Take it from a Brit who's watched Sadiq Khan run London into the ground: this sort of candidate is the quickest way to destroy your city. Good luck, New York—you're gonna need it.
Citation needed, buddy. If anecdotes are all you operate in, I frequent between NYC and London for work and fail to see how London has been "run into the ground" as you claim. Maybe provide some evidence rather than baseless fearmongering, leave that for the Facebook comment section, like to think people are a bit more nuanced here.
American progressives are truly beyond parody. I don't need a “citation” for what every Briton has seen with our own eyes; besides which, the data on knife crime and infrastructure and so on is easy to find. I lived in London for years, I was a socialist activist (in the traditional, European sense of advocating for the country's working class, not in the modern, American sense of advocating for perverts and green nonsense) in some of London's poorest areas, and I still have many friends there. Rich, out-of-touch progressives like you think that jetting around the world makes you an expert on the places you swoop in and out of. You don't need to care about the children being stabbed in out-of-control knife crime, about the victims of drive-by gang shootings. You don't need to care about the spiralling drug trade, the used syringes in children's playgrounds, the stench of marijuana in every tower block. You don't need to care about the ruinous cost to the taxpayer of Khan's corrupt boondoggles and weird green and identity politics schemes. You don't need to care about the decaying housing in the suburbs and the slums, about the failures in infrastructure and transport, about being unable to get a GP appointment or a school place for your kids, about waiting ten hours to be seen in A&E. You only care that your bougie central London restaurants are still there, that you can still catch an over-priced show in the West End, and that your private taxi can still shuttle you back and forth between Heathrow and central London. You are everything that people are rising up against. You are the reason why Trump won and Brexit passed. I hope that if the worst happens and Mamdani wins, you get everything you voted for, good and hard.
Maybe take a step back and look at how Margie's austerity brought about a lot of these very real issues you listed and how Brexit shoved y'all over the cliff. You seem to be really fixated on the rich and powerful so at least you're on the right track there, but this sentence "not in the modern, American sense of advocating for perverts and green nonsense" makes me truly doubt your advocacy claims. Can pretty safely assume you're harbouring some homophobic/transphobic feelings based on a statement like that, and that you have a strange affection for oil companies/corporations, something that doesn't quite vibe with the intersectional nature of social advocacy. You got a lot of anger and hopefully are directing it toward supporting your community rather than painting strangers with broad brushes on the internet (I only wish I could afford the luxuries you describe haha). Both cities have their challenges, there's no denying that, but they're both world class and worthy of a grassroots effort to drive change, most importantly in the outer boroughs.
Social advocacy was never “intersectional”—a stupid word for stupid people—until American progressives got bored of doing actual hard graft for real socialist causes and instead decided to go off into cloud-cuckoo-land instead.
And yes, I do not believe that gender dysphorics are anything other than severely mentally ill: I am proud to live on TERF Island. Advocacy for male sex offenders in dresses has literally nothing to do with socialism.
This is an incredible exchange, great retort. A stupid word for stupid people indeed, and yes the American progressive is obsessed with stupid stuff like perverts and greenhouse nonsense.
Oh wow, rare to see someone go completely mask off like this, appreciate the honesty. Hope you can find some peace in this life, not gonna waste time on this virulence.
“mask off”? lol. I wasn't wearing a mask of pretending to support gender dysphorics. This is just how normal people think about them. You only think it's rare because you live in a bubble with your fellow international jet-setters. Out in the real world, it's much rarer to find people who really support gender dysphoria. There's a reason why Trump's most successful ad by a mile was “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you”. But please, make trans rights the hill you choose to die on, because you will keep losing for as long as you do.
Fellow non-American here, mind adding a citation anyways? This is the substack for a statistician and world famous poll-aggregator, if ever there was place or audience to cite in, it would be this one :)
I'm an American and I don't follow British politics much, especially local politics. Could you please expand on that? When I visited London it seemed like a very nice city. Your trains run well, are fast, and went everywhere I (as a tourist) wanted to go. There was no real threat of crime anywhere, at least not anything more than normal. But obviously I don't see what life is like for a local, so I wouldn't know about under the surface issues.
Sure: London is two cities. One is a swanky central zone for tourists and the rich; the other is the surrounding zone, a failing city of poverty and criminality. That's true to some extent for most big cities, but London is much more extreme than others. You don't see it as a tourist; I saw it because when I lived there I did a lot of socialist activism in my spare time. I met mothers whose sons had been stabbed to death in wars between rival drug gangs. I met families living in mouldy concrete apartment blocks (blocks of flats, as we call them) that were never maintained by the owners, whether council or private. I met people whose family members had died waiting for the NHS to treat them, and of course experienced this myself. I went to political events where women and men had to be segregated to appease Islamists, and the only women who spoke were white because the Muslim women, clad in niqabs and even the occasional burqa, wouldn't speak in front of unrelated men. I met people trying and failing to stand up to the corrupt “Tammany Hall”-style political machine of the Labour Party. Of course, this has been happening at least somewhat ever since the start of mass immigration, but since Khan seized power it has gone into overdrive.
But the bougie central London restaurants and theatres are still there for American tourists to see, so everything's fine I guess? When I visited Washington DC, as well as visiting the museums and sights I made a point of walking around the ghettoes for a couple of days too—after all, Washington is one of the biggest black cities in the US, but you wouldn't know it from the central tourist area. I was influenced by the Psychogeography concept of the Situationist International. Years on, that walkabout is some of what I remember most from the trip. I recommend it as an approach for anyone who's interested in social issues and is visiting a major city.
Khan as Mayor undermined the police by cutting their budgets, opposing them doing sensible things like stop and search, which is particularly crippling to attempts to stop knife crime and drug dealing, and supporting violent protests by groups like BLM and Antifa which undermines the rule of law generally. He has consistently promoted Islam and pandered to the fundamentalists—as a second-generation Pakistani, they are his core base—which has led to increasing Islamisation of culture, which I don't see as a good thing in an open European society. He has consistently advocated for and encouraged mass immigration, even care for illegal immigrants, which has undermined all areas of infrastructure, especially healthcare and education. He has introduced swingeing extra taxes on air pollution, which hurt ordinary Londoners (the air quality is already perfectly fine following the mid-C20 reforms).
He's not the only problem with London, far from it. But he is at the forefront of what has gone wrong with it.
"... He has consistently promoted Islam and pandered to the fundamentalists—as a second-generation Pakistani, they are his core base—which has led to increasing Islamisation of culture, which I don't see as a good thing in an open European society..."
126 years ago Winston Churchill said, in effect, "Islam is to humans as rabies is to dogs."
In his 1899 book The River War, there was a comparison between "the fanatical frenzy" among some Muslims and "hydrophobia in a dog," which is another term for rabies.
The EXACT passage reads:
“... How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy ... which exists wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.”
Regardless of the guys actual policies it seems to me what we see her is people want someone that is taking bread and butter issues like cost of living seriously. I think we saw that with Trump in November (regardless of what you think of him, he's an outsider and spent a lot of time talking about inflation, whereas the Biden Admin seemed to see it as a nuisance). Also, the Boomers, who got to hold on longer than normal because GenX was too small to displace them, is finally getting shoved aside.
The real villain in this story, as usual in New York politics, is electoral fusion.
First, let's not mince words: Zohran Mamdani is a batshit insane Gen Z woke socialist that should not be allowed anywhere near the mayor's office in any city, let alone the largest and most important in the country. He won the primary because his only viable opponent was riddled with toxic baggage, but don't mistake that for a mandate. New Yorkers are as sick of the bullshit as anyone else. That's why in 2024, Kamala Harris only won the state by 11 points, compared to the 20-30 point spreads that were more typical through the 2000s and 2010s. And one out of three votes in the Bronx, of all places, went to Trump. Of course, there are probably some New Yorkers who regret their votes for Trump now that we've started to see how his second term is actually playing out, but the fundamentals that underlay the shift to the right remain unchanged. In 2028, when a (probably) more sane Republican candidate is on the presidential ballot, I think there's an outside chance New York could emerge fully purple.
Circling back to the mayoral race: in a fair system, Mamdani's primary win would represent a huge opening for Sliwa, who IMO is the only one who's truly qualified for the mayoralty. Unfortunately, as Nate pointed out, Cuomo will likely still be on the ballot in the general election thanks to the electoral fusion law, on a minor party line that he custom-created as a failsafe in case he lost the primary, as will Eric Adams. So it's a four-way race where the "anyone but Mamdani" vote will be significant in size but split among three candidates of roughly equal popularity. And because the general election is first-past-the-post, rather than ranked-choice, this sets Mamdani up for a win by plurality, and God help New York.
> Zohran Mamdani is a batshit insane Gen Z woke socialist
Just out the gate with the adjectives. Guy just has a different idea on how to solve problems and you accuse him of lots of things, including using his generation as a negative.
Just as a warning, if you type 3 paragraphs of stuff, I'm just gonna say "i aint read allat" and mute the thread. So choose your own adventure.
> Just as a warning, if you type 3 paragraphs of stuff, I'm just gonna say "i [sic] aint [sic] read allat [sic]"
If you're unwilling to take things beyond surface-level platitudes and into the sort of detail and nuance that sometimes requires a few more words to express, then, ipso facto, you're unwilling to have a real discussion. And that's when *I* mute the thread.
Yes, it is. And a big part of why, over the past eight years, Democrats have been unable to capitalize on Trump's unpopularity and make meaningful electoral gains is because candidates are in the habit of selectively discounting polls and other data that don't line up with their preferred narrative - just as you are doing here. If you're a regular Silver Bulletin reader, you've heard Nate make that point time and time again.
It's time to face up to reality, and the reality is that the bulk of the American electorate, including in New York, is no more on board with the progressive agenda than it is with the MAGA agenda. There is a silent moderate majority, and the reason why they are silent is because 1) they have realized the futility of trying to be heard over the shrieking extremists on both fringes, and 2) in general, they are sick of politics being shoehorned into every single part of life, and of everything no matter how apolitical being forcibly mapped onto the left-right spectrum, and so they opt out of engaging whenever possible. Whichever of the two parties is the first to escape from the thrall of its extreme fringes and pivot to the center will, in all likelihood, be the dominant force in American politics for a generation.
I’m not necessarily a fan of Mamdami (especially the global antifada response, I’m fairly centrist when it comes to Israel, they have a right to exist, so does Palestine, we need to come to an agreement on a two state solution and stop killing innocent Gazans, etc. but I don’t think the pro-palestinian protestors and adjacent folks are being accurate or careful in their language or with respect to Israel… anyway), but I think Nate hits the nail on the head here. Folks didn’t want Cuomo, not just because of his scandals, but because of his ties to the old Democratic establishment. Democrats were willing to take a risk with a new candidate, with his flaws, because he was fresh, offered some good (and bad) new ideas and was focused on issues they care about. The establishment is bad exactly because it is afraid to risk (and Dems writ large are weak) campaigning on substance that the voters want and need. They default to Trump bad, or some other republicans are bad. Democratic voters roughly know that, that’s not enough to be their representative. I’m not the biggest Mamdami fan and be might not have been on my top 4, but it’s nice to see some voters, somewhere tire of the politics of the last 25+ years and finally decide to move on. I wish the republicans would do that too, but I don’t want them to win anyway.
Reason 9000 Cuomo ran an awful campaign is making an issue out of Mandami's opinion of the Middle East regardless of whether it was good or bad or popular or unpopular. The mayor of New York has nothing to do with Gaza. Schools, taxes, police, crime, transportation, housing. Local.
So Nate. You’re a River guy. Do you “ short” NYC? Adams Cuomo and global intifada socialist guy are each in their own way the three riders of the apocalypse. Short NYC Long Florida?
Not a fan of most of his politics, but if democrats ever want to win again they desperately need to do what he did and actually run on a platform of doing something.
AND the establishment could have told Cuomo no thanks, and then backed Lander, and they could have ended up with a viable, moderate candidate. My guess is Mamdani vs (a vigorously supported) Lander would have been a tighter race.
The establishment never ceases to amaze. You’re supposedly the “pro woman” party and you support the guy who had to resign bc of sexual harassment charges? How fucking dumb are you???
Back in 2015, I saw a post from a lady on the Daily Kos who said she couldn't bring herself to vote for Andrew Cuomo ever again, that she'd rather sit out the next gubernatorial election than vote for him; and she didn't even get flamed. So I think Andrew Cuomo was unfortunate to be especially loathed by the kind of Democrat homer who takes a perverse pleasure in participating in machine politics and voting for flawed or uninspiring candidates, whom you could normally count on to get excited about the likes of Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.
More interesting to me in all this is how party machine Democrats are unable to pick winners. Just endorse the person who is going to win the race, it makes you look good by halo. Musk went campaigning in Wisconsin and it destroyed his standing with his own party because he picked a loser. Same should happen here. Why is anyone courting the Bill Clinton endorsement and who is his endorsement convincing? On the other hand the AOC looks way way better after all this not because of specific issues politics but because she picked a winner.
As someone who is directional right on the political spectrum, I do not share the hatred of AOC that my peers do. She is effective politician with the younger generation that generates media attention that leads to support. I can't listen to anything she says because it'll drive me up the wall, so I keep her on mute.
This goes to prove that the OGDs (Old Guard Democrats) always have a base of voters much the same way that President Trump does on the other side of the ledger. Cuomo was a horrible candidate for a lot of reasons but still gets 1/3 of the votes. The key issue now is whether Mamdani can reject a lot of what I call souffle issues (things that look good but are largely hot air) that are generally unworkable in terms of solving problems.
Just as with Andrew Yang's UBI, voters love to get free stuff and don't look under the hood to see what is there. To think that indebted and already overly taxed, NYC can load more taxes on their citizens to build city owned grocery stores and preserve rent control will always be a fool's errand. Maybe he succeeds but can this message translate to the rest of America?
Until the Democrats get serious and run candidates in every single House district and find competitive Senate candidates they will continue to wander in the wilderness.
Souffle issues! Best description I've heard of the kind of batshittery that enthralls some candidates and voters. UBI, free transit, and free college all sound sexy to elder millennials who went to NYU and have terminal degrees and a lot of debt. Good government isn't sexy. Good government is work and hard choices.
The Dem establishment had hoped to find a more seasoned elder statesman than that youngster Cuomo to run, but apparently Chuck Grassley is not a viable candidate: too young, and not a NYC resident. Also, Grassley had not had a single sexual harassment allegation filed against him, at least so far back as they can check, given that his tenure began a few years before Gutenberg invented the printing press……
Despite a candidate with DSA DNA genes winning, I'd be very reluctant to say there's a bright national future for DSA candidates, especially those running on a "defund" the police and "intifada" platform. This is left-leaning NYC after all! Cuomo was a horrible candidate. Lots of centrist candidates could have beaten "Z".
If he never said it or meant it, he should say so....and end the debate.... Ask Nate what he thinks...Z is quoted all over as saying it.... Z should say, yes or no...
What are you talking about? The only reference I could find to him supporting "defund the police" was a spokesperson for the Cuomo campaign claiming it on Fox on Friends. His position as outlined in his community safety plan was to keep the current NYPD staffing, and to expand mental health intervention services. That's a far cry from defunding the police!
Then why doesn't Z deny he said it.... Politico, The Hill, etc. all have him overtly supporting defund the police.... If he never said that or supported it, he should simply say so and end the debate...
are you fucking stupid... genuinely asking... because... you take a long pause between every thought... but never paused to think... that it makes no sense for a candidate to outright deny false allegations... that bear no weight on his campaign... you don't bother to deny lies... for that gives your opponents... control of the narrative...
I appreciate the genuineness of your insult...but it really doesn't answer my concerns and millions of others' concerns that Z's apparent support for "defund the police" (see any and all AI summaries on the topic, Politico, NY Times) and "intifada", only take us further from his important goals, though destructively misstated by Z. The allegation of his support to defund the police and to "promote" "intifada" will prove to be electoral disasters outside of NYC...The Rs are already raising millions from Z's careless vocabulary.
Take it from a Brit who's watched Sadiq Khan run London into the ground: this sort of candidate is the quickest way to destroy your city. Good luck, New York—you're gonna need it.
Citation needed, buddy. If anecdotes are all you operate in, I frequent between NYC and London for work and fail to see how London has been "run into the ground" as you claim. Maybe provide some evidence rather than baseless fearmongering, leave that for the Facebook comment section, like to think people are a bit more nuanced here.
American progressives are truly beyond parody. I don't need a “citation” for what every Briton has seen with our own eyes; besides which, the data on knife crime and infrastructure and so on is easy to find. I lived in London for years, I was a socialist activist (in the traditional, European sense of advocating for the country's working class, not in the modern, American sense of advocating for perverts and green nonsense) in some of London's poorest areas, and I still have many friends there. Rich, out-of-touch progressives like you think that jetting around the world makes you an expert on the places you swoop in and out of. You don't need to care about the children being stabbed in out-of-control knife crime, about the victims of drive-by gang shootings. You don't need to care about the spiralling drug trade, the used syringes in children's playgrounds, the stench of marijuana in every tower block. You don't need to care about the ruinous cost to the taxpayer of Khan's corrupt boondoggles and weird green and identity politics schemes. You don't need to care about the decaying housing in the suburbs and the slums, about the failures in infrastructure and transport, about being unable to get a GP appointment or a school place for your kids, about waiting ten hours to be seen in A&E. You only care that your bougie central London restaurants are still there, that you can still catch an over-priced show in the West End, and that your private taxi can still shuttle you back and forth between Heathrow and central London. You are everything that people are rising up against. You are the reason why Trump won and Brexit passed. I hope that if the worst happens and Mamdani wins, you get everything you voted for, good and hard.
Maybe take a step back and look at how Margie's austerity brought about a lot of these very real issues you listed and how Brexit shoved y'all over the cliff. You seem to be really fixated on the rich and powerful so at least you're on the right track there, but this sentence "not in the modern, American sense of advocating for perverts and green nonsense" makes me truly doubt your advocacy claims. Can pretty safely assume you're harbouring some homophobic/transphobic feelings based on a statement like that, and that you have a strange affection for oil companies/corporations, something that doesn't quite vibe with the intersectional nature of social advocacy. You got a lot of anger and hopefully are directing it toward supporting your community rather than painting strangers with broad brushes on the internet (I only wish I could afford the luxuries you describe haha). Both cities have their challenges, there's no denying that, but they're both world class and worthy of a grassroots effort to drive change, most importantly in the outer boroughs.
Social advocacy was never “intersectional”—a stupid word for stupid people—until American progressives got bored of doing actual hard graft for real socialist causes and instead decided to go off into cloud-cuckoo-land instead.
And yes, I do not believe that gender dysphorics are anything other than severely mentally ill: I am proud to live on TERF Island. Advocacy for male sex offenders in dresses has literally nothing to do with socialism.
This is an incredible exchange, great retort. A stupid word for stupid people indeed, and yes the American progressive is obsessed with stupid stuff like perverts and greenhouse nonsense.
Yes, I like the passion one finds in the Silver Bulletin comments.
Oh wow, rare to see someone go completely mask off like this, appreciate the honesty. Hope you can find some peace in this life, not gonna waste time on this virulence.
“mask off”? lol. I wasn't wearing a mask of pretending to support gender dysphorics. This is just how normal people think about them. You only think it's rare because you live in a bubble with your fellow international jet-setters. Out in the real world, it's much rarer to find people who really support gender dysphoria. There's a reason why Trump's most successful ad by a mile was “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you”. But please, make trans rights the hill you choose to die on, because you will keep losing for as long as you do.
Fellow non-American here, mind adding a citation anyways? This is the substack for a statistician and world famous poll-aggregator, if ever there was place or audience to cite in, it would be this one :)
Rough and hard... wanna meet for some rough sex??????😂😄😇 I got a major crotch bulge....😜
I'm an American and I don't follow British politics much, especially local politics. Could you please expand on that? When I visited London it seemed like a very nice city. Your trains run well, are fast, and went everywhere I (as a tourist) wanted to go. There was no real threat of crime anywhere, at least not anything more than normal. But obviously I don't see what life is like for a local, so I wouldn't know about under the surface issues.
Sure: London is two cities. One is a swanky central zone for tourists and the rich; the other is the surrounding zone, a failing city of poverty and criminality. That's true to some extent for most big cities, but London is much more extreme than others. You don't see it as a tourist; I saw it because when I lived there I did a lot of socialist activism in my spare time. I met mothers whose sons had been stabbed to death in wars between rival drug gangs. I met families living in mouldy concrete apartment blocks (blocks of flats, as we call them) that were never maintained by the owners, whether council or private. I met people whose family members had died waiting for the NHS to treat them, and of course experienced this myself. I went to political events where women and men had to be segregated to appease Islamists, and the only women who spoke were white because the Muslim women, clad in niqabs and even the occasional burqa, wouldn't speak in front of unrelated men. I met people trying and failing to stand up to the corrupt “Tammany Hall”-style political machine of the Labour Party. Of course, this has been happening at least somewhat ever since the start of mass immigration, but since Khan seized power it has gone into overdrive.
But the bougie central London restaurants and theatres are still there for American tourists to see, so everything's fine I guess? When I visited Washington DC, as well as visiting the museums and sights I made a point of walking around the ghettoes for a couple of days too—after all, Washington is one of the biggest black cities in the US, but you wouldn't know it from the central tourist area. I was influenced by the Psychogeography concept of the Situationist International. Years on, that walkabout is some of what I remember most from the trip. I recommend it as an approach for anyone who's interested in social issues and is visiting a major city.
Thanks for the thorough reply. Most of this comment section is pure trash on all sides 😂
What were Sadiq Khan's policies that led to these problems?
Khan as Mayor undermined the police by cutting their budgets, opposing them doing sensible things like stop and search, which is particularly crippling to attempts to stop knife crime and drug dealing, and supporting violent protests by groups like BLM and Antifa which undermines the rule of law generally. He has consistently promoted Islam and pandered to the fundamentalists—as a second-generation Pakistani, they are his core base—which has led to increasing Islamisation of culture, which I don't see as a good thing in an open European society. He has consistently advocated for and encouraged mass immigration, even care for illegal immigrants, which has undermined all areas of infrastructure, especially healthcare and education. He has introduced swingeing extra taxes on air pollution, which hurt ordinary Londoners (the air quality is already perfectly fine following the mid-C20 reforms).
He's not the only problem with London, far from it. But he is at the forefront of what has gone wrong with it.
"... He has consistently promoted Islam and pandered to the fundamentalists—as a second-generation Pakistani, they are his core base—which has led to increasing Islamisation of culture, which I don't see as a good thing in an open European society..."
126 years ago Winston Churchill said, in effect, "Islam is to humans as rabies is to dogs."
In his 1899 book The River War, there was a comparison between "the fanatical frenzy" among some Muslims and "hydrophobia in a dog," which is another term for rabies.
The EXACT passage reads:
“... How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy ... which exists wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.”
Appallingly racist... but progress has been made both in England and the US!😎
“Knife crime.” How cute.
White fragility dies again Brit
And identity based politics shows ignorance.
And Boris did what for London... thats right diddley squat...😆
You should try posting a few more replies to my comment, I have a feeling you're gonna nail it real soon
The UK ran itself into the ground with Brexit and 14 years of Tory rule. London is a casualty of the country’s ruinous choices.
Nein😆
Regardless of the guys actual policies it seems to me what we see her is people want someone that is taking bread and butter issues like cost of living seriously. I think we saw that with Trump in November (regardless of what you think of him, he's an outsider and spent a lot of time talking about inflation, whereas the Biden Admin seemed to see it as a nuisance). Also, the Boomers, who got to hold on longer than normal because GenX was too small to displace them, is finally getting shoved aside.
The real villain in this story, as usual in New York politics, is electoral fusion.
First, let's not mince words: Zohran Mamdani is a batshit insane Gen Z woke socialist that should not be allowed anywhere near the mayor's office in any city, let alone the largest and most important in the country. He won the primary because his only viable opponent was riddled with toxic baggage, but don't mistake that for a mandate. New Yorkers are as sick of the bullshit as anyone else. That's why in 2024, Kamala Harris only won the state by 11 points, compared to the 20-30 point spreads that were more typical through the 2000s and 2010s. And one out of three votes in the Bronx, of all places, went to Trump. Of course, there are probably some New Yorkers who regret their votes for Trump now that we've started to see how his second term is actually playing out, but the fundamentals that underlay the shift to the right remain unchanged. In 2028, when a (probably) more sane Republican candidate is on the presidential ballot, I think there's an outside chance New York could emerge fully purple.
Circling back to the mayoral race: in a fair system, Mamdani's primary win would represent a huge opening for Sliwa, who IMO is the only one who's truly qualified for the mayoralty. Unfortunately, as Nate pointed out, Cuomo will likely still be on the ballot in the general election thanks to the electoral fusion law, on a minor party line that he custom-created as a failsafe in case he lost the primary, as will Eric Adams. So it's a four-way race where the "anyone but Mamdani" vote will be significant in size but split among three candidates of roughly equal popularity. And because the general election is first-past-the-post, rather than ranked-choice, this sets Mamdani up for a win by plurality, and God help New York.
If you want to live in Florida this badly just move there bro.
Like Sliwa always says: improve, don't move.
Hell yea brother. Like the attitude, I just think you are insane.
I'm honestly curious what makes you think that.
> Zohran Mamdani is a batshit insane Gen Z woke socialist
Just out the gate with the adjectives. Guy just has a different idea on how to solve problems and you accuse him of lots of things, including using his generation as a negative.
Just as a warning, if you type 3 paragraphs of stuff, I'm just gonna say "i aint read allat" and mute the thread. So choose your own adventure.
> Just as a warning, if you type 3 paragraphs of stuff, I'm just gonna say "i [sic] aint [sic] read allat [sic]"
If you're unwilling to take things beyond surface-level platitudes and into the sort of detail and nuance that sometimes requires a few more words to express, then, ipso facto, you're unwilling to have a real discussion. And that's when *I* mute the thread.
people who use the phrase circle back need to be shot on sight BTW 😆
Self deport to the nearest charter city Joe Mama... wow what a clever handle mon. 😆
That makes absolutely no sense. Why would I "self-deport" when New York itself is in the process of changing to politically look more like me?
It isn't, though.
Yes, it is. And a big part of why, over the past eight years, Democrats have been unable to capitalize on Trump's unpopularity and make meaningful electoral gains is because candidates are in the habit of selectively discounting polls and other data that don't line up with their preferred narrative - just as you are doing here. If you're a regular Silver Bulletin reader, you've heard Nate make that point time and time again.
It's time to face up to reality, and the reality is that the bulk of the American electorate, including in New York, is no more on board with the progressive agenda than it is with the MAGA agenda. There is a silent moderate majority, and the reason why they are silent is because 1) they have realized the futility of trying to be heard over the shrieking extremists on both fringes, and 2) in general, they are sick of politics being shoehorned into every single part of life, and of everything no matter how apolitical being forcibly mapped onto the left-right spectrum, and so they opt out of engaging whenever possible. Whichever of the two parties is the first to escape from the thrall of its extreme fringes and pivot to the center will, in all likelihood, be the dominant force in American politics for a generation.
I’m not necessarily a fan of Mamdami (especially the global antifada response, I’m fairly centrist when it comes to Israel, they have a right to exist, so does Palestine, we need to come to an agreement on a two state solution and stop killing innocent Gazans, etc. but I don’t think the pro-palestinian protestors and adjacent folks are being accurate or careful in their language or with respect to Israel… anyway), but I think Nate hits the nail on the head here. Folks didn’t want Cuomo, not just because of his scandals, but because of his ties to the old Democratic establishment. Democrats were willing to take a risk with a new candidate, with his flaws, because he was fresh, offered some good (and bad) new ideas and was focused on issues they care about. The establishment is bad exactly because it is afraid to risk (and Dems writ large are weak) campaigning on substance that the voters want and need. They default to Trump bad, or some other republicans are bad. Democratic voters roughly know that, that’s not enough to be their representative. I’m not the biggest Mamdami fan and be might not have been on my top 4, but it’s nice to see some voters, somewhere tire of the politics of the last 25+ years and finally decide to move on. I wish the republicans would do that too, but I don’t want them to win anyway.
Reason 9000 Cuomo ran an awful campaign is making an issue out of Mandami's opinion of the Middle East regardless of whether it was good or bad or popular or unpopular. The mayor of New York has nothing to do with Gaza. Schools, taxes, police, crime, transportation, housing. Local.
He’s going to be worse than De Blasio. That’s a high hurdle to clear, but I think he has it in him.
Miami real estate prices are headed up.
Chicago thought they had hit rock bottom with Lori Lightfoot and than Brandon Johnson said hold my beer.
Let ‘em fry down there.
Miami heading up? But what about the climate change.... ya been there? I have....🥹😆 NYC is still better.
It was as hot or hotter in NYC yesterday
So Nate. You’re a River guy. Do you “ short” NYC? Adams Cuomo and global intifada socialist guy are each in their own way the three riders of the apocalypse. Short NYC Long Florida?
Not a fan of most of his politics, but if democrats ever want to win again they desperately need to do what he did and actually run on a platform of doing something.
I cannot get over how obvious this is and dem politicians continue to not get it.
The pasturing of old cows like Clyburn and the Clintons can't happen fast enough!!😂
I still can't believe that Cuomo ran, let alone that people voted for him.
AND the establishment could have told Cuomo no thanks, and then backed Lander, and they could have ended up with a viable, moderate candidate. My guess is Mamdani vs (a vigorously supported) Lander would have been a tighter race.
The establishment never ceases to amaze. You’re supposedly the “pro woman” party and you support the guy who had to resign bc of sexual harassment charges? How fucking dumb are you???
I’m a moderate Dem, but I’m glad Mamdani won.
Mystified that the “not zohran” vote coalesced around Cuomo. Literally anyone would have been better, surely you can find SOMEONE
Back in 2015, I saw a post from a lady on the Daily Kos who said she couldn't bring herself to vote for Andrew Cuomo ever again, that she'd rather sit out the next gubernatorial election than vote for him; and she didn't even get flamed. So I think Andrew Cuomo was unfortunate to be especially loathed by the kind of Democrat homer who takes a perverse pleasure in participating in machine politics and voting for flawed or uninspiring candidates, whom you could normally count on to get excited about the likes of Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.
More interesting to me in all this is how party machine Democrats are unable to pick winners. Just endorse the person who is going to win the race, it makes you look good by halo. Musk went campaigning in Wisconsin and it destroyed his standing with his own party because he picked a loser. Same should happen here. Why is anyone courting the Bill Clinton endorsement and who is his endorsement convincing? On the other hand the AOC looks way way better after all this not because of specific issues politics but because she picked a winner.
As someone who is directional right on the political spectrum, I do not share the hatred of AOC that my peers do. She is effective politician with the younger generation that generates media attention that leads to support. I can't listen to anything she says because it'll drive me up the wall, so I keep her on mute.
This goes to prove that the OGDs (Old Guard Democrats) always have a base of voters much the same way that President Trump does on the other side of the ledger. Cuomo was a horrible candidate for a lot of reasons but still gets 1/3 of the votes. The key issue now is whether Mamdani can reject a lot of what I call souffle issues (things that look good but are largely hot air) that are generally unworkable in terms of solving problems.
Just as with Andrew Yang's UBI, voters love to get free stuff and don't look under the hood to see what is there. To think that indebted and already overly taxed, NYC can load more taxes on their citizens to build city owned grocery stores and preserve rent control will always be a fool's errand. Maybe he succeeds but can this message translate to the rest of America?
Until the Democrats get serious and run candidates in every single House district and find competitive Senate candidates they will continue to wander in the wilderness.
Souffle issues! Best description I've heard of the kind of batshittery that enthralls some candidates and voters. UBI, free transit, and free college all sound sexy to elder millennials who went to NYU and have terminal degrees and a lot of debt. Good government isn't sexy. Good government is work and hard choices.
I would hate to be a jewish business owner in NYC going forward
Nice try Cuomotard, Zohran will make NYC better for everyone who’s not a billionaire 😄
I am sure The Billionaires paying 46% tax rate, will stay put and eagly pay even higher rates. Enjoy your socialism /Communism. LOL
Probably disasterous but this is how democracy works.
The Dem establishment had hoped to find a more seasoned elder statesman than that youngster Cuomo to run, but apparently Chuck Grassley is not a viable candidate: too young, and not a NYC resident. Also, Grassley had not had a single sexual harassment allegation filed against him, at least so far back as they can check, given that his tenure began a few years before Gutenberg invented the printing press……
Despite a candidate with DSA DNA genes winning, I'd be very reluctant to say there's a bright national future for DSA candidates, especially those running on a "defund" the police and "intifada" platform. This is left-leaning NYC after all! Cuomo was a horrible candidate. Lots of centrist candidates could have beaten "Z".
Not a single time did Zohran ever utter the phrase “defund the police” - take your strawmans back to 2020!
If he never said it or meant it, he should say so....and end the debate.... Ask Nate what he thinks...Z is quoted all over as saying it.... Z should say, yes or no...
It's in all the mainstream media quoting him and Z never denied it....and it's in DSA literature.... of which he is a member in good standing...
What are you talking about? The only reference I could find to him supporting "defund the police" was a spokesperson for the Cuomo campaign claiming it on Fox on Friends. His position as outlined in his community safety plan was to keep the current NYPD staffing, and to expand mental health intervention services. That's a far cry from defunding the police!
Nope! Outright lying doesn’t make you right, you have no source for any of that 😄
Then why doesn't Z deny he said it.... Politico, The Hill, etc. all have him overtly supporting defund the police.... If he never said that or supported it, he should simply say so and end the debate...
are you fucking stupid... genuinely asking... because... you take a long pause between every thought... but never paused to think... that it makes no sense for a candidate to outright deny false allegations... that bear no weight on his campaign... you don't bother to deny lies... for that gives your opponents... control of the narrative...
I appreciate the genuineness of your insult...but it really doesn't answer my concerns and millions of others' concerns that Z's apparent support for "defund the police" (see any and all AI summaries on the topic, Politico, NY Times) and "intifada", only take us further from his important goals, though destructively misstated by Z. The allegation of his support to defund the police and to "promote" "intifada" will prove to be electoral disasters outside of NYC...The Rs are already raising millions from Z's careless vocabulary.