Mamdani, a proudly socialist 33-year-old, holds a 44-36 percent lead over over former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo – who was hoping that New Yorkers had short memories, and were ready to re-elect the textbook centrist Democrat.
However, after the disaster of Trump’s first year back in the White House – with everyday American life interrupted by protests, immigration raids, corruption allegations and the unshakebale feeling that the nation is about to enter World War 3… It seems the pendulum is swinging back towards left-wing politics.
It appears that the success of Mamdani isn’t so much a vote against Trumpian politics, but more a vote against the stale nothingness of the Democrats top brass – who, while pitching themselves as the progressive option in America’s political system, very seldom action – or even – offer – left-wing policies.
Don’t worry guys. I’m sure the democrats will learn this this time around…
Dems continue to be baffled by the popularity of progressive politicians. They can’t fathom Americans wanting less & less to do with their moderate-right-wing bullshit, while the far-right moves farther & farther right.
It’s the foreign influence within the DNC brought in after private money flooded US politics. Get rid of Citizens United and the system will do a lot to correct itself.
Lol, no it really isn’t. Citizens vs United was the culmination of decades of the DNC constantly bending over backwards to compromise with conservatives.
Basically in the late 80’s and early 90’s the legislative grid lock we all know and love today was becoming the status quo. So a strategy of compromising with “moderate” conservatives over policy that benefited aspects of both parties was popularized by the Clinton’s.
This “Thirdway politics” led to short term benefits, and allowed the Clintons to get a death grip over the DNC. After a short period conservatives took advantage of this tactic of compromise to drag the DNC further and further to the right. Basically every sitting senator and most of the politicians in the house made their political careers by being the best at compromising with the right.
I was under the impression moderate compromise was code for working to satisfy donor demands. Which wouldn’t be so pressing with meaningful campaign finance reform.
While you’re not wrong, I don’t know how we can possibly put that genie back in the bottle.
Not moderate, not center, firmly not-openly-sociopathic-yet right.
Jesus fucking christ, where my crew at?
This is our moment to fucking run it in the faces of the idiots telling us we needed to have candidates with barely left of center politics in this country.
People who have told you you need to accept less from candidates because abwd are the toxic bane that handed us Trump. You can’t win elections on being a diet piece of shit; you actually have to stand for some thing.
Genocide Joe has got to g…
Wait what are we doing again
We’re taking a victory lap.
what does abwd mean?
ABWD refers to “Any Blue Will Do”, which is a slogan, ideology, and voting strategy associated with what is now collectively known as “Blue MAGA”.
The charitable version of their argument is that we need to just support every D, no matter what. The problem that ABWD creates is two fold. The first problem, is that in effect, the policy works against its self as electoral strategy. It second problem is that it also works against itself as governing strategy. I’m going to refer to these as “anti-strategies” because I think its important to point out that they are thought about and employed as if they are in-fact strategies that could win an election. They make you feel like a smart person, and are regularly used as a cudgel against other approaches, but they are self-defeating: an anti-strategy hurts you, not helps you.
This clip of Whoopi Goldberg saying she would vote for Joe Biden even if he was pooping his pants on stage highlights:
So the issue that ABWD creates in this context is that, even though Whoopi here is clear that she would vote for a candidate so aged that they shit themselves on stage, American voters wont. And this problem is rampant across Democratic primaries. We’re constantly getting candidates forced into elections through AIPAC, the DCCC, directly from the DNC, who aren’t electable within the Democratic base, for whatever reason. Here, Whoopi has effectively lowered the bar to the floor. And the problem is, that while a pants-shitter might be fine for Whoopi, its not fine for literally everyone else. By insisting on this anti-strategy, that we had to support Biden as the candidate when it was clear he was completely incapable of governing, let alone winning the election (even when Trump was as unpopular as he was), this insistence was basically an instance we lose the election. Its an important historical footnote that Blue MAGA/ ABWD did win the ideological fight that summer. And we lost the 2024 election as a result.
So the second issue with ABWD/ Blue MAGA is that we end up with Blue Dogs, or Democrats that are basically worthless for progressing any Democratic legislative or governance priorities. Effectively, ABWD is used to put conservative, basically Republican Democrats into safe blue districts, which they might hold for decades. A classic example of this was AOC versus Crowley, where Crowley held the house seat responsible for Queens, NY, one of the most progressive house district populations there is. And he REGULARLY defeated, shut down any kind of progressive legislation. There are many, many others, for example, Ed Case, House District 1, Honolulu HI, who voted to censure Al Greene. ABWD/ Blue MAGA results in bad Democrats getting into office and holding space which would otherwise be occupied by more reliable, more progressive Democrats. When you go to actually get get anything done, ABWD defeats your ability to govern.
Well, I’d differentiate between primary and general election. It’s definitely time to overthrow the democratic establishment, and do the same as AOC or now Mamdani. Third parties won’t have a chance, but overtaking the Democrats (like the tea party) is possible.
Nevertheless, in the general election, you should definitely vote against fascism, even if the Democratic candidate is awful as well.Nevertheless, in the general election, you should definitely vote against fascism, even if the Democratic candidate is awful as well.
So, like, you have to start hearing this: If you (or any Democrats) continue to approach elections with this mental framework, you will lose elections. What you are saying; what you are thinking: it directly contributed to Democrats losing in 2024. Not adjacently, not tangentially: directly.
What you are engaging in is an anti-strategy. You feel like you are doing the smart thing by expressing it, but actually, this tactic when applied at scale, gives candidates the permission structure to be worse. It gives them the space to hold onto policies that preclude them from being electable. What you are doing is the exact point I’m railing against, because its been demonstrated now, over and over again, to lose elections.
The election isn’t about you or me: its about the candidate and the electorate. And the only force we wield in that dynamic is our vote. We need candidates to understand that they do NOT have our votes, not in a primary, not in a general, if they don’t move to our policy positions. If they think that they’ve got your vote and don’t need to work for it, they won’t and don’t.
And we don’t need to argue about this. We’ve run both the positive and negative sides of this experiment so many times, its basically solved. Every election since 1996, on both the left and the right, has been won by the candidate who moves to where their side of the electorate is at. When you give your leverage away for free, you give the candidate permission to not change their position and this loses the election.
ABWD is what you are expressing, and by doing so, you are setting things up for failure.
Anyone blue will do…maybe?
Correct.
It’s almost as though people want good policies. Bah, the people are fools! Let’s move further to the right to capture moderates!
-Dems
The fucking moderates are left at this point.
No, they are still fascists, have always been fascist, and only give us the least concessions they can to preserve their own offshore accounts and insider trading. They used to be controlled opposition, and they don’t even bother with that, anymore.
What I’m not shocked about is that they’re so out of touch with what we want.
they’re aware of what we need; they’re just placing their desire to become richer ahead of it.
Pelosian ethics is a discussion of competing conceptions of the good for Pelosi.
I haven’t thought about her in a while but I kind of assumed she just turned to dust and blew away at some point.
Afaik she had a house dropped on her. Not sure who got the slippers.
Steven crowder is probably wearing them with a dress as we speak.
I still bet they’re gonna find a way to ignore the results and give us status cuomo.
Presumably Cuomo will run ‘independent’ with the full support of the DNC, then when they split the vote and a Republican wins, they’ll balme progressives for voting wrong in the primary
Subversion is the name of their game. They’d rather lose than put a Progressive in power.
While I’m glad he won and the message this sends to Democrat leadership, I think making this claim: “It seems the pendulum is swinging back towards left-wing politics” is very premature.
He won a Democrat primary in a deep blue city in a blue state, the same that elected AOC.
I don’t think this really signals much other than, yes NYC likes leftist candidates, as we already know from AOC. This may or may not signal any kind of larger pattern about American political feeling as a whole.
If the same doesn’t happen in cities and states across the country, it will just be disregarded as a fluke.
NYC is overwhelmingly democratic, but not left. They have a big share of rather conservative Democrats, which makes the victory of AOC and Mamdani even more impressive.
It’s a huge poke in the eye of democrats who say anything left of Hitler loses elections.
I think part of the victory is actually showing the ability for the DNC leadership to project force is greatly diminished. They pulled out all the stops. AIPAC, DNC, The entire media apparatus, all the ad buying, the poison pill of hypocrisy, and finally, the sex pest Bill Clinton.
The victory here is very, very much that you win elections with people power, not $. The rumblings of this were actually that judicial election in Wisconsin which got Elon pushed out of the WH. And frankly, its signature was detectable in 2024 where no matter the spending, Democrats couldn’t motivate voters to show up.
Almost all of my friends are big zohran fans. Even the one that’s to the right of me on some issues is cautiously optimistic.
But to hear my friends’ parents talk about it? Doom. Dooooom.
You’re correct but I haven’t seen anyone outside of the lefty propaganda sites say that this actually moving the needle. The legacy news sites are along the line of “What does this mean?” and “Can someone like that actually be mayor of NYC?”
The way I see it, this could be a momentum swing but we need to capitalize and build around it. I understand why people were saying 3rd party candidates are a distraction during the election but now is the time to be pushing the Dems further left or coalescing around a new party. Get their ideas out there now so that even some brainwashed republicans might see the light before the mid term elections next year.
Look at the past few mayors and immediately your point is disproven.
The title is very The Onion™-esque!
Reality has a very onion bias these days
