Congratulations, @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social!
Onward to November.— Democrats (@democrats.org) June 25, 2025 at 4:13 PM
When I was growing up in New York City — when I fled the city in the early 1970s — our mayors were notoriously weird, and the politics behind their various elections were even weirder. This had been true, from all reports, for at least the previous 200 years, and it remains true to this day. Let’s just specify that putting the national financial capital, and the national center of Big Media, on the same crowded landscape was a bad idea. Between these two classes and the 85% of the population that they perceive to exist only as their spear-carriers, the neverending battle(s) turn every mayoral election into a citywide version of Festivus. The potential Mamdani Era will not, I assume, be any less weird.
But I have total respect for Brad Lander. From NYMag, “Brad Lander Is the Happiest Loser”:
If Zohran Mamdani enters City Hall, it will be due in no small part to Brad Lander. The progressive comptroller struggled to break out of the shadow of his younger, democratic-socialist competitor, but two weeks ago, the pair cross-endorsed each other, campaigning on their shared politics and their disdain for front-runner Andrew Cuomo. Lander’s campaign didn’t stop there, running an ad urging voters against ranking Cuomo and paying for Primary Election Day robocalls aimed at Black and Jewish voters, two key parts of the former governor’s base. Lander finished third in the first round of voting, and it will likely be Lander’s second-round votes that deliver Mamdani’s official victory over Cuomo next week.
I spoke with Lander, after he got a few hours of sleep following Tuesday’s shocking results, about his alliance with Mamdani and whether he would serve in his administration.
The primary’s returns were released gradually last night. When did you realize that Mamdani might actually win it all?
I mean, it was as the same-day numbers were continuing in the pattern from the early voting. The early vote was, I guess, about 40 percent of the vote. So, at 50 percent, I think it still felt like, All right, you know, who knows what that is? But once it went to 60 percent of the vote and 70 percent of the vote and that same pattern held showing Zohran up, our team realized he’s gonna win this…You and Mamdani cross-endorsed each other, a strategy that will likely help to propel him to victory. How did that decision first come to be?
Well, from the beginning of this race, we had talked about making sure we had a smart ranked-choice strategy. Four years ago, Eric Adams was elected, in large part, because the No. 2 and No. 3 candidates, Maya Wiley and Kathyrn Garcia, did not cross-endorse each other, and that wound up doing grave harm to New York City. We were committed not to make that mistake again. The Working Families Party brought four candidates into a slate, and early on, I had committed to ranking that slate.
The cross-endorsement for Zohran and I emerged two weeks ago as the final shape of the race was taking place. For starters, to me, it was really ranked-choice math. We knew we could defeat Andrew Cuomo but that it would be challenging and what it would take was adding up our voters, and that’s what ranked choice lets you do. So we had dialogue with his team and we decided to do it. Once it happened and that video we did was out in the world, it shifted from being ranked-choice math to being something more like a politics of hope and cooperation. People were really excited about a politics that doesn’t feel so selfish. I thought it was interesting yesterday that both Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo went out of their way to say, “I’m only voting for myself.” And in contrast, the cross-endorsement reflects a shared belief in the future of the city and just so many people expressed gratitude for it. It certainly was valuable in its math, that it will be my No. 2’s that technically take him over 50 percent plus one when all the votes are tabulated. But it also unleashed a real hopeful energy that you could feel in the city over the past two weeks and especially yesterday…
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.
— Bobby Big Wheel (@kleinman.bsky.social) June 24, 2025 at 10:01 PM
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What does “NYC’s business community” even mean? Bodega owners & home renovation contractors & daycare center owners & Big Law & Southeby’s & Def Jam Recordings & Jamie Dimon are all meeting & plotting a unified strategy?
[Not criticizing @taniel.bsky.social, criticizing Ben Smith]— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 3:52 PM
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a ratfuck operation as predictable as the tides
— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 12:32 AM
War for Ukraine Day 1,217: The Cost
YY_Sima Qian
I thought Cuomo had ruled out running as an independent?
In any case, if Andrew Cuomo has a prayer in the general as an independent, he would have to do so on the backs of a lot of R votes. So, he needs to quit the Dem Party, or be cast out.
YY_Sima Qian
Since this is an Open Thread, it seems Denis Villeneuve will be directing the next Bond film! I look forward to it! Perhaps Timothée Chalamet will be the new 007?
prostratedragon
Certainly didn’t understand the ins and outs of ranked choice at that time, if I do now, but remember being surprised that Wiley and García never ran some kind of joint strategy. Glad to see this year’s candidates have corrected that.
kindness
My brother and sister live in Manhattan. Sometimes it’s difficult to be in their text chats as out here in CA, I’m not all that engaged in NYC politics. It’s a big important city that’s almost impossible to get everyone on the same page. So it gets a lot of attention. I figure Trump will nationalize the NY state Guard at some point. I’m not looking forward to that but that would certainly throw a monkey wrench into the election.
Archon
@YY_Sima Qian: All in on Chalamet. His character in Dune was a complicated, nuanced role to play and he aced it.
SpaceUnit
Don’t know shit about Mamdani.
New York seems like a cool city cursed to always have a crazy and corrupt mayor. It’s like a fucking Greek myth or something.
Aussie Sheila
Mamdani has excellent political enemies. It bodes well for him.
Mai Naem mobile
@SpaceUnit: I didn’t know much about him either. His dad’s been through a lot of stuff in his life related to changing politics. Granted it was in third world countries, but I’m assuming his dad is a trusted advisor and would help him at least navigate the different ethnic/racial politics in a city like NY. His young age worries me a little but I’m assuming Lander is going to be right next to him helping him and Lander comes across as an old experienced hand. I didn’t like some of the Islamophobic stuff from Cuomo’s side. Reminded me of some of the stuff HRC’s people threw against Obama. Not acceptable.
Jay
https://bsky.app/profile/elielcruz.com/post/3lsfkrcw2ec2n
Jay
Vid at link
https://bsky.app/profile/premthakker.bsky.social/post/3lk7cixxaas2s
Marc
@SpaceUnit: Mamdani is pretty clearly non-corrupt. That’s seems to be both his greatest appeal to quite a few of the public and his greatest threat to many of the powers that be.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: oh wow. Now that’s a politician I can support. I continue to wait for SF & CA to do something serious about protecting our people. And the silence convinces me that if the time came, and it was me being rounded-up, they wouldn’t do jack-shit to protect me either.
Marc
@Jay: This is really not all that hard, except for the vast majority of Democratic politicians. When will they learn?
Jay
https://bsky.app/profile/wajali.bsky.social/post/3lsfy64yimc27
Splitting Image
I lot of people have been commenting in threads the last few days about whether or not the Democratic party has a real identity.
I think that ranked-choice ballots in primaries would go a long way towards bulding that identity, because it would allow people to openly talk about what they have in common with other candidates rather than about what makes them different, as Lander and Mamdani did. As it is, many primaries are more about tearing the other candidates down and roughing them up for the general election than they are about building unity.
Chetan Murthy
@Splitting Image: until this campaign, and until you explained it so succinctly, i had not realized this argument for RCV. It’s a great argument.
Splitting Image
@Jay:
In a manner of speaking, Cuomo is right. The Democratic Party’s thinking before the election was “When abortion is on the ballot, we win”. They were confident about 2024 because Dobbs was still very much in people’s minds as recently as last year.
The Republicans relentlessly pushed their anti-trans agenda as being about protecting women and successfully removed Dobbs as campaign issue. It wasn’t the Democrats talking about trans women on sports teams, it was the GOP, and they had a lot of help making that the year’s big campaign issue. To name a few: the New York Times, CNN, Elon Musk and his Twitter algorithms, and politicians like Andrew Cuomo.
Women are still dying because they don’t have access to proper health care, by the way, and they are going to keep dying as long as the country cares more about a dozen or so trans athletes in the NCAA than it does about life-saving health care.
SpaceUnit
@Mai Naem mobile:
@Marc:
Okay. Hope you guys are right about him.
strange visitor (from another planet)
brad lander is the real deal
he was my first choice.
Jay
@Splitting Image:
And the funny thing is the Candidates that didn’t underbus Women and LGTBQ2+, or ignore them, did okay for the most part.
Jay
https://bsky.app/profile/michaelhobbes.bsky.social/post/3lsehkulkvs2s
Screenshot at link.
Jay
https://bsky.app/profile/maxkennerly.bsky.social/post/3lsf5bj72mc2m
Marc
@strange visitor (from another planet): Both seem like the real deal, I have no idea which one is better or worse. My observations about Mamdani are about his media presence and how he uses that to unapologetically put his values forward. There are so many Democratic politicians that could learn from this, but then they’d actually have to take stands on things.
bjacques
@Chetan Murthy: I think you really need goodwill between at least some of the candidates for it to work. l gather from the last Australia elections that Labour benefited from the Greens working with them or at least not against them, while the Liberal/Natural coalition suffered when Teal (light-blue Liberals) declined to support them. Aussie Sheila or Pete Downunder can say if there’s anything to that theory.
Darkrose
@Jay: Definitely one of the things about Mamdani that caught my attention in a good way.
The other thing was that when Lander got grabbed by ICE, Mandani and Adams (Adrienne) showed up in support. Cuomo did not.
Jay
And so it begins, screen shot in post,
https://bsky.app/profile/kenklippenstein.bsky.social/post/3lsgungtm2k2u
Jay
https://bsky.app/profile/cooperlund.online/post/3lshtfuqn6k2s
screenshot in post.
Aussie Sheila
@Jay:
And the next thing that liberal democrats need to learn is that no matter what ‘nuanced’ stance they take, the Right will simply conjure their stances out of thin air. The better tack is to find the culture war issue the Right is using, and go for it, hammer and tongs. Demolish their cruelty and stupidity in real time. Attack it head on.
All the time.
Baud
I wish more lefties appreciated this. We’ve lost so many good years because a lot of them wanted to oppositional rather than influential.
(I’m less concerned about the centrists, although we still need them for many states and districts).
Baud
If Spanberger wins VA big in November, I wonder if her approach will be the model all Dems should follow.
Or maybe we should just be wary of hot takes.
Baud
Interesting
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
Here, I agree with you totally.
Lack of party loyalty and discipline is simply fatal. With it, even bad losses can be recovered. Without it, nothing really sustainable can win, and partisans, loyalists and ordinary sympathisers are left twisting in the wind.
I understand that such sentiments around here are equivalent to suggesting the installation of the gulags. However Party loyalty must be earned. It starts with a Party that is both disciplined and flexible and which rewards its partisans with a consistent and disciplined approach to electoral victory.
This doesn’t mean winning every election. That’s impossible of course.
It means contesting every election, everywhere, consistently and vociferously, so that the ‘brand’ says ‘doesn’t fuck around when it comes to a fight’.
People respect fighters. Sometimes they will vote for them even if they don’t agree with every tit and jottle of their program.
They don’t respect wingers and whiners, and above all, people don’t respect political organisations that blame the electorate for their own mishegas.
Baud
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
That doesn’t happen. It’s only us lowly rank and file voters who recognize that the problem in this country stems from the rot in the culture. Dem organizations and politicians generally never say this and we wouldn’t want them to.
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: I’d heard this put forth as an argument for RCV because it’s how things work in other countries that do it, but the nascent US experience with it had suggested to me that American culture might be uniquely broken such that that you would never have candidates cross-endorsing here. But maybe it just takes time for candidates to start adapting strategy.
NotMax
FYI. The violins grow tinier, the trombones sadder.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
Well there’s your problem. Stop blaming the electorate and start listening to what people say. I understand it may be a frustrating experience. I’ve spent fifty working years listening to people, and sometimes the rubbish seems ineffable. But the more you listen, the more you discern, particularly from people you otherwise have nothing in common with.
Party loyalists and partisans above all need this discipline.
They are the fundamental building blocks of successful politics. Elected pols are simply the muffins you remove from the oven once they are made and cooked.
Elected pols are what the partisans and activists make, they aren’t worth shit otherwise.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
What a ridiculous statement. I’m one of the people. I have the same rights to say what I want as every other member of the people who want to complain. If I want to hold the electorate responsible in a democracy, I get to express that opinion.
The real problem is the fundamental disrespect that exists in our culture towards folks like me that makes you comfortable to tell me to remain silent. It’s pervasive and corrosive, and it’s a large reason why MAGA culture is ascendent.
Aussie Sheila
Oh get a grip! Who’s telling you to remain silent? I certainly haven’t .
Talk about projection. JFC.
I said it’s important to ‘listen’. That doesn’t mean not ‘respond’. It means knowing how to respond in a way that doesn’t disrespect what people feel, even if what they feel is misplaced, misunderstood, idiotic or plainly malevolent.
Depending on your judgement about their responses, an intelligent person will respond accordingly.
Otherwise any political organising is simply a waste of your valuable time and expertise?
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
You.
The electorate is who put the fascists in office. Imagine if I tell people to stop blaming billionaires. No one would take that scolding seriously, and rightly so.
satby
@Baud: 👏👏👏👏
Thank you! That commenter feels free to come in and opine on our system while completely misunderstanding how it works and the political dynamics of the country. I consider weaponized ignorance repeated constantly to be trolling and ignore her.
AnonPhenom
The back-biting from the centists in New York took all of 24 hours.
Lauren Gillian Cong. Rep from Lawn-Guy Land
Baud
@AnonPhenom:
Yeah, that’s terrible. I hope she does get successfully primaried.
Archon
@Aussie Sheila: I’m done giving the electorate the benefit of the doubt. If you are implying that we should pretend this wasn’t about malice but about “concerns” so we can win elections then fine.
So for me moving forward it will be about myself and other like minded people “pretending”there is something noble or dignified about the average American voter so we can win and not have this nation descend into the abyss, likely against their will that it does.
Baud
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
Well then if the electorate is fascist then there is nothing for it except to fight the electorate to death, I suppose.
JFC, the majority of US adults entitled to vote didn’t vote for trump.
In a voluntary voting system like the US not enthusing enough people to come out to vote for you is something that needs attention I would have thought. But maybe not. Maybe people simply should grasp your inner ‘goodness’ and act accordingly.
@/Satby
You know very little about politics anywhere else except where you live. Lucky you. Unfortunately the rest of the world knows a great deal more than you think about your politics. They have to.
I’ll put my knowledge about US history and politics against yours any time, and I’ll put my political experience working with people in politically difficult and sometimes dangerous circumstances, against yours every time.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
That’s correct. Nothing to do but fight. That’s all we can ever do.
Professor Bigfoot
Mamdani advocated not voting for Harris.
That’s a very difficult thing to get past for a lot of people and for most of the Black electorate; but we know how important we aren’t.
America keeps telling us just how much it hates us, everywhere I turn.
satby
@Aussie Sheila: you have absolutely no idea about me at all. So bluff and bloviate away and I’ll continue to ignore your trolling.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Me too. But unless she’s some totally isolated outlier, I think we do need to be worries about the centrists. That wasn’t just punching left, that was throwing hand grenades.
I had to look her up just to be sure: she’s a Democrat in the U.S. Congress. Why does she feel the need to do the Rethugs’ work for them? I keep hoping this Liebermanesque ‘I’m a Democrat, but I’m not one of those Democrats’ would be finally going away, but apparently not.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
The thread yesterday said he urged uncommitted in the primary, so that was Biden. People didn’t find evidence that he opposed voting for Harris against Trump.
If he did, it was malpractice for Cuomo not to use it.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
I’m not any more worried about centrists than I am about leftists. There are good and bad actors everywhere.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: If he did it AT ALL, Black folks are gonna give him the middle finger.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: I don’t even know the differences between “centrists” and “progressives” and “leftists.”
What I know is that they all seem to be WHITE PEOPLE.
THAT makes whiteness a useful barometer.
Oh, and I note that some of those white people use “centrist” as a cudgel against Black voters; but of course “there is no horseshoe.”
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Not arguing with that last statement, but I’m not sure this was an example of that. The VP is always identified with the policies of the President they serve unless they make some sort of clean break, and VPs running for President on their own have always had any politically vulnerable positions of their President thrown at them, back when both the President and the VP were always white men.
So all it would take was Mamdani’s buying into a bunch of that ‘Genocide Joe’ bullshit. All I can say is, I hope that both he and all the other leftists who spewed that nonsense have figured out that Gaza is yet one more example of the worst Democrat being way better than the best Republican.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: This might be true of your parliamentary system where the party apparatus picks and chooses candidates. For better or for worse, voters here choose candidates in state-run primaries, and personally I would not trade our system for yours even if I could, which I can’t.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: People keep telling me it was the primary, but Biden/Harris were the incumbents; and a primary vote against the incumbent carries more weight than in an open, multi-candidate field.
So yeah, I’m kind of at “fuck that guy,” but I’m not a New Yorker.
But it is America telling Black people once again that we are hated.
Geminid
@Professor Bigfoot: I think “Centrist” is just an invidious term for “Moderate.” It’s a way of stigmatizing what is at least half the Democratic base.
Librettist
Cuomo referenced “looking at the returns” a couple of times. He knows damn well his shop steered him into a demographics decline.
“Okay, Boomer….”
Mamdami’s path included turfing out a Greek-American assembly member in Astoria. Happy clapping for a forever post 9/11 electorate is not a viable strategy.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: The Democratic Party is not a membership organization. Democrats cannot “cast out” Andrew Cuomo, they can only beat him at the polls.
Geminid
@Geminid: And they can work to pass a “sore loser” law so that candidates can’t run in a party primary and then if they lose, run in the general election as an Independent. A lot of states have sore loser laws..
@YY_Sima Qian:
Baud
@Geminid:
Really surprised NY doesn’t.
randy khan
I’m not sure that Cuomo will run in the general, and I kind of think that, if he does, it will be good news for Mamdani. Assuming that there are more total votes in New York that would prefer a Cuomo, Adams, or Sliwa over Mamdani, the more candidates who split those votes the better.
Splitting Image
@Aussie Sheila:
Jim Crow was the law of the land in a dozen U.S. states for nearly a hundred years. Are you honestly going to argue that the electorate of those states bear no responsibility for those policies being in place?
Slavery didn’t take as long to abolish as it did because abolitionists had trouble getting the message out. The Civil Rights Act (whichever version you like) didn’t take as long to pass as it did because civil rights activists had trouble getting the message out. They took as long as they did because the opposition was committed to defending their property rights and their privileges right down to the last.
Trumpism didn’t begin when Donnie rode down an escalator eleven years ago. It dates back to Brown vs. the Board of Education, which itself was simply another chapter in a war going back much further.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: “Cast out” meaning not allowing him to run as a Democrat ever again.
I do forget sometimes that that political parties in the US have been much more loosely knit than the rest of the world, although the modern GOP has gone to the opposite extreme & become a full on personality cult.
Geminid
@Baud: New York election laws are weird. They’ve got a “Fusion” voting system, whereby candidates can run on various party lines whose vote totals make up their final tally.
As far as I know, fusion voting is unique to New York. Like I say, weird.
Scout211
Cuomo insiders leaked to the NYPost yesterday that he would withdraw from the November election but no formal statement from Cuomo yet.
YY_Sima Qian
@Baud: Both vile & crass.
Trump was never going to pass up such an opportunity to assert dominance & humiliate someone by stabbing him/her in the back, & I’m sure he loathes any European who is not a far right reactionary.
If this was some kind of nth dimensional move by Rutte to keep Trump onside for a moment in defending Europe, it sure blew up in his face, & Trump managed to offend all of Europe. Then again, Rutte had agency, & as a former Dutch PM he should have had sense, so he deserves the humiliation for stooping himself so low (even if in private). The Netherlands & Europe, not so much.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: If starting from tabula rasa, I think a parliamentary system would be much better for the US. Winners have the opportunity to pursue their policy agenda, & accountability is clearer to the voters. The President as both head of state & head of government structurally encourages a tendency toward the imperial presidency & be treated as elected royalty.
However, as you say, there is no getting here to there for the US, absent a cataclysm that wipes the slate clean.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: You cannot prohibit Cuomo from running in Democratic primary again. Primary ballot access is conditioned by state law, not party approval.
As practical matter, at his age Cuomo is very unlikely to run in a Democratic primary ever again. But if he were a younger man and ran for office again, Democratic primary voters would most likely hold an independent run this year against him, and vote for his opponent.
Again, voters and not a party apparatus would decide, and that is how it should be.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: I have followed politics in nations with parliamentary systems enough to disbelieve in this advantages you cite. Europe alone shows plenty of gridlock and disfunction. And don’t get me started on Israel and Iraq!
In 1960, France was on the verge of civil war because of the Algerian crisis. When political and other institutional leaders pleaded with Charles de Gaulle to save the country, he told them, “Not with this fuvked up parliamentary system I won’t!”
And so the Fifth Republic was established, with a strong Presidency. Nowadays French politics can be disappointing and frustrating, but the place isn’t blowing up and France is a consistent enough actor in international politics. France has the neccesary degree of stability and civil peace to function as a state.
De Gaulle was a wise man because he was an experienced man. He had seen enough instabilty and war in his lifetime to understand the essential values of stability and peace. And for France at that time– and it isn’t that different now– this required a strong executive, not a powerful national assembly.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud:Many lefties feel free to call those who disagree with them stupid, unprincipled, spineless I could go on. They don’t want agreement, they want obedience. Else you can shut up.
Only thing you are allowed to do is praise them for their brave stances
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: A system is only as good as the people who make up the system.
dnfree
@schrodingers_cat: Many people period, of any political or other leaning, feel free to call those who disagree with them stupid, unprincipled, spineless, etc., unfortunately.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I once believed what you believed about parliamentary systems, until wild swings in elections in the US over the past 2 decades, & voter’s expectations for Presidents that are detached from the reality of the office (on domestic policy) on one hand, & lack of checks on presidential power (on foreign policy) on the other. & the reason Repubs could obscure culpability for the consequences of their actions is precisely because of the anti-democratic elements of the system of checks & balances, further shackled by the rules & norms that the Repubs alternative weapons & ignore. Those are structural design defects.
I was going to write something along the lines that only functional countries w/ Presidential systems have been the US & France, & now just France. South Korea’s ridiculously overpowered Presidency (on foreign & defense policies) made Yoon’s autofolge possible, & the years long gap between presidential & National Assembly elections again obscures culpability & accountability for policy implementation.
At the end of the day though, as schrödingers_cat stated, all of these systems are deeply flawed, because the humans that designed & operate them are deeply flawed. Every system can look good on paper.
YY_Sima Qian
@Scout211: Thanks!
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: Or, other Democrats just stop treating him as a fellow Democrat.
PatD
@Professor Bigfoot: where is the evidence of that? I have not been able to find it on Google which isn’t saying much given how shitty search is now.
Mamdani got much more black and Hispanic support than the polling showed. A beneficiary of pragmatic voters.
@Professor Bigfoot:
PatD
@Geminid: I don’t agree at all. Centrists are people like Bill Ackman. People who play both sides of the fence to retain influence but are always punching left and generally lean right in their ideology.
Moderates are still proudly Dem even if they prefer incremental and cautious approach to political progress.
Geminid
@PatD: That’s how I see it too. But I was talking about how the word is commonly used. The press often calls moderate Democratic Representatives “Centrist.” And people here often refer to.Miderates as “Centrists and my sense is that the word is being used invidiouslysebse the word is being”
I consider some of the Never Trump Republicans like Tom Nichols Centrists. But I generally consider Democrats to be moderates, liberals and larger group falling in between.
At least, that’s how I would graph our House Caucus: not as a dumbell with large groups at either end, but rather as a fat Bell curve.