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

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

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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