, should he win the general , that he will get a lot of his initiatives through the political meat grinder, I’m happy to see him bring focus & energy to basic economic issues that affect the quality of life for folks at the lower (and middle actually) end of the income table.
Of course, there’s also a strong case to be made that big cities (most of them) are inherently ungovernable so let’s see what happens.
Omnes Omnibus
@Paul in KY: He ran for the Senate in 1980 but lost.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Baud: your statement assumes a ton without evidence
I tolerate people who did not vote for Harris. Indeed, I love a few of them who did not vote at all, who never vote, but who do great good in their lives every single day.
Sex pests should be prosecuted.
HopefullyNotcassandra
The reaction to this election by some has been off the walls. They label Mr. Mamdani “extreme”. Where is similar ire for this president shipping humans to torture prisons without due process for Fox News sadism-porn?
I hope Mr. Mamdani wins. I hope he succeeds. I hope those who think he is extreme take a trip to Denmark and bask in their closeness to all of those jubilant democratic Danish socialists.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Thank you for that info, sir.
Paul in KY
@HopefullyNotcassandra: I also hope he wins and succeeds as mayor.
geg6
@Darkrose:
Come sit by me. Cowards, the lot of them. Ineffective is the best I can say.
sab
Weird: it is 90° outside, the sun is shining and the sky is mostly blue, yet it is also raining. Out of one cloud only.
PatD
https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/06/25/mamdanis-stunning-win-over-cuomo-fueled-by-unlikely-support-in-moderate-nyc-neighborhoods/ Posting this so some particularly odious talking points can go away. Hopefully, the paywall doesn’t hit. In short, Mamdani performed much better with black voters than expected.
Darkrose
@PatD: Thanks for this. The best part is the last line, though:
Bill Ackman, the racist hedge fund asshole who is butthurt because his daughter took a class on socialism at Harvard and started asking him uncomfortable questions has announced he’s backing Adams. I guess Muslims are okay if they’re the Turkish government?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Darkrose:
So did Booker.
And what you said.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@Darkrose: I would’ve been happy with “Not Trump.” Iran would’ve been, too. Plus all the citizens that’ve gotten “deported” thanks to ICE.
And I could probably keep going.
schrodingers_cat
@Darkrose: Starmer is the PM, isn’t he? I would love a Democratic President right about now.
Darkrose
@TurnItOffAndOnAgain: But we do have Trump, and the Democratic Party is intent on doing what they did in the 1980’s. Instead of building an affirmative case for liberal policies, they tacked right to try to be more like the GOP. Just do what worked for Reagan! That got us Bill Clinton, who was better than Bush, but not great, and he threw an awful lot of folks under the bus. I’m seeing current Democratic leadership doing the same thing.
“Not Trump” isn’t enough, especially if it means just putting a slightly nicer face on rightwing policies, and refusing to fight for your constituents.
PJ
@Darkrose:
Democratic leadership hasn’t thrown anyone under the bus. They have consistently backed LGBT and minority rights and have protested the actions of ICE.
Darkrose
@schrodingers_cat: Starmer is the PM, and he’s been a disaster. He’s trying to push through social welfare cuts that will be devastating to the disabled and their caretakers. He’s gone all-in on transphobia, insisting that trans women aren’t women. And he’s tacking hard right on immigration to stave off a challenge from the straight-up fascist Reform UK party. Tony Jay or Rose probably know better, but from here, I honestly can’t see how different he’d be from Sunak. (I think he called off the Rwanda deal, maybe?)
NaijaGal
@MazeDancer: Zohran Kwame Mamdani – an “Upper West Side privileged kid” born in Uganda (lived there till he was seven) and who also lived in South Africa (his father taught at the University of Cape Town) before moving to teach at Columbia. His father admired former Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah, which accounts for Zohran’s middle name. Mother made Mississippi Masala, Salaam Bombay, Monsoon wedding, etc. Majored in Africana Studies at Bowdoin. Ran an authentic campaign by all accounts. Endorsed by Ella Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter. May not be as easy to pigeonhole as some are thinking. I’m cautiously optimistic about him.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@Darkrose:
It’s more than enough for me. And for people who need vaccines, transgender folks and the LGBT youth who aren’t going to be connected to people know their specific issues when they call a suicide hotline anymore…etc.
NaijaGal
@stinger:
I like this.
Darkrose
@PJ: Hello from California, where Governor Podcaster is already running for the 2028 nomination by making nice with Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon and saying that no, trans girls shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s sports teams. The response to the State of the Union went to Slotkin, who didn’t vote on the trans sports bill and says the Democratic Party is “too woke.” All 99 senators voted to confirm Marco Rubio, who as one of his first actions, announced that passports and visas have to reflect sex assigned at birth–I’m really fucking glad that I decided not to go with the nonbinary X when I got my passport last year!–and only Chris Murphy has admitted that maybe that vote was a mistake.
I’m old enough to remember that Bill Clinton got elected by buying into Republican framing on crime, welfare, and affirmative action, even to the point of underbussing a friend when Republicans called her the “quota queen”. I’m seeing a lot of the same trends, with the consultants urging Democrats to tack to the center instead of standing up for marginalized communities.
Darkrose
@TurnItOffAndOnAgain: Oh, did I miss senior Democrats speaking up against the hotline being shut down? Has Schumer said anything about trans people being scrubbed from the Stonewall Monument site? I haven’t seen either of my Senators say anything about Linda McMahon threatening to yank funding for the state because a couple of trans girls were allowed to compete on their high school sports teams.
Trump is awful. But the lesson some Democrats seem to have taken from the election was that they lost because of pronouns and they need to go back to “common sense” and “bipartisanship”. Forgive me if I’m nervous, because I’ve seen this before.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@Darkrose: I mean, they wound’nt even need to had more people voted for Democrats in the last election because they were “Not Trump.”
YY_Sima Qian
@Ruckus: I have never advocated not voting D in elections over R, despite my vociferous criticisms of Biden’s foreign & trade policies. I gladly voted straight D in 2024, & I would have voted for a comatose Biden, or Biden’s reanimated corpse, just to keep Trump out of the WH.
The goal is still more & better Dems, right? We will not get better Dems if we do not criticize where Dems fall short, & heaven knows Dems are quite capable of falling quite short.
YY_Sima Qian
@satby: I would suggest you follow Younis Tirawi on X. He has been meticulously documenting Israeli war crimes in Gaza throughout the Israeli war of vengeance. Look through his timeline, & tell me if things only “went to hell” in Gaza after Nov. ‘24.
Historical revisionism is what the other side does.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: The point is that the reactionary government in Israel was both surprised & glad that Biden did not put nearly as much constraints on Israel as they expected, that’s the damning part as the Biden team was afraid of exercising the leverage they had.
Bibi did not want a durable ceasefire because needed to stay out of jail. As the IDF grounded Hamas down, along w/ all of Gaza, surely Hamas was interested in a durable ceasefire, but it was unwilling to give up all of its remaining leverage (the hostages) at the start of any phased ceasefire process. Bibi couldn’t care less about the hostages & Hamas doesn’t care about the welfare of Gazans. However, if the U.S. pressured Israel to accept ceasefire terms, it would then be on the Arab states to deliver Hamas. No, the U.S. could not dictate an outcome, as both Hamas & Bibi have agency, but it had & has a lot of leverage to promote a preferred outcome, & Biden (& certainly Trump) failed to exercise them. We can only ask & expect our elected leaders to try their best & do the most w/in their power, Biden fell well short here.
Interestingly, Trump did arm twist Bibi to accept a phased ceasefire plan as he came into office. But that was short lived because Hamas tried to wriggle out of commitments & Bibi would use any excuse at all to resume the war of vengeance, to stay out of jail. Trump has none of the minimum competence, focus or commitment to help make a ceasefire stick. His interest was the Nobel Peace Prize, not the welfare of either the Gazans or the Israelis. Once Israel & Hamas failed to hand it to him on a platter, he just moved on.
YY_Sima Qian
@tobie: Stop putting words in my mouth if we are going to have a productive discussion. Where have I ever suggested that the Trump game is better for Gaza than Biden? I have always said they are an order of magnitude worse, although their impact on the ground in Gaza has not been a order of magnitude worse, because it was already horrendous before. Just being better than the Republican is perhaps the criteria we should judge Dems on Election Day, but surely that is not the standard we should judge Dems when it comes to governing & policymaking between elections.
As for Blinken working “feverishly”, well he sure had to work hard when he could not use much of the leverage over Israel at his disposal to move things forward. He himself had an utterly risible episode where he spiked a State Department report on IDF units committing war crimes, so that the Biden Administration would not have to sanction those units, even though the sanctions would have been milquetoast (no access to U.S. supplied weapons to those identified units). IDF war crimes in Gazan have been widespread, so perhaps the U.S. would have needed to sanction the entire IDF. & that is the crux of the issue, arms rushed to Israel at a speed that Ukraine could only dream of, what Israel did w/ them mattered little. That made the U.S. complicit.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: You are assuming here that the Arab nations would have delivered Hamas. I don’t think they could. Hamas would not admit failure, and kept doubling down in hopes the Western countries would break with Israel, which they did not because they saw Hamas’s game.
Hamas began this war with the mistaken belief that the Arab world would pitch in alongside them. They even believed that Israeli Arabs would join them. When that strategy failed, Hamas pinned their hopes on the belief that Iran’s Axis of Resistance could save them.
They found out otherwise last Fall., but by then it was too late. Benny Gantz had left the War Cabinet in June. He and Yoav Gallant would have out-voted Netanyahu if Hamas had accepted a ceasefire that did not guarantee its permanent hold on Gaza and its citizens. Hamas knew that too, but they put their own interests ahead of the people of Gaza and held out.
Kayla Rudbek
@Kirk: travel by air contributes to climate change? (Although I say this as someone who will fly still)
Or the American worshipping of the automobile in general, which screws up our infrastructure?
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I think what you said was tru for 1st half of ’24, but not 2nd half.
Well, the US did not have leverage over Hamas, but it did & does have leverage over Israel. No ceasefire could be reached unless Hamas agreed, too. So, why not put the onus squarely on Hamas? If Israel agrees to a ceasefire but Hamas does not, the fighting continues, & what would be lost in the attempt?
Also, Israel could have crushed Hamas w/o all of the war crimes & crimes against humanity, certainly not to the wanton gratuitous extent we have seen. Continued & expedited US arms shipments to so that Israel could continue to prosecute the war in Gaza in the manner it was & is doing, was unnecessary. Other than a few symbolic gestures, Biden did not put limit on how Israel used American arms, & Trump certainly isn’t now.
The double standard was particularly galling, as seen from Kyiv.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: I said it was true for the first half of 2024. The dynamic changed when Gantz left the War Cabinet* in June of that year and it was dissolved. Hamas knew Gantz was leaving and a window of opportunity would close. They did not care; they were too fanatical to give up their hold on Gaza and its people. They still are.
* The War Cabinet was established October 11, 2023. It was part of the coalition agreement ratified by the Knesset and had the force of law. This was done before, in 1967 and 1973.
I saw people here ridicule and dismiss the War Cabinet; if it did not deliver what they wanted, it must have been a fraud. This was an example of a phenomenon this war has illustrated many times over: people can deeply about some matter, and still not be interested enough to better inform themselves about it.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@YY_Sima Qian:
Thank you for this.
Those of us on the left who have spent a lot of time and effort in here punching back on the usual suspects from the Klein/MattY/Shor//Thompson/Smith/Atlantic/Vox crowd who’ve had far too much sway in party direction are always told to stfu because we’re ‘toxic’ or “don’t understand coalition politics” and other bullshit reasons in an effort to quell any criticism of the crap they’ve been peddling for far too long and has “helped” get us to where we are.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: As for the Israelis crushing Hamas without the unnecessary loss of of life we’ve seen, they haven’t crushed Hamas in 19 months even with their brutal and destructive tactics.
Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the smaller militias entered this war armed to the teeth, with plenty of mortars, machine guns, sniper rifles, and top-line Iranian anti-tank guided missiles besides their assault rifles. They had every thing a modern infantry force has except for anti-aircraft missiles.
They prepared for this war for years. By Hamas’s own estimate,* they contructed 500 kilometers of tunnels with hundreds of access hatches. You could not name a more challenging urban warfare environment. This and the hostages are why Israel hadn’t crushed Hamas a year ago.
* Back before Hamas started this war, they tried to impress,upon the world, particularly Israel and the Arab world, how dangerous an adversary they were.. That’s when they showed off their powerful arsenal of weapons, and that’s when a commander bragged about their 500 kilometers of tunnels.
Of course, he did not talk about how the tunnels were built with resources diverted from aid intended for Gaza’s people, who were left without bomb shelters because they were just pawns to be sacrificed.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: Israel is now trying to support a brutal gang in Gaza, in order to undermine the residual governance capacity of Hamas, just like Israel helped to bring Hamas into being to undermine the PLO, & Bibi paid off Hamas right up to 10/7/23.
In any case, my primary criticism of Biden’s policy is not the failure bring about a quick ceasefire. As you say, it was not entirely in his control, though he certainly did not use the leverage at his disposal to pressure Bibi to move forward, at least. I take issues w/ the things in his control – continued & expedited shipment of arms to Israel w/ little strings attacked (despite IDF brutality becoming apparent w/in days of the Israeli offensive into Gaza), failure to hold Israel to account for pervasive war crimes & crimes against humanity (& ignoring US domestic laws to do so), covering for Israel in international forums, pressuring the ICC against holding Israel to account.
Aside from everything else we have discussed, the failure to act undermined the credibility of any claims about “rules based international order” just as much as insufficient action in face to Russia’s re-invasion of Ukraine. To be fair, in this Biden was joined by the EU & the E3.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: I have plenty of criticism for Biden myself. I’ll cut him just a little bit of slack in that the Israelis could always pit Congressionsl Republicans against Biden. That’s a problem Trump does not have because Republicans are scared to cross Trump.
As for Biden’s Secretary of State, Ragip Soylu said something interesting when Blinken’s tenure ended. He quoted an appraisal someone made when Biden picked him: “[Blinken] will always be a staffer.” Blinken shrank from the role of leadership and tried to assert American power through consensus. Biden would have better served by a more confident and assertive Secretary of State, but we’ll never know know how big a difference that would have made.
neldob
I know I’m late to the party but I think strongly it’s important to name the piles of money that supported Cuomo-
“A major source of spending to oppose Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral race was the Super PAC “Fix the City”, which supported former Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Key backers of “Fix the City” included:
Another group that spent money against Mamdani was Sensible City, which received a $50,000 donation from Citadel CEO Ken Griffin.
These groups and individuals spent significant amounts of money on advertising and campaigning to prevent Mamdani’s election, primarily supporting his opponent, Andrew Cuomo. ” from AI