Well I think you should vote for people who actually have qualifications for the job they’re running for, especially at the municipal level. Brad Lander was also a member of the Democratic Socialists and the Working Families party, is a progressive, but unlike Mamdani, actually has municipal and executive experience. He’s run non-profits and before he was city comptroller he was on the city council. How about that? I’m not anti-progressive. But thanks for the lecture.
I mean Mamdani has won, so best of luck to him. Hope he doesn’t shit the bed for Democratic Socialists specifically, and progressives in general.
These aren’t actually objective “qualifications” for the job. They are things that you personally think are important. And that’s fair enough. That’s how the electoral process works. But to claim that Mamdani isn’t qualified doesn’t make any sense. He qualifies to be able to stand for Mayor: thats all that is really needed.
I already went over what I meant by “qualifications for mayor.” I’m not getting into this with you. I honestly have no idea why you’re getting so amped up over this. A progressive won. I said I would’ve voted for a progressive if I were an NYC resident (Lander).
…because I think with the rise of the alt-right worldwide and the current authoritarian takeover of the US federal government, we should be pushing back on the “establishment norms” that helped get us into this mess in the first place. I think that the idea Mamdani “isn’t qualified” is an absurd one and it needs to be pushed back on. Of course he’s qualified. Everything he’s said and done on his campaign shows just how qualified he is from fund-raising to staying-on-message to building-bridges with his opponents.
You aren’t going to take back the America by playing it safe. Mamdani has everything it takes to be the Mayor of NYC. If a buffoon like Adams can keep the schools running, then I don’t think Mamdani will have a problem.
Dude wtf? It just means we’ll see how he does as mayor. No one has any idea how he’s gonna do, including you. As I’ve said before, he has zero municipal experience, zero experience as the chief executive of anything, but maybe that won’t matter. Wouldn’t have been my choice to run the largest city in America, but my choice doesn’t matter. I hope he succeeds.
The good news is, he won’t be able to implement the vast majority of the idiotic policies he’s pitching.
He’s promised to pay for them with a 2% tax on New Yorkers making more than $1,000,000 a year (or, New Yorkers who can afford to move) as well as by raising the state’s corporate tax rate from 7.25 to 11.5.
You may have already noticed the problem with this plan, in which case, congrats - you’re smarter than Mamdani (not a high bar to clear).
Like a student body president who promised no homework and ice cream socials every Wednesday, the position to which Zohran has apparently been elected does not actually have any influence over the state’s corporate tax rate. New York’s governor already said she’s not interested in the tax hike. So most of Mamdani’s proposals are dead on arrival.
Chief executives are overrated. ESPECIALLY when it comes to running political office. I personally think chief executive experience is largely disqualifying.
If the only people who are qualified to serve are people that tick certain boxes: being “chief executive of something”, then you are going to only get what you’ve gotten for decades: political hacks who know the right palms to grease.
There are no shortage of people like Mamdani that the world are needing right now to lead the charge against the rise of the alt-right. The stakes are higher than they’ve ever been before. The Democrats are NOT fighting back. People need to be able to rally around something. “A few years of municipal experience” is NOT what New York City, America or the world needs right now. That isn’t inspirational. That isn’t going to get people out to vote.
Thats all I’m saying. The world isn’t the same as it was ten year ago. The Democrats are decades behind the opposition in understanding how to win in the disinformation era. Mamdani’s got the experience where it matters and is working a great ground-game that actually has a chance of winning in a post-truth world.
Point taken, but “winning” and “governing” are largely two different things. (Yes, you need to do the first to have a chance to succeed at the second). Let’s hope he can do both.
For me, this is the main thing. Democrats (the organization) need to wake-up and do something different. Voters are sending this message to them. Maybe those running the party will take note.
Agreed. However Mamdani turns out as a mayor, the dinosaur-fossils of the DNC and entrenched Democratic got-too-comfortable-for-their-own-good elites have officially been put on notice.
…the thing is the biggest threat to Mamdani being able to govern isn’t his “lack of experience.”
It’s that EVERYBODY will be coming at him, setting him up to fail. The Republicans. The media. The NYPD. The full force of the United States Federal government. Establishment Dems. I just looked to see if Schumer or Jefferies or any other senior leadership had offered their congratulations, and nothing. Perhaps tomorrow.
But Mamdani has run the sort of campaign that you can only run if you surround yourself with competent, smart people. The idea that he will abandon that if he wins the election and the garbage starts piling up and the school system closes down seems far-fetched.
It’s the bigger picture that matters here. I think the establishment Democrats are fundamentally incapable of rising to the moment. They will continue down the road of “centrism” which in reality is just old-school Republicans, being complicit with the Trump administration more often than not. It’s why campaigns run like Mamdani’s are so important.
In a sane world if Mamdani gets elected this would be the beginning of the end of the establishment dems. But we live in a world where Donald Trump got elected President twice. It will be an uphill battle to get anything done. And every little thing that goes wrong will be amplified by the “told you he didn’t have enough experience” crowd. The narrative always wins in the end.
And that’s what I fear will probably happen. And why I pushed back on that narrative in this thread. I don’t think there is anything we can do to really fight back against the rise of authoritarianism around the world right now. Look at Canada with MAID. Or the UK with Starmer. It isn’t just the right. It’s the so-called left that are also jumping in on the bandwagon. I’m picking we will be on the downward spiral for at least another decade before we can finally fight back.
So thats why Mamdani’s little victory today in New York has resonated beyond the city. Because maybe he can pull it off. And perhaps that will inspire a fightback in other places. I honestly don’t have much hope for the future. But I had a little bit more hope in my heart right now than I did a few hours ago.
(With the small caveat, tempering my own earlier messages as well, that this is just the primary. Perhaps incumbent Adams can pull off an independent upset. Perhaps something else will happen. It’s likely that Mamdani will become mayor, and all the above will become operative, but not certain.)
In so far as American liberals require new leadership in order to be viable, I agree.
However I’m not certain that the alternative I’m seeing is going to work.
“But when Miller asked Mamdani about the pro-Palestine slogan “Globalize the intifada,” the candidate’s pragmatism and intellectual humility evaporated. “To me, ultimately, what I hear in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights,” he said.”
This is a mistake when handling the subject of the middle east in the west. We do not need to take the gravely serious tone about their issues as they demand from us, as we have our own concerns.
One of those concerns is center-left people who are leaning increasingly center-right as the left becomes more unstable and cannibalistic. We need leaders focused on our own issues, not because other peoples issues don’t matter, but because we can’t win on other peoples issues.
The article talks about “globalizing” and “intifada” and the delicate concerns of what these words imply, but it doesn’t matter what they imply to the people heatedly arguing about this. From our view point these words have one purpose: they are from the mouths of foreign agitators and should be mocked and ridiculed, not danced around to placate sections of the left which are largely contributing to our domestic failure anyway.
A victorious left doesn’t require any of these things.
Liberals need to vow to win for working class and average people, not to be usurped by religious wars from a distant land, nor idenity politics in general which have made bigotry and division worse than they have ever been in my whole life.
Mamdani has clearly energized many voters, especially young voters. And his refusal to bow to conventional wisdom regarding Israel/Palestine is a huge part of why. The Democratic party needs these voters as well as the voters you describe. Not every candidate of the future will be a Mamdani clone, but the party could learn a lot from him and his campaign and would be wise to welcome his energy into the party and the future.