Firstly: that’s an interesting photo that editorial chose to run with on Jonathan Chait’s opinion article.
Secondly: anyone familiar with Chait’s political leanings would know what stance he was gonna take here. He thinks that “progressive overreach” on things like trans rights are what gave Trump the win even when the Democrats barely campaigned on trans rights at all. Absolutely nobody is surprised he’s taken the same stance on “globalize the intifada.”
These pundits like Chait and Yglesias, consultants like Carville and Bitecofer…they all insist upon themselves. They got it exactly wrong…so wrong it helped drive the Democrats off the cliff. And they can’t concede they got anything wrong. None of the Democrat leadership can do that. As far as they are concerned its just another day at the office.
If the “liberals” have to win, then they can fight the progressives for it in the marketplace of ideas. Because the “liberals” aren’t fighting for the working class, and they aren’t fighting for the average people and they actually overwhelmingly support fighting wars over in the distant land and many people in America are starting to see that. It’s actually the progressives who have actionable plans to help the working class and average people and people at the bottom that nobody wants to fight for.
And “identity politics” from progressives is absolutely NOT responsible for making bigotry and division worse than its ever been. Its the bigots that are responsible for that.
Glad you mentioned Rachel Bitecofer, who is an unrelenting warrior against Trumpism and advocate for smart Democratic Party strategy.
But she went on a fairly bitter Xitter rant last night about NYC voters, claiming this result (not mathematically clinched yet) is actually a setback for the party in the long run. I think she’s missing the important point that younger voters want a new, younger-thinking party leadership.
There’s some kind of message to be gleaned when youthful male voters, who have been drifting rightward, went strongly for Mamdani yesterday.
I was briefly amused to learn that Zohran attended the same primary school as me for a couple of years; and then slightly horrified when I realised he was a couple of grades behind me. I’m not that old, dammit!
Despite your small print, this deserves to be highlighted. Mamdami won, but this is just the primary. The incumbent mayor is running for re-election as an Independent, and there is a GOP candidate as well. However scandal-plagued, it would be very foolish to write off Adams, who has shown Trump-like ability to shrug off what should be major liabilities. And could a deep Dem party rift open the door for GOP candidate Curtis Sliwa to slip through? (I doubt it - he seems like a lightweight/fringe candidate to me, but who the hell knows?)
I’m curious how this’ll work, when there’s a strong progressive candidate in the front of the field, and a bunch of corrupt billionaire-supported assholes running as independents and Republicans. Normally, Adams and Cuomo would split the “I want a puppet of the billionaire class” vote. Does ranked choice make their job easier?
…I don’t think anyone can write off Adams. I’ll go even further: considering the totality of the world we are living in right now, including the fact that Adams was under indictment for corruption before literally getting a get-out-of-jail card, I’m not expecting a clean election, and it wouldn’t be silly to consider Adams a favourite no matter what any polling may say.
In a four-way race between Mamdani, Adams, Cuomo and Sliwa, who would we expect to be eliminated after the first round and where would we expect his second place votes to go?
Asking for opinions because I don’t have much of a feel for the electorate in that scenario.
I don’t think the general election is ranked choice.
EDIT: I googled and this was really hard to find. I’m still not positive, but I think I’m right - the NY election board website says that RCV is used for “primary and special elections”, but no mention of regular general elections.
It is indeed hard to find that information stated simply but it looks like you’re right and I was wrong. It’s the regularly scheduled election in November which means that voters will be back to the terrible FPTP system and some candidate will win with 60% of the electorate hating him.
I cannot speak directly to Mamdani’s plan, but Massachusetts instituted a “millionaire’s surtax” in 2023 after residents voted for it in a referendum. During the campaign, the anti side had a similar argument to yours, namely that rich people would move out of the state as a result. And yet, I read an article a couple of months ago that reported that the number of millionaires in MA has actually increased since the tax was passed.
And the surtax has generated about $2.5 billion in new revenue (more than anticipated!), almost all of which has been allocated to help our crumbling public transit infrastructrure and public education.
I voted for that tax and am, so far, quite pleased with the results. It’s not a crazy idea and Mamdani can point to Massachusetts as a blueprint.
It backed another tired, entitled candidate in Andrew Cuomo. Voters finally had enough.
(not sure if article is paywalled)
Miscellaneous takeaways from his article, which I generally agree with:
This was a comprehensive ass-kicking, with Mamdami winning many areas that you wouldn’t expect to vote for a Socialist (neighborhoods that went heavily for Clinton over Sanders in 2016, for instance).
NYC is fairly conservative as big cities go, with a lot of law-and-order voters and a big swing toward Trump last year. As a bellwether of public opinion, this is a much more impressive victory for the Left than a similar candidate winning in San Francisco or Portland would have been.
Leftists seem to do better when they focus on cost of living issues rather than being distracted by culture wars.
Mamrani, who started the race polling at 1%, is clearly a good politician and a rising star.
Cuomo was a crappy candidate.
The Democratic establishment sucks. Because he has a famous name and a big campaign bankroll, they were just going to anoint him as the candidate. It didn’t occur to anyone from the centrist wing of the Party that some voters maybe might have wanted a candidate who wasn’t a Socialist OR a sex offender. It’s the same lemming mentality that prevented any credible centrists from running against obviously flawed candidates like Clinton '16 or Biden '24.
If you want to attract younger voters, it’s probably good to not nominate 67 year olds.
Anyway, three cheers for Zohran. Hope he does well.
Seriously, what is it with the “I refuse to go away, I will have the voters vindicate me” thing with the NY Dems? (See: Cuomo, Adams, Weiner, Spitzer).
Is that organization really going to have to rely on “dark horse” candidates to come out of nowhere, like AOC and Zohran, to move along?
I mean, hey, sure Adams was not really the guy the Establishment wanted and even setting aside dodgy dealings he hasn’t been exactly what neither the elite nor the base expected, but in 2021 he brought a winning offer to the table as it stood then. What was Cuomo bringing? Can he really still retain that much fundraising clout?
I agree but I have no faith that the leadership will do much, if anything, about this. Instead, I think each will cling to their perks and play a game of musical-chairs till they are all gone. They are old enough they only have a cushy retirement in front of them even if they lose office. They will feel no pressure to change.
To be clear, my problem with the 2% millionaire tax is a minor one compared to the proposal to raise the corporate tax rate. Which again, is like a child running for student body president promising no homework and ice cream socials - not at all in his wheelhouse.
Here’s the rest of my post that you cropped out of the quote where I explain this:
As for the millionaire tax - I’ll just note that there are fewer barriers to leaving city limits than to leaving the state. But we will see, that’s far from the biggest problem with Mamdani.
I cropped that out because I was not responding in any way to the corporate tax plan, only the millionaire’s tax. It is completely irrelevant to my post.
That’s true as far as it goes, but is not responsive to the facts of what has occurred in Massachusetts, i.e. a large net influx of millionaires to the state and a huge boon to the state coffers.
Looking up those numbers, there was an increase to people with a net worth of over 1 million dollars.
The surtax in question impacts people who make over 1 million dollars a year. Those two groups are like, an order of magnitude apart, potentially?
According to Mass Opportunity Alliance, the number of people earning over $1,000,000 a year decreased sharply. Again, those are the people impacted by the tax, not simply people with a net worth of over $1,000,000.
Seems like someone is playing some funky games with net worth vs net income…
I’d consider someone with a net income of over a million to be exceedingly rich; someone with a net worth of a million might barely be middle class, if that’s all locked in a house.
Trump consigliere Stephen Miller contributed to the ongoing meltdown over Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary with a nod to what’s known as the “great replacement theory.”
Miller has long elevated the racist right-wing conspiracy theory, which posits that liberal elites are ushering in immigrants to replace native-born Americans and thereby make electoral gains. In 2019, The Guardian reported that Miller, in emails with a writer for the far-right site Breitbart, “promoted racist fears of demographic replacement of white people by non-whites.”
Indeed, a significant number of middle-class ordinary Americans who socked away even modest amounts of money in their 401k, Roth or S&P500 for decades would have over $1 million in worth right now.
