What Are Zohran Mamdani's Flaws?

Have at it.

https://mamdanitimes.com/

Hasn't become mayor yet.

He gives off a short-guy vibe. But plenty of mayors are short. I think he'll be a good mayor of NYC, and everyone who hates him (thus far) is a gaping asshole. That can't be a coincidence.

sharp knees

Let's save this for when he becomes and Mayor and calls in the cops anyway...

I can’t wait for the titch-off when he meets Sadiq Khan.

NYC mayor's effectiveness, for better or worse, is reversely proportional to their height, so maybe that's for the best.

convinced his mom to not direct a harry potter film, potentially costing her life-changing money.

then again, he was probably playing 4d chess and already thinking about fending off nepo baby allegations

He's never once appeared nude.

November seems like a long ways off, but that isn’t his fault.

OR IS IT

😂

not my husband

Let's save this for when he becomes and Mayor and calls in the cops anyway...

This is the real answer — Mamdani's biggest flaw is that he's running for mayor of a gigantic city, and that job comes with built-in constraints. He will absolutely still use the police for a lot of things, even if he manages to create his Department of Community Safety and disband the protest-response squad (both of which he's promised). A lot of people want the cops to come when they call. You can argue that they shouldn't want that, but a lot of them do.

Also of course NYPD will try to make his life miserable. That's not a flaw, but it's a reality.

Textbook example being the full-fledged riot led by Rudy Giuliani against Dinkins.

Gives off a bit of a Lin Manuel Miranda vibe

too handsome.

max read had a quote in one of his recent newsletters about the police issue from a Matthew Guariglia:

THERE ARE A FEW LESSONS that Mamdani can learn from how the NYPD stymied de Blasio. People on the right are going to blast him for being soft on crime no matter what he does. But Mamdani has the ability to flip the script on them. Advocates of the status quo, unwilling to try innovative methods of community safety and crime prevention, are the ones who permit the persistence of crime. After all, the failed ways of “fighting crime” are about putting people in jail after committing crimes. A new public-safety paradigm centers on preventing it in the first place.
Mamdani can also emphasize officer well-being and workloads by creating agencies willing to take some of the “burden” away by taking on tasks armed police should not be doing in the first place. He can be proactive about copaganda: police will be eager to link crime to a progressive mayor even if they have to manufacture a “crime wave” to do it. The future mayor’s office should be constantly vocal about how low crime is, what the city is doing to make people feel safe and prevent crime, and should not be afraid to say when police are engaged in creating a politically-motivated narrative of fear.
Another lesson is for New Yorkers, not Mamdani. That's to refuse to panic.

I think making it a value proposition for the police is canny, but it's an uphill battle and this analysis is mostly right. It's not that left-wing policies are causing supposed crime waves, it's selective policing done in the purpose of discrediting a mayor that the police union views as their adversary. Maybe getting ahead of that helps, maybe it backfires and the PD demands you kiss the ring and continue giving them unlimited overtime pay. This problem isn't specific to large cities, and I feel like that levy has to break at some point.

if you just execute one cop in front of the rest of them theyll fall in line

They are scavenging his twitter and its truth nukes day and night back in the day.

The West is defined by its most powerful while the rest by our most vulnerable. This shit pisses me off.

— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) July 16, 2014

that's my guy

I want to marry him

will this doom his chances

https://t.co/SWOuKnn88O pic.twitter.com/ad7zvamviE

— Franklin Leonard (@franklinleonard) July 8, 2025

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:kypbxp7rhw7q2dfa4fr7f6i6/bafkreihscsqidkzsbrmzrlx3qpdg5ck2rqmcwyhe42ptxml4phzulzhvky@jpeg

tough out there

So weird!

So basically the problem is that they're are too many rock solid, logical reasons why people should vote for him and not one of the brazenly corrupt assholes that are running against him.

*there are

https://archive.ph/sYAOl

New Data for Progress poll:

Mamdani 40
Cuomo 24
Adams 15
Sliwa 14

https://www.filesforprogress.org/datasets/2025/7/dfp_nyc_mayoral_ge_traditional_crosstabs.pdf

Sickos.jpg

Even Trump’s team was smart enough to realize he had to co-opt RFK jr. in order not to split his vote.

not excited to see how low the Democratic Party is willing to go to sideline Mamdani

incredible opportunity to tee off on the very unpopular dem establishment send this nasty old man to hell

Cuomo said he would make affordability a cornerstone of his general-election campaign but would run on the notion that he will actually be able to make the city more affordable while Mamdani will only talk about it. “It’s about not just connecting with the perception of the problem. It’s finding the real solution and then having the ability to do it. You don’t want someone who just connects. That’s step one. What you really want is the problem-solver, and I can actually do that.”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/nyc-mayor-race-andrew-cuomo-on-rematch-with-zohran-mamdani.html

No means no, amirite

A "No Means No, Andrew" campaign is a good thought. Instead of engaging with him directly, just brand him as a loser who also happens to be a sex pest.

The ads the Cuomo campaign used to recruit the actors used in the ad are already showing up on social media.

The Democratic Party always reminds me of Brecht’s joke after some East German apparatchik said the government had lost confidence in the people: “we should dissolve the people and elect another, then.”

When I was in Chicago, I tried to do a news story on Scott Waguespack for my school. This would've been my first time writing a political news story and he was running against Theodore Matlak, a complete waste of space hand-picked by Mayor Daley for the 32nd ward. These were both white males, but nonetheless the dynamic had strong similarities to Mamdani vs. Cuomo. A faculty member helping me out showed me how to look up campaign finances, and he immediately said "oh man, this poor guy's going to get creamed" when the data came up because Matlak had an enormous amount of money compared to Waguespack. Matlak was supposed to have a safe seat but this was a year when a lot of people had enough - Waguespack was clearly the grass roots upstart, so Daley's machine quickly put together the kind of campaign you're seeing with Cuomo, albeit circa 2007 (i.e. before technology re-shaped the tactics). I could go more into details but it was a sobering, thorough lesson in how unrepentantly corrupt local politics can be, in the way they operated and the way they campaigned. It wasn't even that sophisticated, so much of it was stupidly and blatantly dishonest, and the attitude was sort of "yeah, it's obvious, but it works." Anyway, I eventually went to Matlak's office, which had some of the nicest and sweetest people working there, all in their early 20's (visually not unlike Obama's campaign which was defined by youthful optimism) and I was naive to think "man, these people may actually believe in this guy and I'm actually working on a story about his blatant dishonesty." The "interview" turned out to be shit - after making cordial, pleasant conversation with the campaign manager, as soon as I started recording, she turned into a fucking robot and would only repeat pre-scripted lines trying to push the same false information they put out in a press release (that Waguespack was under investigation) and completely ignoring any question I asked. When I left, a campaign worked offered to give me a ride, and during our chat, it turned out everyone in that office was hired virtually overnight to work in that office - none of them had any personal connection to Matlak, they were all hired from a firm that just does these things. It was a stark contrast to people I spoke to campaigning for Waguespack who were clearly neighborhood locals who would be directly impacted by the election. The guy who told me this was just really green about what he was doing - he was still figuring out what to do after college and took this job with the firm to make some money in the interim. (FWIW, the investigation scam worked like this: Matlak had strong ties to someone on Berwyn's city council, and Waguepsack had been the city administrator and chief of staff to Berwyn. To open an investigation, or really initiate a process to determine whether an investigation was needed, the council just needs one person to put that motion forward, not vote or explanation needed - you can guess who put that motion forward. When I asked him for more details, he went into ridiculous circles, and I just flat out said, "tbh, it doesn't sound like there's anything going on here" to which he replied with a straight face "that's why we need an investigation!")

The happy ending I didn't expect: Waguespack won, by a measly 121 votes, a reflection of how bad things were for Daley that year, relatively speaking. Waguespack's still there today and still the guy you expect him to be - he was actually one of the very few people who vote against that shitty parking deal that was Daley's parting shot to the city.

*no vote or explanation needed

Should add one important detail: I never got the story published because I couldn't get an interview with Waguespack's campaign, even though the story was clearly in their favor. I'm guessing it was because they had a small operation that was stretched very thin (again, they had very little money compared to Matlak's campaign) and granting an interview with a school newspaper wasn't considered a good use of their time, but it was frustrating as hell. They kept referring to a statement they already put out a week prior, thinking that was enough - I think I got only 2, maybe 3 emails from them and they amounted to one sentence each - but I kept explaining it wasn't.

Reminds me of the infamous phrase "We don't want nobody nobody sent".

incredible opportunity to tee off on the very unpopular dem establishment send this nasty old man to hell

Cuomo said he would make affordability a cornerstone of his general-election campaign but would run on the notion that he will actually be able to make the city more affordable while Mamdani will only talk about it. “It’s about not just connecting with the perception of the problem. It’s finding the real solution and then having the ability to do it. You don’t want someone who just connects. That’s step one. What you really want is the problem-solver, and I can actually do that.”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/nyc-mayor-race-andrew-cuomo-on-rematch-with-zohran-mamdani.html🕸

realized i omitted the punchline

So what would he do on housing affordability? “There is no real answer,” he said.

A Reformer with Results

....bad ones!

our lad is on it have no fear

https://bsky.app/profile/zohrankmamdani.bsky.social/post/3ltz2bot2pc2u

My brother's union endorsed him today.

If you have IG, you can see him in this story with the hat and orange glasses.

https://www.instagram.com/stories/dc37nyc/3677482450139167667

https://i.imgur.com/DyxcBqQ.png

By the time I saw that, the parenthetical had been changed to "if You Want a Foil for Republicans." And I was like, "sure, sounds good!" Had to read the article to see that Stephens thought it was a bad thing.

if you wanna help Republicans
gotta hang with Zohran
make it last forever
friendship never ends

Ziga Ziga Zohran

i like how the Democrats and the Labour Party are in competition for who can make their party name the most grimly ironic

Among the many obnoxious things about the anti-Zohran rhetoric is that it tends to ignore or brush past that in order to NOT vote for him, you're asking people to vote for a sexual harasser, an indicted crook, or lol Curtis Sliwa. His popularity does not exist in a vacuum! It's insulting to ask people to support anyone else on the ballot.

true

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/JULY16.P1_LCF.jpg

lol
Give me more

this is good as well... via Salon

Arizona’s 7th Congressional District is nearly 2,400 miles from New York City. Still, the New York Times found a way to take shots at NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani over a recent primary election in the border-hugging district.

Like Mamdani, Adelita Grijalva won the Democratic nomination for an upcoming election in the district. The seat in the House was previously held by her late father, Raul Grijalva. Tuesday’s primary pitted the younger Grijalva against progressive activist Deja Foxx. Grijalva won the endorsement of left-of-center stars like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Foxx garnered the support of former DNC Vice Chair David Hogg.

Foxx raked in just 21% of the vote, compared to Grijalva’s 62%. The Grey Lady painted Grijalva’s victory as an establishment victory.

“The Mamdani momentum withered in the deserts of southern Arizona on Tuesday night,” Jack Healy, the Times’ national correspondent, wrote.

Ha ha yeah they did a story on that race a few weeks ago that was framed like—is this the next Mamdani race? Uh no. Raul Grijalva was the kind of congressman who showed up on Democracy Now all the time.

trying to frame it as “voters pick legacy name over upstarts” is super funny. do politicians have policy stances or not?

lol this video is great
https://bsky.app/profile/cassiewillson.bsky.social/post/3lekyenmt7k2l

Wu-Tang brought Zohran onstage at MSG last nigth.

uh, night

Number one spice baby

Post-pillow company getting Hogg certified is an anti-endorsement IMO.

wut

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQVsVNPkPmE

Cos I'm 85 years old
85 years gold
85 years with my family on my back so
Outlast everybody, all my fuckin haters
Don't know me now then you'll never know me later

I fucking love this so much.

trolling the NY Post about his trip to Uganda >>>

https://bsky.app/profile/zohrankmamdani.bsky.social/post/3lufp7ztaes2z

lol

Yes it sure is a mystery how this likable, smart guy who’s objectively good at politics has performed better than expected.

*ned flanders voice* Isn't this a lot like that movie 8 Mile?

https://bsky.app/profile/zohrankmamdani.bsky.social/post/3lufp7ztaes2z

― that's not my post, Sunday, July 20, 2025 11:17 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

hes too good man

you can tell hes a true new yorker because he loves to make up his own post headlines

WU-TANG FOREVER 👐🏽 pic.twitter.com/tEKXnSPmBp

— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) July 24, 2025

lol i love how rza needs to repeat everything zohran just said to the rest of the room as if he's translating from a foreign language, even though it's basically the same words

Mamdani 44
Cuomo 25
Sliwa 12
Adams 7

https://patch.com/new-york/washington-heights-inwood/s/jjc29/mamdani-leading-nyc-mayor-race-by-nearly-20-points-new-poll-finds

City voters under 35 are overwhelmingly supporting Mamdani, as are a plurality of voters 35-54 percent, however, voters 55 and older back Cuomo over Mamdani, 38-32 percent.

I don't remember the results of the last poll, but is he closing the gap with the over 55's?

wild that the guy who is mayor can only get 7% thats a really bad mayor

His haters are his waiters — waiting for him to leave.

At times I’m a studio conveyer
Eric Adams was a shifty fucking Mayor

he’s the worst mayor. he’s the best mayor in some kind of surreal comedy sketch show

lol "shifty" spellcheck

https://townsquare.media/site/366/files/2022/07/attachment-crazy_town_butterfly_music_video_screenshot_shifty_shellshock.jpg

Honestly Adams is certainly the funniest mayor NYC has had in my lifetime. It’s like he’s a cartoon of weirdness and corruption

he really is

yeah they should give him some pretend government job so he can continue to go on tv to make bizarre pronouncements

I saw some liberal on twitter pushing all this conspiracy stuff about Zohran's property in Uganda. Seems like the anti-Mamdani forces are going with: a) He says he's a socialist but he's rich b) he's African c) But not African enough to check a box on an admission form d) globalize the intifada yada yada don dadda

This is very po-faced but I am very anti “let’s hold up this buffoonish Black person as an endless target of mockery”* primarily because my experience as a Black American tell me it’s eventually going to make someone think it’s okay to treat me the same way

* unless it’s Terrence Howard, fuck that guy

lol doc c

fwiw DJP, I don’t think of Adams as an endless target of mockery, i actually genuinely think he is hilarious and a total weirdo, but he is also corrupt as hell and bad for the city.

Similar to Trump, he’s shitty but in a slightly more interesting way

like this is fucking hysterical imho

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17791TUpdK/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v

i mean hes def a buffoon held up for mockery but yeah it is high level buffoonery

skin-tight buffoonery, as they say

It's not a real Eric Adams press conference video if they don't show him walking out to his intro Alicia Keys/Jay Z theme

kind of tempted to rewatch the one where he unveils the new NYC garbage receptacles -- that can be picked up by an automated truck! that one's kind of a "lol, NYC" one underneath the special sauce

nyc losing its core identity "trash city usa", sad

my friends took a trip to NYC recently and had told their daughter about how they had rats there. apparently if you have the hawk-like eyes of a child, you might spot 1 - 2 rats per subway station! she was thrilled by this "spot the rats" game. she was also shown the pizza rat video and was very enthusiastic

I didn't see any subway rats the last couple times I was in the city but I wasn't looking and lack child-like perception. sad.

pizza rat local hero

my niece from california is obsessed with pizza rat. and pigeons. was very excited to see both on her visit. on her second visit managed to win a pizza rat stuffy at pt pleasant boardwalk.

omg pizza rat stuffy

wonder how many pizza rat tattoos there are out there

One of my favorite NYC experiences was being in a station (I think 96th and Broadway) when suddenly one young woman yelled really loudly in alarm. Everyone in the station turned to look toward her to see what was wrong. She was pointing down at the tracks and yelped, "A RAT!" Everyone started cracking up. It was kind of sweet, like seeing someone's baptism. Welcome to New York!

https://i.imgur.com/PYtT0hl.jpeg

What other city would invent “the trash can” but New York baybeeee let’s go Mets

i've seen more rats in Boston's subway stations than NYC

I've seen more rats at a Miami-Dade commission meeting.

real walking down 2nd st in manhattan on trash day and the bags were shaking with rat activity

also accidentally kicking a rat classic ny experience

saw you in a rag
kicking a rat

1-2-PIZ-ZA

I will say NY rats don’t fear people. When I saw a rat in the Watergate parking garage in DC it was more scared of me as I was of it.

https://i.ibb.co/fdt2ZQXg/Gy-Qw5-Dx-W0-AENCo-P.jpg

oh

1. lol
2. yeah, no

classic new york city exceptionalism not knowing that almost all mayors are bad

new yorker: nothin like getting a famous bacon egg and cheese sandwich and enjoying my weird bad mayor in the only place its possible to do that

real walking down 2nd st in manhattan on trash day and the bags were shaking with rat activity

I used to ride the F train home after working evening shifts. Because of where I was going to get off, I always lined up to be in the front car. That meant when we pulled into 49th Street, the doors opened onto the very end of the platform, where all the trash bags from the whole day (from the station and surroundings, I guess) were piled up to be picked up by the garbage train. The door would open and that whole pile of bags was just feet away from me, and they were just alive with activity, like a whole village of rats in there tumbling around. Had a sort of Lovecraft vibe.

yeah the rats are goin nuts in there

btw nothin like waiting a while for the subway late at night one approaches and its the fuckin trash train, just throw me in there baby

For real, always such a letdown.

you know, many do not realize that the creator of the term Pizza Rat posts on this very message board

Stage 1: The post

SEPT 21, 1 a.m.: M4tt L1ttl3, an actor and comedian in New York, films a rat carrying a piece of pizza down the stairs in a Manhattan subway station.

1 p.m.: Twelve hours later, L1ttl3 posts a clip of the video to Instagram and tweets a link, which racks up an unusual number of faves. Realizing that people really like this dumb rat, he uploads a copy to YouTube, too.

Pizza Rat takes over the Internet

2:40 p.m.: The video is spotted by Gawker’s J0rd4n S4rg3nt, who writes a post about it. (Headline: “Pizza Rat, Pizza Rat, I Love You.”)

to be fair, i didn't "spot" it -- the guy sent it to the gawker tips email. however i was the first one online to post it and did coin the phrase Pizza Rat. this is by far the thing about my career that delights strangers the most.

!

!!!

also, great headline, shame that didn't travel with the meme

damn legends do walk among us

good claim to fame, hope you're considering "birthed pizza rat" for an epitaph

also, great headline, shame that didn't travel with the meme

― Doctor Casino, Thursday, August 14, 2025 12:30 PM (twenty minutes ago)

thank you doctor casino. the thing i'm actually most proud of is framing the post as something other than the "this rat is so us!!" type humor that was big at the time and inevitably came in the wake of its virality

indeed!

I used to ride the F train home after working evening shifts. Because of where I was going to get off, I always lined up to be in the front car.

---

btw nothin like waiting a while for the subway late at night one approaches and its the fuckin trash train, just throw me in there baby

same and same. spent a lot of time at jay street at 2:30am just watching the rats

Rats are way down, in my estimation, from three years ago. I think the various garbage collecting initiatives have worked. On the other hand I saw two raccoons on my back patio last week, and that's a new issue. I will write a letter to Mr. Mamdami about that.

I opened this thread expecting drama and instead was greeted with so much delightful rat intel

I recently told my partner that I felt like the rat issue on our block had subsided a bit, just in terms of not having felt the need to shake my keys at any bags of trash recently, and they looked at me like I had lost all ability to perceive the world around me. So jury's still out, I think.

sick j0rdan lore

confession - i've never seen the pizza rat video

fucked up that j0rdan failed to provide a headshot to defector btw

the world needs a lil circular j0rd.png

among conservatives

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:q4kdx6fcdk4jllhog2lhjxwe/bafkreics4bw3uorc2exfry4jliojxsqxl6fm2e2rtznib2fsvfztfjfff4@jpeg

SOCIALISM THREAT

BITCOIN

Sliwa wears a beret eh

Has for decades, he was a “guardian angel” in the 80s, they all wore kicky berets.

Yeah I think it's surgically attached to his scalp at this point.

xxp Alfred, if you aren't aware of Sliwa's gig as a respectable street gang leader, read up on the so-called 'Guardian Angels' he started. The beret is their gang sign.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Angels

he looks like the villain in a Police Academy film

The Guardian Angels organization was founded on February 14, 1979, in New York City, by Curtis Sliwa.

They used to invent muggings for the press. Cool guys.

In 1992, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa issued a public apology for faking several subway rescues in the 1980s in order to get publicity for the group.[30]
In October 2020, various individuals running for the New York City Council expressed concerns that the presence of the Guardian Angels might bring tensions to their neighborhoods.[31]
In February 2021, Patrick Bobilin, a candidate for the New York State Assembly, posted a video to Twitter showing members of the Guardian Angels allegedly harassing and attacking protesters, including Bobilin, as they returned from a Stonewall Inn protest.[32]
In February 2024, several members of the Guardian Angels shoved a man to the sidewalk and put him in a headlock during a live interview with Sliwa at Times Square. During the interview, which came a week after a widely publicized brawl between several migrants and NYPD officers, Sliwa stated that the man was a migrant. He also stated that the man had been caught shoplifting. In a later segment, he added "[...] Let's just say we gave him a little pain compliance, his mother back in Venezuela felt the vibrations. He's sucking concrete, the cops scraped him off the asphalt[...]" The NYPD later said the man was actually from the Bronx, and they did not provide evidence of the man shoplifting. Sliwa told The Associated Press he believed the man was a migrant because he spoke Spanish and had been encountered with other Spanish speakers on patrols. The man was issued a summons for disorderly conduct.[33]

Guardian Angels somewhat bizarrely hyped by the Clash (who I'm guessing liked their look and didn't read past the headlines).

The Guardian Angels showed up in my city back in the 90s and then were run out of there after one of them raped a girl.

They tried it in London too.

It really says something about the state of the Republican Party in New York that its mayoral candidate (for the second election in a row!) is a literal subway vigilante from the 1980s.

wow is hakeem jeffries a dead-eyed piece of shit

The numbers suggest Jeffries could lose a primary.

he looks like the villain in a Police Academy film

This sent me into a pretty godawful rabbit hole. How the hell were those movies so popular in the '80s? Not to mention the soul-killing "creative" arguments between the producer (who likely had final say) and director (who wanted to make a genuinely good movie).

Comedy is popular!

The raw sexuality of Steve Gutenberg

The Bedroom Window takes care of that.

he looks like the villain in a Police Academy film

This sent me into a pretty godawful rabbit hole. How the hell were those movies so popular in the '80s?

― birdistheword, Saturday, August 16, 2025 2:41 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i loved the police academys when i was a kid, couldnt tell you why, obvs the guy makes the sounds is awesome but besides that idk what was going on there

Mamdani tells the press that Cuomo is still running because “Andrew Cuomo is someone who doesn’t understand that no means no” pic.twitter.com/BLslWWTspE

— David Freedlander (@freedlander) August 20, 2025

LOL solid zing

A "No Means No, Andrew" campaign is a good thought. Instead of engaging with him directly, just brand him as a loser who also happens to be a sex pest.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, July 15, 2025 2:07 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'll expect my consulting check any day now.

(to be fair I was responding to xyzzzz__, so I'll settle for a half share)

Why Do They Call Me Mr. Fredo?

The posters write themselves, really: ‘no means no’

― einstürzende louboutin (suzy), Monday, 14 July 2025 19:52 (one month ago)

HABIBI

but "Cuomo Means No" is right there

#NoCuomo

pause

(your campaign)

oop fair play Suzy, you were there first. You can be CEO of ILX Campaign Solutions.

Frank Serpico is Team Mamdani apparently

Mamdani: Why should I debate Trump's puppet when I could debate Trump himself? If Trump is serious about this, he should come to New York City. We can have as many debates as he wants about why he is cutting snap benefits for hungry New Yorkers just to fund tax cuts for his… pic.twitter.com/nyHNHzAR6R

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 5, 2025

LMAO, Adams managing to exceed Mamdani's total donations on the basis of huge donations alone. The most blatantly corrupt shit.

Though he posted a very funny video where he's only asking for ppl's canvassing time not donations, which is beautiful to see.

I saw his video on McGuinness, and at least in the Greenpoint neighborhood, I kind of know that area pretty well because it's between a whole spread of concert venues I used to frequent. I did a quick search and immediately came up with this - again, another example of how blatantly corrupt Adams is and how all these other candidates are all about serving the wealthier and more privileged side of this city.

no flaws, no notes

https://bsky.app/profile/zohrankmamdani.bsky.social/post/3lyech7chqs2q

"How Are the Very Rich Feeling About New York’s Next Mayor?"

A Dramatic Reading of The Recent New York Times Dispatch from the Hamptons.

Presented by The Gilded Age's Morgan Spector.

Love that shot after they play the clip of Mamdani saying, "I don't think we should have billionaires . . . "

its crazy how popular a no billionaires party could be

You're going to lose the billionaires or the about-to-be-billionaires with that kind of talk.

im willing to drop my demands, for one billion dollars

I would give out one shiny dollar every day to an unhoused neighbor just to stay under the threshold

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:mx4nzus45ho7dciimoyozkjp/bafkreidv7kb3odrj2l7oe6k7etpvwqemzvbu2uvkvwzjnefwsvzlemm4f4@jpeg

He really has the best enemies.

Pulling out of a WABC televised town hall.

Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani will announce Monday that he is cancelling a televised town hall with WABC News planned for Sept. 25 in the wake of the network suspending comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show last week, amNewYork has learned.

Mamdani, his campaign exclusively told amNewYork ahead of the announcement, is making the move in defense of freedom of speech rights, which he says are under attack by President Trump. He is bowing out of the ABC event specifically because the network shelved Kimmel’s show following threats from the Federal Communications Commission over comments the comedian made last week about the assassination of conservative figure Charlie Kirk.

i mean they were just going to ask him about israel anyway

I’m hoping it’s also a sign of confidence that he’s got this

fuck ABC ihibidtace

Adams is gonna drop out of the race today. Good news for Mamdani? Bad news for Mamdani?

"here's why that's bad news for Mamdani"

- NYT Pitchbot

I dug into the crosstabs of a recent NYT/Siena poll, and people who preferred Adams were almost equally split between Republican-leaning and Democrat-leaning but voted for Trump in 2024 by a 2-to-1 margin. Guessing Cuomo picks up most of the Adams voters, but Mamdani still wins by double digits.

Tracer, what the hell does "ihibidtace" signify. The only search results I found for it was you using the same acronym one time on ILH. other than that, nada

"is how i break it down to a certain extent" but if u say it out loud it rhymes with "liberace"

Adams is gonna drop out of the race today. Good news for Mamdani? Bad news for Mamdani?

How much was he bribed by Trump?

A lot

Not good.

My statement on the two year anniversary of October 7, 2023. pic.twitter.com/JlsXUeAeYd

— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) October 7, 2025

Nah that’s all accurate

Yeah, no objections on factual or rhetorical grounds. The mirrored language - "I mourn these lives" - is nicely done.

The actions of the International Criminal Court of Justice both corroborate and justify every part of that statement.

Thought bump was gonna be about this: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/10/democratic-candidate-zohran-mamdani-smiles-in-photo-with-key-the-gays-lawmaker/

I see no issue with his statement? Hamas fucking suck, too.

You don't have to pretend this started on the 7th October. Saying nothing was best.

Whatever man

Yes man

xxpost Unless he’s running for office or something.

When he says “the occupation and apartheid must end” he’s clearly speaking more than the past two years.

Hamas fucking suck and Palestinian lives mean nothing to them and of course none of this would happen without Israel ultimately causing all this.

Love to hear Westerners and those who directly contribute to the war on Palestinian lives saying that Palestinian lives mean nothing to actual Palestinians.

(That said, I don't think that Mamdani could have done anything differently in his statement— not mentioning hostages would have caused an uproar, not mentioning the anniversary would have caused an uproar, and his statement is firmly in the pro-Palestine and anti-apartheid camp).

What Prez Keyes said.. the mention of 'apartheid' clearly connotes a much longer issue

using this anniversary to talk about israeli apartheid is provocative, and correct

Table otm

If there is any one lesson that can be carried away from the past couple of years in Gaza, it is that the most powerful Western nations won't remotely back up the lip service they've paid to the idea that they are united to oppose war crimes and genocide, until the victims of war crimes and genocide are almost past helping.

those who directly contribute to the war on Palestinian lives

poster Boring, Maryland contributes to the the war on Palestinian lives?

"Hamas fucking suck and Palestinian lives mean nothing to them"

They are Palestinians. Many of the leaders have grown in these prison camps, their families have been assassinated, their lives have only been this. Don't be a dick.

Hamas kill and torture Palestinians, which may or may not count as sucking but I think surely counts as being a dick

They fight the IDF, which is one for the positive side column.

And again, they are Palestinians.

In conclusion hamas is a land of contrasts

You take the rough with the smooth sometimes

Speaking of provocative I saw a video on Tiktok yesterday from a Palestinian American who had somehow been invited onto a radio talkshow called "The Patriot" and the host asked him how peace can be achieved, and he said "I'm not interested in peace." It had the desired effect because I, and presumably all the listeners to this station suddenly was like. wtf is he talking about. He said I'm not interested in peace, I'm interested in liberation. We tried peace for decades. We got killed, bombed and tortured. Now we have to try to liberate ourselves with violence because we have no other options. The host was aghast. "Yes, but both sides have to lay down their weapons" and he's like no - the idea that Israel will lay down its weapons is ridiculous. So we have to fight. And the host says, you'll die. And he says we're dying already. We'd rather die fighting for liberation than on our knees. Your great patriots, he said, your founding fathers - they said give me liberty or give me death. That's what we're doing. It's a hard point of view, but put in this way it's understandable. I went down a rabbit hole on this theme and there is a rich history of Palestinians as well as Black Americans in the 1960s with exactly this point of view. That "peace" is NOT the goal. That "peace" is a figleaf for domination. "Peace" is simply capitulation.

Probably better for the other thread

Its good here too.

_those who directly contribute to the war on Palestinian lives_

poster Boring, Maryland contributes to the the war on Palestinian lives?

If you pay US taxes, like I do, we kinda do. I hate it!

_those who directly contribute to the war on Palestinian lives_

poster Boring, Maryland contributes to the the war on Palestinian lives?

If you pay taxes in the US, yes. I do, too.

Anyway just so we’re perfectly clear whose side I’m on I protested outside Senator Mark Warner’s house last Sunday with Jewish Voice for Peace.

I don’t doubt you, fwiw, Boring— I just don’t think that people in the US setting the terms for how a subjugated people should react to their subjugation is ever a good look, especially given that we are one of the main perpetrators of that subjugation. See the point that Tracer relates above.

Tracer’s post was pretty good, yes.

it seems to that paying taxes would be an indirect contribution, but what do i know!

I just don’t think that people in the US setting the terms for how a subjugated people should react to their subjugation is ever a good look

far as i can tell, nobody on this thread is interested in "setting the terms" for how Palestinians should react to anything. there's a reason we use the term "dehumanizing" for situations of extreme oppression: people tend to be robbed of their humanity. recognizing this, and being honest about this, and not being afraid to admit that it has ugly consequences is part of the recognition of Palestinians as fully human, with all the good and bad that entails. reducing things to hollow moralizing only exacerbates the problem

i wasn’t doing anything of the sort, but whatever

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/10/20/zohran-mamdani-profile

Before he got involved in politics, Mamdani tried to make a career as a rapper, tutoring high-school kids to pay for studio time.He recorded multilingual songs under the name Young Cardamom, rapping in Luganda and Hindi, as well as in English, and filmed puckish, elaborate music videos. (The best one is for “Wabula Naawe,” in which Mamdani and his collaborator HAB play feuding guerrilla leaders.) But, eventually, Mamdani recalled in a podcast interview this spring,“there was a point at which my dad said, ‘I think it’s time for a real job.’ ” When I recently asked Mamdani if his mayoral run was a complex ploy to boost his Spotify streams, he shook his head. “I can tell you—they’re not up,” he assured me.

I listened to some of his stuff on Tidal but I am so rap-unschooled that I couldn't tell if it was any good or not. Didn't seem very exciting.

ladies and gentlemen, we have located a flaw!

The Nani video got a lot of play when it came out because Z got Madhur Jeffrey to be in the video.

come on. this is fire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQVsVNPkPmE

I love Nani so so much and have posted it here multiple times and been ingnored as far as I can tell but please everyone rave about it!!!

ha https://bsky.app/profile/zohrankmamdani.bsky.social/post/3m2x7uofda223

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/magazine/zohran-mamdani-mayor-new-york.html

Seems to be an Arsenal fan :(

Sports fandom is a flaw in my book

So the Times has resigned itself to his victory?

They see the train leaving the station

looks like Cuomo picked up most of Adams' supporters, but that still doesn't get him within 13 points of Mamdani.

wow this debate

endless meme fodder/quotability

Peter Sterne‬
✧@peterste✧✧✧.c✧✧‬
· 39m
“I knew Mario Cuomo. You’re no Mario Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo.” - Sliwa

lol oh man

‪Joshua J. Friedman‬
✧@joshuajfried✧✧✧.c✧✧‬
· 4m
For those keeping score, that's the second time Cuomo has said "bona fide" (BOH-nuh FIE-dee)

well he is a lawyer

Sliwa: You think 911 is a joke? Public enemy? 311 is a joke

I knew Mario Cuomo. You’re no Mario Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo.

This feels like this would be the climax if Oliver Stone made a movie called Cuomo.

Cue montage shot on different film stocks.

lol what

“It was a mistake to put so many migrants in New York City.” - Cuomo

very satisfying to see cuomo eating shit like this

There was a darkly hilarious article on Politico the other day about how there was apparently real risk for Mamdani going into this debate, that he had to avoid "catastrophic errors"... come the night of, and he's up there beating Cuomo like a piñata, only stopping when Sliwa says, "Hey, let me get a turn."

Moderator: If you need to get somewhere in a hurry and you can use the train, where do you go?

Sliwa: I never use a cab. I was shot in a cab in 1992 by Gambino goombas.

oh man I gotta track this down. I actually
missed my city council member knocking on my door, campaigning recently, because I was watching the nyc democrat mayoral debate lol

(my city council guy is running unopposed nbd)

he needs a better barber

watching this and he's a complete [prove me wrong] tommy carcetti

This Curtis Sliwa answer is very entertaining.

https://bsky.app/profile/yasharali.bsky.social/post/3m3irvk2q5k2i

completely wrecked their asses

Lol, everyone hates Andrew Cuomo except the billionaires.

That's the part that I feel like just doesn't get emphasized enough, it's crazy to talk about this as "upstart socialist vs. former governor" when it's actually "guy who seems pretty smart and pretty cool vs. loathsome sex pest toad king."

even the billionaires don't like cuomo; they just think he's their best bet

fucking guy has anti-charisma

and now the latest attack lol: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/nyregion/cuomo-mamdani-imam.html

i have to figure that cuomo no longer hopes to win, but he will settle for doing whatever damage he can do to mamdani before he loses and everyone starts to ignore him. it's the least he can do for his big donors.

enjoy that, if we must take the legend of mario cuomo at face value, he would completely reject every single thing his sons have done

just absolutely garbage human beings and failures

the fact cuomo thought this was a venture worth pursuing was the funniest part. "eric adams sucks! let me and my baggage be a better alternate!"

my god https://bsky.app/profile/premthakker.bsky.social/post/3m3t2yfppjk2f

jfc

is the cuomo campaign ok

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:n2i5lkhcqi62xv3edolwvj4j/bafkreifdzlovhupxevrp5vjzj2cctxojkvs7uixpwl4vz5o4aota2cpoci@jpeg

no doubt a mistake that doesn't reflect andrew cuomo's values

idk seems more like he's a fight and deliver candidate

Any opinions on the Ballot Proposals 2, 3, and 4 - the ones about affordable housing fast tracking? My friends are arguing over these.

https://i.imgur.com/anwmuyN.png

Re ballot proposals, I often look toward what SoftPowerVote has to say.. their doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tInkfYso96EHqeoZDE0Q9loxrOHMLaMvhsF--LUmYeo/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.a9uu07gfw61x

Bret Stephens and Cuomo just doing this clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK1GI8oBh8o

https://bsky.app/profile/zohrankmamdani.bsky.social/post/3m3ulpudrks26

Zohran would cheer on another 9/11

Thanks for that link, pitted. Leaning "no" on those proposals thanks to those explications.

I think I posted this upthread, but the most disgusting show of Islamophobia I saw after he won the primary was two competing tweets shared simultaneously by two connections on social media: one claimed he was an anti-American nut that believed 9/11 was actually an inside job, the other claimed he celebrated the attacks.

It’s a bit suspicious though that when the WTC fell, Zohran was 10– the number between 9 and 11.

makes u think bc why did he stop at 11? bc fuck 12 (he hates cops)

I missed the integrity/experience line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iW4B4Iy7n0

This is HUGE! Surely will shake up the race!

“Zohran Mamdani has relentlessly focused on addressing the affordability crisis and explicitly committed to being a mayor for all New Yorkers, including those who do not support his candidacy,” Jeffries said in the statement.

“In that spirit, I support him and the entire citywide Democratic ticket in the general election,” Jeffries added.

I guess it’s never too late, huh

Dem leadership is deathly afraid of doing anything that might justify the "socialists!!!" label because they believe it is the kiss of death. Being fear-driven is the opposite of leadership.

I mean, that's just the debt owed to power. Jeffries has done the math and figures it's better to be on the right side of the leader of the city he represents part of than not. Fine, whatever.

Meanwhile I got rage-baited into clicking on an Andrew Sullivan piece lamenting the rise of Mamdani, but even rage couldn't carry me past the paragraph that started by calling him "a critical-theory racist."

a good future policy would be never to click on anything written by Andrew Sullivan or any publication that would publish him

Andrew Sullivan or any publication that would publish him

I don't think there are any. He's a Substacker now.

Substackin' across the universe
Funded by American Enterprise, canonizin' Charlie Kirk

Jai Guru MAGA, Om

sullivan loves self-publishing as he never needs to report conflicts of interest

incredible how TNC's success fully broke him

I guess it’s never too late, huh

He should've waited until the election was called, it would've made a perfect Onion moment.

"Congratulations to Zohran Mamdani, who I have always supported."

this is good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGBQwCsIhn0

Yes, very good

Voted for our man; there was an old white woman in front of me muttering “hes probaby going to win; yung people… how will he pay for free busses?”

Incredible speech

lfg

Ryan Broderick ryanhatesthis.bsky.social‬

Wow this is rough. Gov Kathy Hochul is speaking the Zohran rally. She's listing examples of Trump admin overreach in NY and the crowd is heckling her loudly, chanting, "do something, you're the governor." Taking forever for her to get through her speech.

https://bsky.app/profile/ryanhatesthis.bsky.social/post/3m452ifqoys2h

did he win yet

Seriously when will this be over

Is the NY mayor race always this exhausting? Especially for all the parts of the country and the world that are not NY?

The only thing worse than not getting the Hochul endorsement is getting the Hochul endorsement.

And no, I don't think any NY mayor races of recent decades at least have had this kind of drama or reach. I remember Dinkins' election was kind of a big deal, and then Giuliani beating him got a lot of attention as a conservative backlash. It's always somewhat news who runs NYC, but this year is way more visible.

And no, I don't think any NY mayor races of recent decades at least have had this kind of drama or reach.

I feel Iike Mamdani cldn’t have gotten even vaguely close if not for Adams’ post-primary campaign

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omstN14glhA

pack it in, he's a linkin park fan - can't have that kind of edgy recklessness running NYC.

getting nervous

Everything was perfect
Always made me nervous
Knowing you would burn it
Just to watch it burn

Cut the bridge we're on
Cut it down, cut it down, down, cut it, cut it down

I don't know what to take
Thought I was focused, but I'm scared
I'm not prepared
I hyperventilate
Looking for help somehow, somewhere
And no one cares

jfc CNN is running a story about how Mamdani's aunt isn't actually his aunt it's his dad's cousin

wow! CNN dropping a bombshell!

Atomized affluent Americans not understanding "auntie" culture.

I run into it plenty in Appalachia — everybody's an aunt, an uncle or a cousin, but when you ask about actual family connections they're complex and sometimes people are just like, "I don't know, they're on my momma's side."

Meanwhile, all the NRIs I know are explaining the “cousin-uncle”/“cousin-auntie” phenomenon.

Amazing, this is a total non story at a moment when there are a zillion worthy stories to cover

The media is completely auntie-Mamdani

everybody's an aunt, an uncle or a cousin

Definitely a thing in Native culture too... I also had it explained to me that 'cousin' in Mexico/Central America is often someone associated with the place you're from or grew up, and may not be a blood relative at all

I call every actual cousin on my dad's side of the family aunt or uncle because they're the closer to my dad's age than mine, this is 100% media nonsense

yeah it's dumb as hell. see also "he eats with his hands!!" antique racism in the city that never shuts up about pizza

the "Cuban cousin" aka the godson or the kid of a good neighbor your parents knew in Habana is a thing in Miami

Even I, who grew up an overwhelming superfluity of 'real' aunts, uncles, and cousins, know that there are tons of people who are given those unofficial titles due purely to love and affinity. Our family has an 'aunt susan' who is just as much a member of our family as any blood relative or in-law.

Speaking only of the white side of my family, my granny’s sister is my auntie, my mum’s cousin is my auntie, her best friend growing up is my auntie. Pretty sure this is just how normal people do things, “no it’s actually your fifth cousin twice shy, leg before wicket” ok petunia mitford but fuck off actually

An *auntie* from Kilbrew in Ireland moved into our house when I was a kid. I later found out she was my older sister. This stuff happens!

my my my once kindred twice shy

you guys are all doing this stavros bit

Most insightful thinker of race and ethnicity this side of Barbara Fields pic.twitter.com/IjbDg16xO9

— Matthew Zeitlin (@MattZeitlin) October 27, 2024

yeah i was encouraged to call the old lady up the hill “aunt foster” and the old couple across the road “uncle ritchie” and “aunt ritchie” no relation obv

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKVlMfH8yEk

you guys are all doing this stavros bit

🐦[Most insightful thinker of race and ethnicity this side of Barbara Fields pic.twitter.com/IjbDg16xO9🕸
— Matthew Zeitlin (@MattZeitlin) October 27, 2024🕸]🐦

The real divide isn’t WASPs, it’s 3rd-4th-5th generation college grads whose families have scattered over the decades and so often don’t grow up around extended family. And WASPs are of course overrepresented in that demographic. But probably does include a lot of New York media people.

The racist/islamophobic campaigning from Cuomo is just appalling. I hope Mamdani crushes him in the election

excited to very shortly do my part towards that end!

Revolutionary Rebar 🦇‬
✧@revolutionaryre✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 2h
Gotta start calling people by their actual titles "Hey Moms First Boyfriend from Middle School Her Parents Never Let Go and Still Love and Now I Call Uncle Pat because He's A Family Friend, pass the butter?"

This is getting nuts. The London Times just making up anti-Zohran quotes from DiBlasio.

I want to be 100% clear:
The story in the Times of London is entirely false and fabricated.
It was just brought to my attention and I’m appalled.
I never spoke to that reporter and never said those things.
Those quotes aren’t mine, don’t reflect my views. https://t.co/I65e8UV6tm

— Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) October 28, 2025

And London has had a Pakistan-born, Muslim mayor for almost a decade

(I take it back - he was born in London)

and anybody thinks Bill de Blasio's opinion is going to sway voters?

(anyway)

not many Londoners vote in NYC anyway

"if I don't win I'm getting the hell out" is an insane thing for Cuomo to say, that's the sort of line you'd use in a political comedy that would completely tank the bad guy's career

And London has had a Pakistan-born, Muslim mayor for almost a decade

Not only that but when a onetime future Tory PM hopeful went full on islamophobe as Khan’s mayoral opponent he got absolutely spanked back into the dark ages.

London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has been given permission to slash the amount of affordable homes in new developments from 35 per cent to 20 per cent.

unfortunately Khan is a career-pol melt of the UK Labour Party, who shows the limits of just representation without the transformative politics that Mamdani is campaigning on.

Cuomo really outing himself as a total piece of shit this morning. Here's a clip of him appearing on Maria Bartiromo's show that's just breathtakingly racist and Islamophobic and fucked up:

https://bsky.app/profile/justinbaragona.bsky.social/post/3m4dsewdzok2b

Christ, this latest NYT story. I mean even just the headline and subhed: "How a Small Elite College in Maine Influenced Mamdani’s World View:
The mayoral candidate has said his education at Bowdoin College was formative. But critics say that his degree exemplifies how colleges steep students in leftist dogma."

O rly "critics say"? And who are these critics? JD Vance and the right-wing National Association of Scholars, which has been attacking women's studies and ethnic studies programs for 30-odd years. Meanwhile Mamdani and every one of his professors they talk to talk about how wide-ranging — and deeply rooted in American history — his actual studies were.

They really have done everything they can to "other" him.

xp Maria Bartiromo coming off as a total piece of shit as well, but I guess that's par for the course.

xpost I hear they have Nazis in Maine too

I missed the auntie conversation earlier so I have to chime in to say my relatively insular, not-many-siblings family tree mysteriously had Aunt Esther, who was the ex-wife of my great-grandfather’s half brother.

She was family!

xp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obZ7_c4BrDc

Maria Bartiromo coming off as a total piece of shit as well, but I guess that's par for the course.

Joey lost another one to Johnny.

my god

“I’m Bill DeBlasio. I’ve always been Bill DeBlasio,” DeBlasio said in an interview conducted Wednesday evening through his Ring doorbell in Huntington Station, Long Island, from his current location in Florida.

“I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor,” DeBlasio told Semafor Wednesday evening. “So I just gave him my opinion.”

https://www.semafor.com/article/10/29/2025/british-newspaper-spoke-to-the-wrong-deblasio-not-an-imposter

The episode began earlier this week when a reporter for the quality British newspaper, Bevan Hurley, sent a polite email to an email address containing the full name belonging both to the wine seller and the two-term New York mayor, who spells “de” with a lowercase “d” and inserts a space between the two parts of his surname. (In DeBlasio’s view, “low-class Italians use a little d.“)

That guy is a prize huh

I thought only US journalism was dead.

Also, Long Island represent.

Big De energy

lmao holy shit: https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/local-paper-opines-on-mayors-race

(compilation of every WSJ opinion piece on ZM since June 18)

I thought only US journalism was dead.

what did you base this on

I reviewed many academic journals on the topic, conducted in person interviews, subscribed to every newspaper and magazine in the world, quit my job to get a second career in journalism, and became a stringer for a foreign news service. This took a very long time and only then did I make a poor throwaway joke on the Internet.

Probably the most batshit insane paranoia I've seen about this election:

From Wall Street Journal Opinion: Zohran Mamdani’s victory would imperil Jews and embolden totalitarians everywhere in the world. If New York falls, the entire free world may again totter on its foundations, writes Bernard-Henri Lévy.

wow

The Apple has Fallen

who is this fuckchop?

Long history of controversy, this guy...

didn't realize that the fate of the entire free world rests on my mayoral vote

nice

get your cheese slice now, it might be your last

what the fuck

(compilation of every WSJ opinion piece on ZM since June 18)

thanks for posting this... it's insane.

you know I've heard "the establishment fears me" many times but I think this is the one guy where it's actually true

i don't think anyone who uses 'embolden' can be trusted

that's an odd metric to pace so much weight on, but sure, why not?

find me a recent political example in which its use does not involve trying to scare people about 'those (other/different) people'

(generally in service of restricting the rights of those other/different people)

i suppose there are democrats like chuck schumer who have whined about All This Trump Stuff Emboldening Fascists . . . but tbh they've earned no trust either

Haha Bernard-Henri Lévy still on his grift. The French right truly hurting for passable public intellectuals in the last 50 or so years.

I feel like these guys are setting up unrealistic expectations. If Zohran doesn't singlehandedly destroy Western Civilization I'm going to be a little disappointed now.

while i will celebrate zohrans election should it come to pass the idea that he will personally destroy the current order is just more of that old great man theory of history the reality is we all need to do our part to bring about the collapse of western civilization

we all need to do our part (to contribute to the fall of the west)

Great photos on Bluesky of him hanging out with night-shift workers (nurses, cab drivers, etc.) last night.

https://bsky.app/profile/zohrankmamdani.bsky.social/post/3m4hju7zmf22a

https://bsky.app/profile/zohrankmamdani.bsky.social/post/3m4ht527a7s2t

https://bsky.app/profile/zohrankmamdani.bsky.social/post/3m4ht7y67u22t

yeah that should do it

Chris Sommerfeldt c-sommerfeldt.bsky.social‬

Defend NYC, a pro-Cuomo super PAC operated by Trump adviser Jason Meister, is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on sending out this text message to NYC voters, hoping it'll convince them to vote Cuomo for mayor, new filings show.

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:eof64py7gulrj4drvmp52scd/bafkreihyebh4uwuh5eynki7lkkaxfyvtmghwncyktfe6gan6rfr63ot6lm@jpeg

https://bsky.app/profile/c-sommerfeldt.bsky.social/post/3m4ixnhhlqc2z

How is that not a New York Times headline?

I kinda wonder if Mamdani should really be cycling around and jumping into random crowds

It's good politicking but I really wonder if it's safe... these are weird times

https://scontent-ord5-3.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/561789422_1356185845861806_677688077886817370_n.jpg

https://scontent-ord5-3.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/561789422_1356185845861806_677688077886817370_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg_tt6&_nc_cat=100&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=833d8c&_nc_ohc=L5ApHjyPUAgQ7kNvwFq0mNf&_nc_oc=AdnwLryyZU1flNJwY9qL2IyeHvMQ9WaMxl7S1pT3gP2bk1f7V66D8PLhUqK8PHGTWGs&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-ord5-3.xx&_nc_gid=GhodiR2vajZweW04SZtDNg&oh=00_AfeW3aHWyplO4_fErSGKaWBreeVEn6M_yNJKcjt_cpjw8A&oe=690AE9E9

I kinda wonder if Mamdani should really be cycling around and jumping into random crowds

It's good politicking but I really wonder if it's safe... these are weird times

― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, October 31, 2025 2:28 PM (eleven seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

hes kinda gotta do it retail politics is his thing, did notice hes got big body guards with him

If a Mamdani win could *guarantee* all these assholes threatening to leave NYC would actually do so, he would get every vote save this handful of real assholes.

I do love when rich dickheads threaten to leave cities, but go silent when their bluff is called and someone reminds them that, you know, you could move to Alabama* tomorrow and live like a true king, with absolutely no regulations, low taxes, low cost of living and decades of institutionalized authoritarianism that works in your favor.

(*Alabama is actually quite nice!)

i looked up the "cuomo murdered my husband" woman.

My husband was living in a NYC nursing home when Cuomo forced them to accept COVID patients. Immediately, residents began dying and my husband became deathly ill. I managed to get him taken to a hospital where he was given a 5 day regimen of hydroxychloroquine. He completely…

— Stella Paul (@StellaPaulNY) February 19, 2025

hmm

(sorry for the twitter link.)

My husband was living in a NYC nursing home when Cuomo forced them to accept COVID patients. Immediately, residents began dying and my husband became deathly ill. I managed to get him taken to a hospital where he was given a 5 day regimen of hydroxychloroquine. He completely recovered and went back to the nursing home. Shortly thereafter, Cuomo signed an executive order forbidding use of hydroxychloroquine.

Aftermath: my husband died alone in the nursing home after almost a year of brutal isolation. When I finally saw him in his coffin, he was a skeleton covered with bed sores. He died 8 days after getting the vaccine.

Also Aftermath: Cuomo is now the big favorite to be the next mayor of New York.

I WANT JUSTICE.
7:49 AM · Feb 19, 2025

with respect, i don't think somebody who's going on the epoch times is a reliable source

In tales of “never fucking happened,” that lady’s story

I BELIEVE CUOMO IS A LIZARD PERSON AND I'M VOTING FOR HIM ANYWAY

yeah, she's a complete nut. which i now understand is what jaymc was implying

https://i.imgur.com/ZLKXpbc.jpeg

xxp why doesn't she vote for Sliwa, he didn't murder her husband

maybe she respects that cuomo did it, leaders need to make tough decisions

The funniest part of the pro-Cuomo text message is "We know what she means." You do?

A lot of people hate their husbands, I guess.

A lot of people hate their husbands, I guess.

kerrykennedy.jpg

"A vote for Cuomo is a vote to kill the husband you hate!"

"Cuomo murdered my husband and I am voting for him. Because there is no requirement under New York State law that write-in candidates must still be alive."

There's video on Bluesky of Cuomo saying NYC hasn't had a competent mayor since Bloomberg... with Adams standing right behind him.

already posted in the "Is NYC Dead" thread but this is a fascinating article particularly for those of us not versed in the city's rent stabilisation history. lays out who all the players are and what's at stake. near the end it touches on mamdani's ascent and outlines how the city can be a more muscular player

It is true that a rent freeze, without additional intervention, risks deepening the crises within the market. Owners of rent-stabilized buildings may choose not to invest in their properties. If conflict between the city and the large real estate firms intensifies, and building conditions continue to deteriorate, the question of new construction could be politically pinned on the rent freeze. What would effectively be a capital strike could then be construed as the effect of this progressive housing reform.

What impact will the rent freeze have, then, on the current impasse? Already, the centrality of the demand to city politics has opened up a new chapter in the struggle for a sane housing policy. A long-due conversation about housing conditions can make possible new housing politics—if paired with an effective code enforcement program and public investment in housing affordability, the proposed freeze will place the Mayor’s office squarely on the side of habitability, in defense of the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.

But investment in enforcement is not in itself enough. With its multi-billion-dollar capital budget, the City has the capacity to act as a non-speculative market actor: purchasing buildings where the landlord is no longer interested in ownership. Thanks to its scale, its lack of a profit motive, and its taxing power, the City can intervene to stabilize volatile markets and act as a counter-cyclical force that puts housing quality first and property values second. It can use this power—to acquire rent stabilized housing as a market actor—to drive down costs for operators and improve housing quality across New York.

As a long-term owner, meanwhile, the City can act as something like a quasi-community land trust: holding land in a city-wide portfolio and leasing out the right to collect rents, while using its position as landowner to pursue asset management at scale. As its portfolio grows, it could use rents from higher-income buildings to fund operations and lower-income buildings in other parts of New York. This type of portfolio-wide asset-management approach would help New York avoid some of the challenges of private-sector-led affordable housing deals of the past, where individual operators sought building-by-building deals with the City and many projects ended up facing cash-flow issues.

To ensure quality housing for renters in a market where the tools of real estate speculation are suppressed, we need to combine the power to enforce housing standards and the power to finance and acquire rental housing—two capacities the City already has.

https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/stabilization-and-speculation/

via Mark Harris on Bsky:

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:zknk3rjsatent75sdbbopown/bafkreidk6j7j3felrbp4u3ukvaxh6tgr47em2k4h6jgre2bb75nzifszyi@jpeg

this guy

Says the guy running a disgustingly divisive anti-Muslim campaign

the first level of subtext there is that it's the muslims who are harboring the antipathy toward other NYers. the next level down is that NY muslims are sympathetic to terrorists.

canvassing for @ZohranKMamdani in the east village today and the actor who plays dr. strugis in young sheldon is in my canvassing group!! pic.twitter.com/WVQNC7skGB

— ella devi (@HOUSEOFDEVI) November 2, 2025

Good lord has Princess Bride fallen that far off the Gen Alpha radar?

😩

I first saw Wallace in his breakout film role in My Dinner with Andre. This film is now ancient history.

He'll always be the "oversexed brilliant kind of animal" from Manhattan to me

good to see i'm still not missing anything by not having a twitter

she's very good
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nrh7ngbqmdfdxowtxn6dazec/bafkreihwbrswa6fdhlig5sd25nox3u5bfuvlzzdgsxztyzbirjjjrkpsx4@jpeg

haa

I mean, when I was her age, Orson Welles would be "the guy from the wine commercial."

lol

is that some kind of filter or does she truly have enormous eyes

get em

https://i.imgur.com/bqkwDlV.png

haaaa

yesss

Love the “old people” zing being Clueless

What is it? Imgur blocked in the UK.

that’s the joke sic

lag8n that content is unfortunately not viewable in my region

Even millennials don’t really care about Princess Bride. X becometh Boomer.

weird its just a twitter screenshot posted imgur im not logged into imgur so theres no settings or anything, anyway its just her own replies to the first tweet upthread click through and you will see them xp

that’s the joke sic

yes I am applauding it

(especially in the context of the follow-up that you haven’t seen)

i will never see it because i don’t have a twitter account so can’t see replies, and imgur is blocked in the uk. my internet life is truly a shambles

ella devi HOUSEOFDEVI

“put some respect on wallace shawn” i am only 18 and have only seen him in young sheldon i’m sorry!!!

ella devi HOUSEOFDEVI

old people! if you have time to yell at me to go watch the princess bride you have time to canvass or phone bank: (link to mamdanis site)

nice

weird its just a twitter screenshot posted imgur

imgur seems to be banned to UKers, in my recent experience. It's a bummer!

https://bsky.app/profile/astroericl.bsky.social/post/3m4odkbw5lc2q

Currently his main flaw is his social media team has decided I should be bombarded with clips. Not that I mind, but I can't actually vote in NYC.

ella devi HOUSEOFDEVI

“put some respect on wallace shawn” i am only 18 and have only seen him in young sheldon i’m sorry!!!

ella devi HOUSEOFDEVI

old people! if you have time to yell at me to go watch the princess bride you have time to canvass or phone bank: (link to mamdanis site)

Wallace Shawn age test

Gen X: The Princess Bride
Millennials: Cyrus Rose in Gossip Girl
Gen Z: Young Sheldon

Baby Boomers (?): My Dinner with Andre

Baby Boomers are My Dinner with Andre

ha jinx

Boomers: “Didn’t his dad edit the New Yorker?”/Manhattan/Andre
Older Gen X: Andre
Younger X: Princess Bride

Xennial: Clueless

Wow, the Grand Nagus sure did a lot of side projects.

The madness on twitter once the results are out will be something to treasure

I saw my dinner with Andre for the first time with some friends the other week and we all laughed when wally says that something is inconceivable

I’ve never actually seen the princess bride but I’m pretty sure I get the gist (inconceivable)

Princess Bride is American Things.

I have a friend from Sweden who did high school in the US and he says literally the first day the teacher made a PB reference and everyone in the class laughed except him.

I've noticed several accounts that I once thought were fairly left turn to full time anti-Zohran posting.

I saw it once as a kid but it left no real impression on me, so I was unprepared for how often I would encounter references to it as I got older. Same with Star Wars and Goonies and a few other movies of thst era. Feel like these were movies that people my age watched repeatedly on VHS, whereas I rarely saw something more than once.

I’d put Ferris Bueller in that category.

I've noticed several accounts that I once thought were fairly left turn to full time anti-Zohran posting

Huh, that's interesting. I've noticed some mainstream dem celebs, the kind who wouldn't have supported Bernie, turning out for him.

goonies bueller more of tv movies imo, star wars people were more devoted to theyd put the tape in and it was barely played on tv wasnt made available i guess, princess bride i feel like is more niche not that its obscure or anything theres lines that are very well known but generally its popularity is deeper than it is wide its some peoples very favorite movie

Sub TPB for Clash of the Titans and it's Casa Soto 1985-1990.

i've still never seen princess bride

its pretty good check it out, its very wholesome but not prissy and its funny, i think that mix is why people love it so much

Andre the Giant's finest role.

Anyway, the whole "I can't be expected to know about culture because I'm 18" thing is wack. I'd seen tons of movies that came out before I was born by the time I was 18.

I had the Princess Bride novel as a kid and it was kind of a mindfuck in a fun way

the girl should not be required to know who wallace shawn is regardless of her age who gives a shit man watching movies is not an accomplishment

yeah Princess Bride is one of those rare movies that actually is funny for all ages, it pulls off a balance that's apparently very hard to get right. amazing casting too, feels like one of those movies where all the characters were rewritten a bit to account for the actors strengths

Huh, that's interesting. I've noticed some mainstream dem celebs, the kind who wouldn't have supported Bernie, turning out for him.

― a ZX spectrum is haunting Europe (Daniel_Rf), Monday, November 3, 2025 10:17 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm thinking of people like this. Not a super lefty, but she was Alan Grayson's campaign manager, so not exactly establishment. Her feed for the past few months is just attack after attack on ZM to the point that I think it may be a paid gig:

Very Trumpian. See how that gels with Trump. https://t.co/QUdRkiL7T0

— Tina Dupuy (@TinaDupuy) November 2, 2025

Alan Grayson's campaign manager

pulls deeply of a cigarette while gazing into the distance

She was also one of the people who accused Al Franken of groping her, so it's a bit ironic that she's supporting Cuomo.

I've noticed several accounts that I once thought were fairly left turn to full time anti-Zohran posting.

White supremacy is a hell of a drug

So is anyone worried about any potential (illegal of course) Federal action to block him from taking office? Sending in the “rapid response” national guard to occupy City Hall?

yes

not sure why they would want to shine a bright spotlight on the Democratic Socialist who just got elected mayor of the biggest city in the US, but anyway they can occupy City Hall if they want but this isn't the Republican-controlled Congress we're talking about here, the NYC government can swear him in whenever and wherever they feel like doing so

obama doesnt have better politics than the general dem establishment, but he is smarter

Former President Barack Obama called New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on Saturday, praising his campaign and offering to be a “sounding board” into the future.

...

Mr. Obama spoke admiringly about how Mr. Mamdani has run his campaign, making light of his own past political missteps and noting how few Mr. Mamdani had made under such a bright spotlight.

“Your campaign has been impressive to watch,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Mamdani, according to the people.

...

Mr. Obama first called Mr. Mamdani in late June, shortly after his primary victory. Patrick Gaspard, an adviser to Mr. Mamdani who had also served as political director on Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign and in his White House, said that initial call came “unsolicited, unprompted” from the former president.

https://archive.ph/n4y1r

So is anyone worried about any potential (illegal of course) Federal action to block him from taking office?

More concerned that they'll make him one of the first outspoken non-native citizens they try booting out of the country, if they start really going that route.

obama doesnt have better politics than the general dem establishment, but he is smarter

Yeah I think that's a game-recognize-game situation. Obama knows and can admit when he sees good politickin'.

He also knows Mamdani can't run for President, so he won't have to kneecap him in a future primary campaign.

that obama quote sounds like a blurb from Archive of Our Own tbrr

Yeah I think that's a game-recognize-game situation. Obama knows and can admit when he sees good politickin'.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Monday, November 3, 2025 11:47 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

also just basic willingness to read the writing on the wall

An amazing quote from a Washington Post editorial:

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3ezphbcb74zrirki5w3ql3ce/bafkreibp4sr6xotsgett7w3yhvq43oknhds2y4ac6skavrud5dgiuipndy@jpeg

If the image doesn't show up, it reads "One of the most notable aspects of Mamdani's political success is that voters know what they're getting. The young politician was born into a life of wealth and privilege, and from that perch he adopted a worldview centered around destroying the economic system that made his adopted country thrive."

the thrive market is strong this month

pretty sure if you polled Americans a majority would be 100% onboard with destroying the current economic system

wtf @ that quote!?? is the post ed staff basically the wsj at this point??

ya

Class traitor, sounds good not bad to me

uh what

Sorry that was for the original quote

yeah reminds me of when right wing idiots are like "here's the secret about Greta Thurnberg, she was born rich and all this activism is on her parents' dime", it doesn't occur to them that some privileged people might actually want to make the world better for other people, it's such a foreign concept to them

Yeah Bezos is getting the WaPo editorial page he wanted. Pro-“markets” and anti-“socialist.”

The top opinion editor at WaPo, Adam O'Neal, came from The Economist and previously worked at the Wall Street Journal and The Dispatch.

He recently did an interview with Fox News:

O'Neal calls the current state of the editorial pages a "work in progress" and that reshaping them will take time. That includes redefining the voice of the editorial board, which he says is still developing.

"So one day we might be saying, ‘Hey, you know, the president has a good point about Bagram Air Base,’ right? At the other time, we might praise Democrats who are standing up to [New York City mayoral candidate Zohran] Mamdani and his radicalism. And at the same time, we'll criticize the Trump administration when we think they get it wrong. So, if anyone thinks that our project here is about one president or just tactical partisan moves, I think that's really short-sighted, and they're just not reading or watching or listening to us very closely, frankly," O'Neal said.

so, a moron

So is anyone worried about any potential (illegal of course) Federal action to block him from taking office? Sending in the “rapid response” national guard to occupy City Hall?

― This dark glowing bohemian coffeehouse (Boring, Maryland), Monday, November 3, 2025 10:52 AM (one hour ago)

as far as occupation by force goes i'm far more worried about what the response from the NYPD is going to be, because not only will they be dealing w/ a DSA mayor with a mandate to de-cop the city but it will be immediately on the hills of a literal cop mayor who has pushed cop visibility and cop privilege to heights that haven't been seen here since at least the end of stop and frisk a decade ago. and we know from what the NYPD did to de blasio that they will make public efforts to humiliate zohran and strip him of power, and in our current state of things we can't rule out i.e. the NYPD occupying or patrolling some parts of the city in direct defiance of zohran's orders as mayor, and you don't have to travel very far from that place to some scenario where the NYPD is trying to take further control of the city from zohran via force

Tbh, the attitudes toward Mamdani from the center-left political and media establishment, ranging from skepticism to outright disdain, have been rather eye-opening. He is clearly a rare political talent who is able to appeal to some of the demographic groups that Democrats have been trying to win back, and even just on the surface he seems like an enormously likeable guy -- and yet he is being painted like an angry extremist who wants to set fire to the city. I probably shouldn't be so surprised, but I am.

destroying the economic system that made his adopted country thrive

does that mean Mamdani opposes chattel slavery, child labor, or the military-industrial complex?

Tbh, the attitudes toward Mamdani from the center-left political and media establishment, ranging from skepticism to outright disdain, have been rather eye-opening. He is clearly a rare political talent who is able to appeal to some of the demographic groups that Democrats have been trying to win back, and even just on the surface he seems like an enormously likeable guy -- and yet he is being painted like an angry extremist who wants to set fire to the city. I probably shouldn't be so surprised, but I am.

― jaymc, Monday, November 3, 2025

^^ copy and paste that quote into an Obama '08 thread and it would make just as much sense -- other than that Mamdani is lefter than Obama.

theyre desperately trying to maintain the jig, but unfortunately for them it is in fact up

i do think this is different than the reaction to obama which imo was a lot driven by the fact that hillary already had the establishment in her corner and even then some heavy hitters came out for obama early eg ted kennedy and that was also for the presidency which is something youd except every single weirdo dem party creation to ooze out of the woodwork for, all these national figures taking extreme positions against the dem nominee for an nyc mayoral race is just odd and indicative of the fact that the politics mamdani represents are a threat to their livelihoods

its funny they dont see that theyre just giving him more air and that everyone hates them

this shit is just fuckin loony

Mehdi Hasan‬ mehdirhasan.bsky.social‬

The Democratic gubernatorial nominee in VA is effectively calling the Democratic mayoral nominee in NYC a liar on the eve of close, contentious, and crucial elections for both of them. What a joke this party often is. No wonder Republicans win so much.

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4k6dakv7cskxttdvfpzadq7e/bafkreict4pp7crefv2vjnqrw5ekx5gt4to5evesiieqivmbbdtky3qy2ui@jpeg

https://bsky.app/profile/mehdirhasan.bsky.social/post/3m4qlnqqsgc25

wtf @ that quote!?? is the post ed staff basically the wsj at this point??

If there was any doubt over Bezos's vow to introduce right-wing (really Trumpian) viewpoints into the Post, no one should have them at this point.

(that wasn't intended as criticism, it was a statement of agreement)

one thing that is analogous with obama and mamdani obvs is the easy bigotry of the supposedly enlightened multicultural party

lol @ the example of why are leftists turning on him being someone with Israel brain worms and Atlantic bylines.

There was definitely an establishment vs. upstart divide in 2008 between Clinton and Obama during the primary, and there were also a lot of ugly attacks against Obama from the right during the entire campaign. But I feel like once Obama won the nomination, the Democratic Party and the mainstream liberal media were squarely behind him and excited about the historic nature of the candidacy. That's different from, for instance, the reluctance of Jeffries and Schumer to support the Democrat running for mayor of their own city.

yup

i think when confronted with a leftish nonwhite opponent with roots that are partially in other countries, the right wing can't help themselves and they go to far, they call them actively radical terrorists and meanwhile you've got Zamdani reminiscing about the Strokes' debut album on someone's TikTok.

it helps that these guys are obviously easy to like, you'd think the Dems would go all-in on this dude 100% instead of waffling between him and a sex-pest crustacean like Cuomo.

GOP also devoid of ideas and energy by summer '08 until Sarah Palin made starbursts come out of Rich Lowry's eyes briefly.

that's gonna bother me so --

xxp "they go too far"

as jaymc alludes to it's worth noting that there is a coincidence of sorts where the top ranking senator and representative for the democratic party are both from new york city. so not only is it natural for them, in interviews with national visibility, to be questioned about the mayoral race here, but there is also a threatening of their political capital on a direct personal level that transcends the existential questions about "the future of the party," and which i think has further entrenched those people, and thus the party they lead, against zohran. it has created a vacuum into which kathy hochul has stepped, which is sorta interesting bcuz for people who actually live here a united governor + mayor working towards progressive political goals is actually more important than the mayor having the institutional backing of the national party apparatus

and i do think it's true that hochul has been downplayed as a national figure bcuz she supports zohran, if she was in lockstep w/ schumer and jefferies she would get to be on TV all the time too

lol @ the example of why are leftists turning on him being someone with Israel brain worms and Atlantic bylines.

― Lady Sovereign (Citizen) (milo z), Monday, November 3, 2025 1:05 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I guess it would be lol if I had said leftists were turning on him. Which I didn't.

I just remembered Dupuy because she used to appear on the Majority Report, so I was kind of surprised that her twitter had become a full-on Mamdami hate account.

there is also a threatening of their political capital on a direct personal level that transcends the existential questions about "the future of the party,"

Yeah and I think for Schumer and Jeffries those things are also inextricable. They very much want the future of the party to remain heavily under the influence of their major donors (Wall Street and AIPAC), which is what those major donors are paying them for. They rise and fall together.

One thing the whole episode illustrates is how absolutely beholden New York Democrats in particular are to those forces, which is why they're mostly terrible and should not be in national party leadership positions.

She was also one of the people who accused Al Franken of groping her, so it's a bit ironic that she's supporting Cuomo.

― A floating crown, but an extremely small one (President Keyes), Monday, November 3, 2025 7:39 AM (two hours ago)

this is kind of mind-bending

In New York City, Mamdani is leading the polls in the mayoral election by large margins, including women overall. But among likely voters, 45% of women over 50 plan to vote for Cuomo compared with 34% for Mamdani, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Oct. 9. That’s more women in that age bracket than men, with 32% supporting Cuomo and 40% for Mamdani.

the reluctance of Jeffries and Schumer to support the Democrat running for mayor of their own city

their reluctance is understandable, but completely inexcusable.

real leaders don't get to excuse themselves on the grounds of the weakness, disunity, and vulnerability of the party. that's the quickest way to ensure the continuance of weakness, disunity, and vulnerability.

It's hard to exaggerate the degree to which Mamdani is the incarnation of the strawman figure centrist Dems invented to explain why they lost in 2024: immigrant, Muslim, pro-Palestine, college-educated, activist, socialist. It's why Platner is splitting things in a way that is puzzling from a policy angle, but obvious in an identity politics one.

If Mamdani were trans I think the DNC might actually have had him killed

and i do think it's true that hochul has been downplayed as a national figure bcuz she supports zohran, if she was in lockstep w/ schumer and jefferies she would get to be on TV all the time too

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Monday, November 3, 2025 10:18 AM (twenty-one minutes ago)

interesting -- I don't follow NY state politics as closely any more, but isn't she considered part of that establishment crew? I've heard a lot of calls for her to be primaried, and I don't think zohran's more fervent supporters found her tepid embrace of him all that convincing

yeah reminds me of when right wing idiots are like "here's the secret about Greta Thurnberg, she was born rich and all this activism is on her parents' dime", it doesn't occur to them that some privileged people might actually want to make the world better for other people, it's such a foreign concept to them

That’s just them calling her a class traitor though

I've heard a lot of calls for her to be primaried, and I don't think zohran's more fervent supporters found her tepid embrace of him all that convincing

― comrade jhøsh (k3vin k.), Monday, November 3, 2025 1:54 PM (fifty-four seconds ago)

i don't think her embrace of him has been tepid, i also don't think DSA people are all of a sudden going to embrace zohran, however neither of those things are my point...

Mamdani is going to win. He's run a fantastic, positive campaign and campaign. People are excited to vote for him. And here?

If Mamdani were trans I think the DNC might actually have had him killed

?

FDR was a class traitor, too, thank god

The Dem establishment/Billionaire freakout over Mamdami has been a thing to behold. If I didn't know anything about him, I'd just assume he was okay because of the quality of the people who throw fits about him.

xpost not sure what exactly you're confused about, but my point is that centrist Dems are also blaming losing in 2024 on not being anti-trans enough

NYC is the absolute center of the universe for multi-billionaires, even if they don't live there, because all the money in the world flows through it, including their own money. They're worried Mandami will siphon some off to help the millions of ordinary working stiffs and their kids.

xp I am absolutely not confused about your post.

i don't think the dem establishment actually cares about zohran's identity they just know identity-related attacks are easy to wield when appropriate (ofc the hypocrisy of this goes without saying). going to put it out there that referencing killing trans people right now in whatever context is overly harsh at best.

fwiw this is why the establishment cares:

the politics mamdani represents are a threat to their livelihoods

i'm pretty sure how this all plays out is once mamdani is elected and hits the 9-5 the entire crushing apparatus around him slowly churns him into something along the lines of another aoc. just a hunch, i haven't followed this at all so i may be showing a lot of ass.

I mean AOC requires 220 other people to do anything; the mayor of NYC has levers he can actually pull to make things happen

aoc is pretty good compared to those other chumps

yeah i was gonna say, "another AOC" as Mayor of New York, after Eric fucking Adams sounds like a miracle to me

the entire crushing apparatus around him slowly churns him into something along the lines of another aoc

can’t tell from context if this is intended to be a good or bad thing lol

still early to tell but i actually think mamdani is more skilled than aoc as a campaigner and communicator. feels more like an obama level once-in-a-generation talent

zohran "becoming AOC" -- aka having his stated policy positions sanded down by the realities of governance -- is baked into the system, and you can already seeing this straining his coalition if you peer into the right places

An institution like the House is designed to make you compromise if you want to do anything other than make speeches.

going to put it out there that referencing killing trans people right now in whatever context is overly harsh at best.

good point map, I'm sorry all

An institution like the House is designed to make you compromise if you want to do anything other than make speeches.

― A floating crown, but an extremely small one (President Keyes), Monday, November 3, 2025 3:00 PM (one minute ago)

so is being the mayor, though

Being mayor of New York is a heckuva job, there are things for people to get mad about every single day, the city's finances aren't great, and there will be a lot of dedicated media out there amplifying every screw-up, inconvenience, petty scandal, you name it. He's not gonna get a honeymoon from the national media or the entire right-wing industrial complex. He's obviously smart enough to know that, I hope he has good people around him because he'll need them.

xpost Sure, but when you win the election for mayor there are not a bunch of other mayors you have to court the favor of to get placed on a powerful committee.

there could be other mayors, secret mayors

Sure, but when you win the election for mayor there are not a bunch of other mayors you have to court the favor of to get placed on a powerful committee.

― A floating crown, but an extremely small one (President Keyes), Monday, November 3, 2025 3:09 PM (one minute ago)

well you're doing a very strict reading here when the reality is that there's plenty of interests mayors have to court favor with to get things done, including the interests of other specific politicians

to me the NYPD stuff is the canary in the coalmine w/ zohran because he has said defund the police a bunch of times, he probably believes that defunding the police is a good idea. but you can't govern new york city and be a sworn enemy of the nypd. police forces in america are too independently powerful for any mayor to govern that way. and already zohran has offered some public olive branches to the nypd, because how else is he going to govern the city? you can find tweets of people saying this means that he's gonna sell out like the rest of them, and the establishment will absolutely try and break zohran's coalition over time by pointing out all the ways he didn't live up to the dream he sold us, i.e. telling us we elected a defund the police mayor who is now doing xyz things w/ the police. the details of all this will matter but there is also an existential question of... how you can acknowledge and accept that a governing politician from the left is going to have to naturally drift towards the center to get things done

the entire crushing apparatus around him slowly churns him into something along the lines of another aoc

The name I've heard more often is Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson. He won largely because people liked the idea of *him*, as much as his ideas, but in practice he's been a bit of a mess.

yeah i don't think it's possible to be antagonistic to the police and actually do anything as a mayor, in most u.s. cities. been watching a local, relatively progressive mayor here in the slc area. lots of police back-patting along with securing funds for a new library etc.

at least he displayed the lgbtq flag on his desk after the state banned it from public buildings.

Having worked in a liberal city administration and dealt with the cops, yes, it's a very tricky relationship. They are pretty much everywhere the largest department in city government — in our case, they were about 1/3 of the workforce — and they are such fucking crybabies about every single thing, they are institutionally averse to any kind of criticism or accountability, they are founts of rumors and conspiracy theories about what the mayor's up to ... Just an administrative nightmare, basically. And every now and again they'll kill somebody or (in our case) beat up a homeless man in broad daylight with a whole neighborhood watching.

BUT also, they are by far the most in demand city service, people call 911 all the time for everything, and believe it or not most voters even in a fairly liberal city are pretty pro-cop and generally want to more of them rather than fewer.

every video I see on bsky of ICE doing something horrible in Chicago or LA or the SLC airport, there's at least one reply where someone asks why the bystanders don't call the police

(I left a word out there, they generally want to see more cops rather than fewer.)

The flipside of this is that the two times I've served on juries, I was surprised and impressed by how skeptical the other jurors were of cops in general. I think the difference is, when you're calling 911 you see them as an aid — but if you're on the receiving end, it feels different. And enough people have had enough bad real-world experiences with cops, or know people who have, that there's a lot of suspicion of them too.

So I don't think police accountability is necessarily a political loser, lots of people would actually like the police to be accountable. They don't want to abolish them, but they're open keeping an eye on them.

I was surprised and impressed by how skeptical the other jurors were of cops in general

Yeah... when I was up for jury duty a couple of years ago, during the course of being questioned for jury selection it was notable how much they wanted to get our opinions of and/or relationships with the police. The case didn't even directly involve the police.

it seems like cognitive dissonance to think both "cops can't be trusted" and " we need more cops" but when they're the go-to response for any 911 call you're going to need to do a lot of reworking of the system, which... the cops don't want, even if it means they'd have help in situations they're not really trained for

to me the NYPD stuff is the canary in the coalmine

Initially read this as 'the canary in the cocaine' for whatever reason.

why not

believe it or not most voters even in a fairly liberal city are pretty pro-cop and generally want to more of them rather than fewer

Mamdani's argument for several months now has been "we need to let cops be cops, and get more social workers and mental health workers out there to respond to people in crisis," and both halves of that seem to be very popular. Also the fact that he's not getting rid of the current police commissioner seems to be viewed as a good thing in cop circles.

and believe it or not most voters even in a fairly liberal city are pretty pro-cop and generally want to more of them rather than fewer.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Monday, November 3, 2025 3:52 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

polling is showing these numbers dropping precipitously, for obvious reasons, and as part of a general trend in liberals losing their religion for our nice corporate/military/police/surveillance state

A welcome and overdue development if so.

read a good piece on it recently see if i can dig it up, its interesting too cause its happening with basically zero support from any establishment anything, basically anyone with any power or megaphone is enthusiastically pro cop but theres something bubbling up from the underground, reminds me of the surge in popularity for medicare for all except with even less institutional support

dis is it

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/no-kings-is-about-more-than-trump

oh no lol

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:xxcbvm4arpbg2icwxxhhhul7/bafkreidsgnerjervqcdwco3ebijbi26ly44f2w4tmlf2p7l4trfxepywdq@jpeg

That fucking guy has an incredible publicist. I've seen at least three major profiles of him in the last two weeks, having never heard of him before October.

i heard about him a little bit before that

i mean he is in a major movie that just came out

re a shift in liberal sentiment facebook wine moms have gone fuckin feral https://bsky.app/profile/fullslack.bsky.social/post/3m46sce42uk2n

that's fucking awesome

my stepmom is a pretty run-of-the-mill wine mom and she fucking *hates* trump & his slack jawed minions

so much antidotal evidence out there of normal people saying shit they wouldnt have dreamed not too long ago, klippenstein points out in his piece that its a huge contrast with trumps first term where people were dreaming of james comey swooping in to save them

footage out of chicago of 60 y/o white guys in golf shirts yelling in ice thugs faces

Kasie Hunt (CNN): If he does run the city as a communist, are you going to have any regrets?

Curtis Sliwa: Why should I have regrets? I trust people. People are going to make the choice. I'll live with the choice. I'd like them to choose me. But if perchance I lose on November 4th, I will improve, not move. I was born in this city. I was almost killed in this city. I'll die in this city. I'll be buried in this city.

Oh rifle girl who shit her pants is still doing her schtick? I thought she retired to a bunker in 2020.

stavvy has about a half dozen things going on right now. he's flooding the zone

my stepmom is a pretty run-of-the-mill wine mom and she fucking *hates* trump & his slack jawed minions

my comfortably retired Midwest lawyer aunt's take: "someone should just kill him"

lmao https://bsky.app/profile/c-sommerfeldt.bsky.social/post/3m4sm73ibkk2s

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:4xaad7thmc4uqdhefbq6vizm/bafkreibjzziq6dqoe5ibybrvvuljpppu6pxo22cnagfj6hczfjbfuklgxy@jpeg

lmao

Kasie Hunt (CNN): If he does run the city as a communist, are you going to have any regrets?

eat shit, hack

Amazing that Sliwa’s answer is…right on?

What does running the city as a Communist entail? Putting nukes on Staten Island?

i can only hope that Hunt was parroting back something Sliwa said. otherwise seems pretty irresponsible to call Mamdani a communist!

ya sliwa has repeatedly called mamdani a communist, even though he doesn't wear a red beret

What was the last American city to have a mayor that identified as anything other than Democrat, Republican or Independent? I know Milwaukee had a few Socialist mayors, but that was ages ago.

https://i.imgur.com/RAxSYMC.png

That's a whole lotta words for 'we got nothing.'

The Republicans are going to call every Democrat or Democratic policy Communist or Marxist or Socialist anyway, so who gives a shit?

it's so funny how clearly Sliwa prefers Mamdani to Cuomo, or maybe more accurately his particular, intense hatred of Cuomo is striking

@Josh: The mayor of Wichita is a Libertarian:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Wu

Good to know! Is she the only one?

Anyway, I have no idea why so many (allegedly) went from Bernie Sanders to Trump, but there must be something there.

"A Mamdani victory is a serious political problem for those in the party who have been driving the strategies that have led to us absolutely eating shit on a national level"

To be fair, Mamdani actually is a Democrat. He ran and serves as a Democrat in the legislature, and he's on the Democratic line today.

There are a few other Libertarian mayors, but in much smaller cities.

Anyway, I have no idea why so many (allegedly) went from Bernie Sanders to Trump, but there must be something there.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, November 4, 2025 11:24 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

that always seemed pretty clear cut for me

Yeah, but I don't know where the Venn diagram intersects, exactly.

A Facebook friend (someone I went to high school with but haven't seen since) made the Sanders-to-Trump move. But his pro-Sanders posts in 2016 seemed to be mostly about attacking Hillary Clinton as a corrupt criminal and member of the elite/establishment, so it didn't seem like much of a leap when he boarded the MAGA train.

The connection is both say the system is rigged. Guess what? They’re both right, for different reasons.

extremely otm

Yeah the vent diagram is just “anti-establishment, doesn’t matter who”

And Sanders and Trump give Honest Tough Talk.

more voters went from hillary to mccain than from bernie to trump as far as elections go, think the whole bernie to trump story is prob just some bs cooked up by the usual suspects

I was a Bernie guy who would sooner be publicly castrated than vote for Trump or anyone like Trump (obviously), but I think that one of the obvious reasons for that particular pipeline is simply pure vengeance against the DNC. I'm not saying this is good, and I'm not saying this is mature, but I definitely had a few friends who swore they'd never vote Dem again after the DNC basically torpedoed what many believed was the last possible offramp from absolute chaos. Incidentally, none of those friends voted for Trump either, so I dunno. The "let it burn, that'll show 'em" approach seems a bit shortsighted, counterproductive and selfish to me, but I do identify with the disillusionment.

A Facebook friend (someone I went to high school with but haven't seen since) made the Sanders-to-Trump move. But his pro-Sanders posts in 2016 seemed to be mostly about attacking Hillary Clinton as a corrupt criminal and member of the elite/establishment, so it didn't seem like much of a leap when he boarded the MAGA train.

― jaymc, Tuesday, November 4, 2025 10:38 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I know a few IRL examples of Rand Paul to Bernie as well

I either want one thing, or the exact opposite!

A friend had someone in his law school who was big into Zizek, Jordan Peterson and Bernie. Dude just liked big ideas!

Agreed with lagoon tho that this supposed pipeline is overhyped.

I know someone who did the Obama to Trump thing, and then really became an absolutely horrific human being with unfortunately a decent sized following

What's going on with NYC right now makes me wonder if, had Bernie won the nomination in 2016 or 2020, some moderate Democrat would have run a third party campaign that was tacitly supported by the Dem establishment.

Hillary only got about 63,000 fewer votes in 2016 than Obama got in 2012, there was not a huge fall-off in Democratic votes even if you think all 63,000 were Bernie supporters. Bernie got about 13.2 million votes in the Democratic primaries, so 63,000 would be like one-half of 1 percent of that. I'm maybe in a minority here in thinking that Bernie's failures were more his own fault than the DNC's, but there's not much evidence of a real defection of his supporters to Trump.

anecdotally, I know three people who moved from Bernie to Trump fwiw

people move from a losing primary candidate to the other party in the general in every election, and its more than you might think, but the data doesnt show an unusually big swing from bernie to trump, now there could be some longer term pattern going but i havent seen anything about it, we are living through weird times tho so all sorts of shifts could be happening

There are campaign boosters/grifters who are really just trying to get their foot in the door for different jobs in the future and elevate their own public profiles across the board, but wow were there some total stinkers that attached themselves to Sanders 2016. Looking at Tulsi Gabbard specifically, here

suspect this story has legs because a. some people just want it to be true b. it has a certain logic of bernie and trump both being outsider candidates which tbf i could see it working that way, except that i think youd have to factor in a countervailing force which is that bernie is a pretty far left candidate so that makes his supporters less likely to go hard right

I have the suspicion that sometimes people who haven't engaged with politics that much get enthusiastic about an outlier candidate and go insane when their candidate doesn't win

saw it with Sanders in 2016

I have two acquaintances who still vote Dem b/c Bernie told them to and for whom the 2016 loss was devastating

The biggest failure of both Bernie and the DNC post-2016 was to find a way to convert the energy of his run into a lasting movement. But the DNC wasn't interested, and Bernie didn't really have a vision or strategy for that.

more voters went from hillary to mccain than from bernie to trump as far as elections go, think the whole bernie to trump story is prob just some bs cooked up by the usual suspects

― lag∞n, Tuesday, November 4, 2025 8:46 AM (fifty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

astroturfed nonsense for sure

yeah I'm not claiming my anecdotal experience points to any larger pattern, but it's certainly been striking to see multiple people I know go down that road

tl;dr 2016 broke a lot of people's brains

makes me wonder what sort of content the algorithm is serving them

New York, here’s a little history on why we’ll win this race—last stretch magic courtesy of the good luck truck!#VoteforCuomo pic.twitter.com/FdWX0Xqos5

— Andrew Cuomo (@andrewcuomo) November 4, 2025

this is, simply, a tim robinson sketch

lol well, win or lose, at least he's fulfilled his main mission: to make it very clear that that is NOT an OJ Bronco

the ol good luck oj bronco gotta love it

I've also been ridiculed quite a bit, people saying oh, that's the OJ bronco, actually it's not the OJ bronco and if you look closer

verbatim

holy fucking shit at that cuomo video what the fuck

folks we're gonna win because of my truck

which, i just have to say, is not the bronco that OJ drove. just clarifying this for you all, in case anyone was considering asking

that's why it's good luck. OJ didn't drive this truck. i did

some automobilia history 4 u

"yeah I see that!"

many team cuomo people going full tim robinson today

https://bsky.app/profile/wapplehouse.bsky.social/post/3m4szaljp4226

you can tell that Bronco video idea came from someone born after the Clinton administration

many team cuomo people going full tim robinson today

https://bsky.app/profile/wapplehouse.bsky.social/post/3m4szaljp4226

― lag∞n, Tuesday, November 4, 2025 10:15 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Big “Pacino great ass” energy in that delivery

Cuomo murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and I am voting for him. That's how bad things are in New York.

she really floors it xp

Mamdani Votes in Favor of Ballot Proposals 1-5