2025 & 2026 Elections

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What a disaster of choices for New York and the Democratic Party. Mamdani will provide a wealth of material for the mouth breathers on the Right. And on the other side - imagine thinking, "Cuomo is our guy."
 
Paine said:
You claimed a week ago that the label “socialist” is political suicide. That it kills campaigns before they begin. That the merits never even get heard. But Mamdani wore that label openly. Ran on it. Embraced it. And still won a high-turnout, high-stakes race with the full weight of the political establishment against him.
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Political suicide *outside of the most liberal areas* which NYC happens to be. I’ve seen the Mamdani groundswell firsthand and had plenty of conversations around town that made me believe a win was possible here. HERE. In NYC. Not many other places.

Here’s what I said and you have now selectively reframed:
duluoz said:
And as for it being viable as-is in some local races, sure. Some. But republicans anywhere and everywhere will still point to the state and federal representatives and legislators who endorsed the “socialist,” and we all get saddled with it.

And calling each other comrades, no matter how infrequently or tongue-in-cheek, is the stupidest and most tone-deaf way to serve up red meat on a silver platter.

There’s simply no defending nor rehabilitating the term in a way that makes more sense than just finding a new label for the same ideological platform. It’s maddening that it persists, but another of many ways Dems just don’t understand messaging.
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p5mmr9 said:
What a disaster of choices for New York and the Democratic Party. Mamdani will provide a wealth of material for the mouth breathers on the Right. And on the other side - imagine thinking, "Cuomo is our guy."
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The sad reality of this moment is that nobody in his or her right mind would run for a major political office. We're lucky to have some really good masochists still out there, like Jeff Jackson, Adam Stein and (to be fair to my more progressive friends) AOC, but it's really, really hard to consider exposing oneself and one's family to the absolute shitstorm that is modern American politics.
 
Mamdani leans into Democratic Party stereotypes and that will clearly be used as ammunition against the Democrats going in to 2026...and if he actually wins the election - his inexperience will almost certainly yield growing pains at best which will (in addition to some of his more questionable policy proposals and his remarks vis a vis Israel and the Palestinian conflict and what can be broadly interpreted as veiled swipes at Jews) likely have some impact on the 2026 election.

The real problem is that there are very few national Democratic Party leaders with a national media presence. So, when one garners significant national attention - it's under significant scrutiny. Mamdani isn't the type of politician we should want under that type of national scrutiny.
 
lawtig02 said:
The sad reality of this moment is that nobody in his or her right mind would run for a major political office. We're lucky to have some really good masochists still out there, like Jeff Jackson, Adam Stein and (to be fair to my more progressive friends) AOC, but it's really, really hard to consider exposing oneself and one's family to the absolute shitstorm that is modern American politics.
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There were good candidates running for the Democratic nomination. We are in an era of celebrity and attention deficit. And so, if someone isn't a celebrity or can't stick their head above that fray - they aren't given adequate publicity. The press follows the public and the public follows the press and unless you go viral - you are sunk.
 
Paine said:
So let me get this straight: you think the Democrats’ problem is…too much visibility for a young, working-class-backed politician who actually won a contested race?
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Yeah. That's exactly what I think.
 
Paine said:
If Republicans red-bait him, push back. If they twist his record, clarify it.
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Welp, Paine has solved it everyone — simply push back and clarify! Why has nobody thought of that.

When you embrace a label like socialist (outside of NYC, SF, etc) you have dug yourself a hole that you can’t climb out of. Your ideas and policy proposals don’t matter to anyone outside of your most fervent followers, because they’re all stuck in that hole with you.

The fact that you see Mamdani’s win as some proof of concept shows you’re wearing some serious goggles. Your head is so far in the clouds, I don’t know why I even bother to engage.

I’m glad it’s Mamdani and not Cuomo. But there are very good reasons to be wary of him — woeful inexperience and pie in the sky proposals not least among them. And relative to my previous points on the national scale — IMO it’s the exact wrong time to be led by (or be painted as being led by) an incredibly polarizing minority of the Democratic party. Many who proudly call themselves socialists and comrades, including Mamdani himself.
 
honestly, color me unconvinced that Dems in NYC are significantly farther to the left than Dems anywhere else. There are more of them than in other places, sure, but that doesn't say anything about that population's place within the left wing. I think Zohran has shown that he could win a Democratic primary anywhere, personally.
 
akillesheel said:
honestly, color me unconvinced that Dems in NYC are significantly farther to the left than Dems anywhere else. There are more of them than in other places, sure, but that doesn't say anything about that population's place within the left wing. I think Zohran has shown that he could win a Democratic primary anywhere, personally.
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And that’s the issue. These type of candidates can’t win nationally. They can’t be competitive nationally. The Democrats have to be smart in their primaries. It’s like the lessons from right after Cheeto winning ate already forgotten and the party is now somehow interpreting it as “we were left enough.” It’s beyond frustrating.
 
Progressives shouldn't make the same mistake centrists made 4 years ago when Adams won. A win doesn't validate all your priors and doesn't mean there is a large swing in national politics

Zohran ran a great campaign, under the right conditions, against a flawed opponent. All those things mattered more than his general ideological stance on the leftist-centrist spectrum
 
akillesheel said:
honestly, color me unconvinced that Dems in NYC are significantly farther to the left than Dems anywhere else. There are more of them than in other places, sure, but that doesn't say anything about that population's place within the left wing. I think Zohran has shown that he could win a Democratic primary anywhere, personally.
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How much time have you spent in NYC? How would you know this?

It's not so much that Dems in NYC are further left, and more that there are more of them who are far left. Lots of artists in NYC, way more than anywhere else. Lots of would-be artists who became waiters, lol (that stereotype is hackneyed but not untrue). The education levels in Manhattan are off the charts. And because of the neighborhood structure, associative sorting is super-easy and that tends to increase polarization.

When I lived in Park Slope Brooklyn, I had an 8th floor condo in a building with about 25 units. In those units, there was precisely one white-white couple. There was my Indian wife and me; an Indian husband with a white wife. Two black-white couples. A black-Latino couple. Three East Asian/white couples. The white/white couple was older and didn't have any kids living with them. So literally every single kid living in that building was multi-racial.

That was not unusual in Park Slope. And then we would go to the Park, and the Park would draw visitors from surrounding neighborhoods: upscale diverse Park Slope; a largely Haitian/Carribbean community in Flatbush; Italian communities to the south, and African and American black populations to the north. On weekends, there would be big soccer games -- someone would bring some hockey nets and they'd play 11 v 11. I never saw any goals but everyone seemed to have lots of fun, and the games were like watching the floor at the UN. Every single skin color was there.
 
Paine said:
Mamdani didn’t go viral because he danced on TikTok. He won because he organized. He had a message. A theory of change. And he didn’t talk down to people.
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Don’t kid yourself. I live here and have had these conversations. Young people in NYC are very opposed to Israeli treatment of Palestinians, from Gaza bombings to settlements and occupation to you name it. It is currently THE motivating issue among that demographic here. Way more so than free buses. Even if some won’t say it out loud.

No matter how Mamdani has walked that line lately with his messaging, there is a tacit understanding by his voters (especially young voters) that he is of course with them on that. That, and his youth and charisma are what has them lining up behind him. Plus having such an easy narrative foil as Cuomo.

Sure he’s well organized which helped him pull in broader support and also did fine in the debates… but after the identity politics, the rest was paint by numbers to fill in his platform. Hardly revolutionary.
 
duluoz said:
Don’t kid yourself. I live here and have had these conversations. Young people in NYC are very opposed to Israeli treatment of Palestinians, from Gaza bombings to settlements and occupation to you name it. It is currently THE motivating issue among that demographic here. Way more so than free buses. Even if some won’t say it out loud.

No matter how Mamdani has walked that line lately with his messaging, there is a tacit understanding by his voters (especially young voters) that he is of course with them on that. That, and his youth and charisma are what has them lining up behind him. Plus having such an easy narrative foil as Cuomo.

Sure he’s well organized which helped him pull in broader support and also did fine in the debates… but after the identity politics, the rest was paint by numbers to fill in his platform. Hardly revolutionary.
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Was just in NYC over the last couple of weeks and the conversations I overheard about that race seemed to line up with what you're saying here. I'm not saying Paine is wrong about Mamdani, but I also agree that this primary was at least in part a referendum on Israel and Gaza.
 
HintonJamesHeel said:
And that’s the issue. These type of candidates can’t win nationally. They can’t be competitive nationally. The Democrats have to be smart in their primaries. It’s like the lessons from right after Cheeto winning ate already forgotten and the party is now somehow interpreting it as “we were left enough.” It’s beyond frustrating.
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they can win nationally by doing what Zohran did and will now have to do going into the NYC general - expanding and energizing the Dem voter base with a strong, worker-forward, populist campaign, and then forcing the "Blue No Matter Who" crowd to put their money where their mouth has been and vote for a candidate to their left instead of outing themselves as hypocritical diet conservatives.
 
Paine said:
It proves red-baiting doesn’t always work.
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It doesn't prove anything of the sort. I mean, I guess if you literally adhere to "always", sure. But this is one episode, and let's break it down:

1. This means Mamdami is the mayor, right? Wait, this was a Dem primary only? Oh. Now, in NYC, the Dem primary usually (but see Mike Bloomberg) produces the mayor only because Democrats so outnumber Pubs. But the fact is that Mamdami got 44% of the vote in a Dem primary in the first or second most liberal city in the country. This is not the triumphant data point that you are portraying.

2. I suspect a lot of people never even considered voting for Cuomo on personal grounds. I would have left him off the ballot. He resigned from the governor's position in disgrace, and rightfully so. I figured his political career was finished. It should be finished. And apparently it is.

But if Cuomo didn't have a legacy of lying to the public, sexually harassing his aides, generally being a huge asshole -- and his other flaws -- then the race comes out differently. Maybe Mamdami still wins, but I doubt it and at best we don't know. I suspect Cuomo lost well more than 10% of the vote because he's an asshole. I'm about as much of a political pragmatist as there is, but there's no nose-pinch tight enough to keep out that smell.

3. Here's where I will give your argument some credit but again, we need to remember that this is not a replicable political contest elsewhere. It's true that in the usual case, I would not give much thought to someone like Mamdami, pretty much without thinking about it too deeply. He wouldn't win, so why bother -- and even if he did win, it would make the left look bad. I never had time to pay close attention to city politics. In other words, it was something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because the socialist had no chance of winning, I didn't have to pay attention to him/her (there have always been very left candidates for NY mayor).

If the socialists are seen as having a chance of winning, then maybe they would be taken more seriously and maybe they would gain more support. This is certainly a possibility. Actually, I'm confident it's true to some degree -- the uncertainty would be whether it's a 1%-type effect or a 10% effect.
 
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