So, Democratic Socialist (ie. has politics a 70s liberal would have agreed with, but is less racist) Zohran Mamdani has won the nomination for Democratic candidate for New York city Mayor.
I’ll point out here that there have been a few such attempts. Matt talks about Lamont’s challenge to Lieberman, where Lamont won the primary, then Lieberman won the election. That is what will be tried here: the oligarchical part of the party will align behind another candidate, possibly even the Republican one. Those who don’t will try to co-opt Mamdani and turn him into a centrist-left winger.
Mamdani is more radical than Sanders, he isn’t a Zionist, for example. But he’s basically suggesting policies than no Democrat in the 50s and 60s and even into the 70s would have found extraordinary.
What Matt calls system defining elections, I call sub-ideological revolutions. FDR changed the form of capitalism practiced in the US, so did Reagan and Carter. Mamdani, for all the screams from rich operatives like Larry Summers and various oligarchs isn’t a radical, any more than FDR was. He doesn’t want to switch to economic Communism (ownership of the means of production by the workers, or Soviet style central control), say, or a single party state. He wants real changes to how capitalism is practiced and some changes to who has power in Democracy.
Sanders in 2016 and 2020 was an attempt at a sub-ideological revolution or system defining election. This is why Obama intervened and lined up everyone behind Biden, a nearly unprecedented step.
So was Corbyn, except he got further, winning the Labour leadership. It’s not an accident that (and we have receipts, so don’t argue) Labour operatives actually sabotaged him in two elections to ensure the Conservatives won. They wanted the old ideology/system to keep running more than they wanted their party to win. And once he was removed, his successor, Starmer, purged the party of the democratic socialist left, and once in power doubled down on austerity and politics no different in substance, but actually more punitive, than those followed by the Conservative party.
Now the Reform party in the UK is coming on hard.
Be clear that sub-ideological transitions/system changes can be bad. Neoliberalism was a bad change. If Reform in the UK sets the new system/ideological norm, it will be awful.
This is one reason why I said that Corbyn was the UK’s last chance: if the left failed, the right would then get its shot, and what the right wants to do is beyond awful.
It’s why Germany is beyond hosed: doubling down on military Kenesianism (which won’t work in a corrupt neoliberal system) while cutting social welfare will just lead the new-right getting into power and their policies will make most people worse off, not better.
As for Mamdani, he’s a good sign. The fact that men went for him and so did the youngs is also excellent, because it shows that men and youngsters aren’t really “right wing” in any way that matters. Yet. What they want is change. If they are offered good change, they’ll take it, but they’re so desperate that if all that is on the menu is shitty change or the status quo, they’ll take shitty change.
This was obviously going to happen. I wrote years ago that we wouldn’t see real change till the mid 2020s at the earliest, because it required generational change as well.
Mamdani tells us that what sort of change will finally win in the US is not yet decided. It doesn’t have to be MAGA stupidity and meanness.
So if you want something better in the US, if you want a chance at a new New Deal, get behind Mamdani and people like him hard.
There still remains the question of if Mamdani can deliver even if elected. Will be be co-opted? Will he run into opposition from powerful enemies he can’t either overcome or use as a rallying call? Is he competent to create and run a new system like the one he’s suggesting?
But this is a chance because if Mamdani wins then improves New Yorker’s lives, he’ll be copied. And if you’re in a position to do something to improve the chance of it happening and then working, I suggest you do so.
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Feral Finster
1. Settle down. Cuomo will run as an independent in the general election, solely for the purpose of splitting the ticket. That, combined with an all-out propaganda blitz (most of which will have nothing to do with Palestine) will ensure that Mamdani will lose. Muh Freedom will be saved.
2. “It’s why Germany is beyond hosed: doubling down on military Kenesianism (which won’t work in a corrupt neoliberal system) while cutting social welfare will just lead the new-right getting into power and their policies will make most people worse off, not better.”
No amount of money will turn europeans, the biggest wimps on the planet, into soldiers. There is a reason that army recruiters do not focus their efforts on old age homes for geriatric metrosexuals. That is understood, but all that is beside the point.
The point is to show the Americans who the most loyalest little bitch is, in order to get the Americans to fight Russia on their behalf, to show the Americans that they are worthy, that they really really want it.
Oakchair
There is a conspiracy theory that the anti-violence, love not war, hippie peace culture was in part created by the CIA and oligarchs. They did this in order to condition their ideological opponents to become pacified.
Hopefully Zohran Mamdani avoided that conditioning. Hopefully he views acquiring power as a means to an end instead of the end. Hopefully he understands that oppressors won’t stop stomping on a human face because of lectures. Most importantly he needs to understand that the democratic establishment, the media and every institution are controlled by the oligarchs. The same people who cheer and smile as millions are slaughtered.
different clue
If he can keep running on the same things that he is saying now, and get elected on those things, then he will try to achieve some things in NYC. NYC is a small place and a limited arena of action. His enemies within and beyond NYC would try to sabotage and block his every effort every which way.
If he gets elected, hopefully he will actually try to do all the things that are theoretically legally possible within NYC. That way , if he tries, and he is stopped, his supporters will get educated on who the enemy is and how the enemy works, and will begin thinking deeper and further about how to deal with the enemy.
The NYPD and especially its fascistic Police Union, will be one of his most vicious and evil enemies if he is elected.
I hope he is studying/ will study the mayoralty of Mayor Harold Washington of Chicago. I remember reading and hearing at the time that most of what Washington wanted to do was being blocked by the Chicago Aldermen, led by one “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak. And he knew it. So he spent much of his energy first term breaking the Aldermen, including Fast Eddie, and then got elected to a second term. And almost immediately died of a heart attack, which was a tragedy and a loss for American social-economic politics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Washington
mago
Mamdani won the primary, can erasure be far behind? Wait for it. It’s on the way.
shagggz
mago, considering NYC is the biggest Zionazi hive outside of Isnotreal, erasure would be a reasonable expectation.
Robin R Payne
Does Zohran Mamdani Matter?
Short answer: No.
Medium answer: Maybe…if you believe being mayor of NYC is significant.
Cuomo lost the primary but is backed by big money/establishment liberals. Of course he will run as an independent because NYC needs moar wealth management and hi profile fascist curious dickheads.
Long answer: I honestly don’t give a fuck; I am leaving the USA for Colombia in a few months.
someofparts
speaking of the Zionazi hive –
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/07/the-end-of-israels-economy/
Should we expect an influx of angry Zionists if that country falls and none of them are willing to risk moving back there?
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This guys bonafides smack of Obama. An injection of Hopium when times are dire. I smell CIA. What is truly under the rock that is Zohran? There is something or many things, I assure you. There always is. He mentioned the magic phrase that ties him to the establishment thus indicating he is an imposter as they all are — DEI. Any serious “leftist” sees DEI for what it is and no, I’m not talking about the rightest critique of it.
The irony of Trump calling him a communist lunatic on the one hand and on the other hand he praises the likes of Putin and Kim Jong Un, both of whom are communist lunatics. He criticizes Mamdani’s looks and yet considers the al Qaeda leader of Syria a hunka hunka burnin’ love. Zohran is every bit as dashing and handsome as Donny’s man-crush Ahmed al-Sharaa and I bet Zohran gives better back rubs.
Too much has changed to compare anything to FDR. IN fact, too much has changed to compare anything to Reagan. It’s likened to comparing pineapple to rhubarb or a zebra to a marmot.