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Why establishment Democrats still can’t stomach progressive candidates like Zohran Mamdani (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Who’s afraid of Zohran Mamdani? The answer, it would seem, is the entire establishment. The 33-year-old democratic socialist and New York City mayoral candidate has surged in the polls in recent weeks, netting endorsements not just from progressive voices like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders but also his fellow candidates for the mayoralty, with Brad Lander and Michael Blake taking advantage of the ranked-choice voting system in the primary and cross-endorsing Mamdani’s campaign.

With the primary just around the corner, polls have Mamdani closing the gap on Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor of New York. This has spooked the establishment, which is now doing everything it can to stop Mamdani’s rise.

Take Michael Bloomberg, who endorsed Cuomo earlier this month and followed this up with a $5m donation to a pro-Cuomo Pac. The largesse appears motivated not by admiration for Cuomo – during his mayoralty, sources told the New York Times that Bloomberg saw Cuomo as “the epitome of the self-interested, horse-trading political culture he has long stood against” – but animosity towards Mamdani and his policies.

Mamdani wants to increase taxes on residents earning more than $1m a year, increase corporate taxes and freeze rents: policies that aren’t exactly popular with the billionaire set.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

If I lived in a red state in a red county and I knew the candidate was going to lose I would probably be more likely to vote third party….

I live in a blue state in a blue county where there is basically zero chance for a red candidate to win our districts… I can leave troublesome candidates blank.

The only time I would even consider voting for a candidate I didn’t like would be if our district has a reputation for being close to 50 50, and even then it would be a tough choice for me….

For national senate seats I do use different judgement calls but I really despise voting for neoliberals and centrists…

Thankfully our state has mail in voting for both primaries and the national election, so it’s super easy to vote in primaries….

I hear you it’s a tough call to make, but one thing I suggest we do is stop blaming each other…

I did it and you did it too, and it’s really dumb….

The blame lies with the shitty ass democrat party…

And fyi I don’t generally downvote folks I’m chatting with here fyi so, I do try to listen to folks I’m ranting and rave with and at

[–] agamemnonymous 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Look, I get it. I don't like voting for neo-liberals any more than I like laboring under capital. But the left is already at a disadvantage from a solid century of anti-left propaganda. Acting foolishly isn't doing us any favors.

My area of expertise is change implementation. Systems have inertia, they are resistant to change. Especially 250 year old systems composed of a third of a trillion people. That's not to say change can't happen, but it takes time and strategic, organized action. We need to understand the tools at our disposal, and how to use them strategically to implement the change we want.

The electoral system we have is one of those tools. It is not the only one, I think workplace democracy and local mutual aid are much more crucial in their ability to educate the working class, but it is an important tool.

It is important to understand how that tool works, and how to use it to implement the desired change. A drill doesn't do much good if you use it to try to hammer screws into the wall.

The electoral system we have supports two parties, in roughly equal proportions. If you want to introduce a new party to a roughly proportionate two-party landscape, it is either going to engulf, or be engulfed by, one of the two.

Our options for a leftist party, under our current electoral system, basically come down to two possibilities:

We push the existing "left" party further left
One of the two fractures and a Leftist party fills the vacuum

If it's to be 1, the best course of action is to pack Democratic primaries with leftists while keeping them in power.

If it's to be 2, the best course of action seems to be to smother the Republicans at every opportunity. Let the Democrats become the new conservative party, let them move right so the "centrists" abandon the MAGA rot and let the Republican party wither on the vine. Then we can introduce the Leftist party to splinter the now mono-party Democrats.

That's just how it has to be, by the mechanics of the electoral system. In either case, Democrat is the vote on every national election. If it's a progressive, yay. If it's a neo-liberal, well frankly I think option 2 was more likely anyway.

And in any case, we should be pushing leftist candidates in every single local office (and obviously organizing in other ways but this is a rant about elections). Whether they run D or other is a concern best determined with respect to local conditions, but that's the foundation. 3rd party long-shots in major elections aren't viable, we need to be starting local and building a volume of eligible candidates for higher office.

But at the end of the day, placing blame is not even on my radar of activity. There are many parties involved, each has their own scope of power, and feedback mechanisms. I don't waste my time anonymously criticizing representatives in online leftist spaces. When I want to criticize the shortcomings of a representative, I send them direct correspondence. When I am in anonymous leftist spaces, my energies are best tailored towards anonymous online leftists, criticizing their shortcomings so that other anonymous online leftists seriously consider the veracity of their claims.

Part of the blame lies with Democrats, but they are operating in their own system with their own obstacles and limitations; I'm sure some of them have their hearts in the right place. Part of the blame lies with the media, but they're bought and paid for by special interests; we can pump our own media, especially in the Internet age, but I didn't forsee any future in trying to sway legacy media. Part of the blame lies with ideological leftists, despite their hearts being in the right place; this is not a battle that can be won through stochastic, well-meaning ideology. We need organization and a clear common vision of action.

For me, BNMW is the bedrock. The Republican party needs to fail. They are an organized, determined faction of ideologues directly opposed to the Left. The Democrats oppose the left as well, but not nearly as directly. Either the Democratic party pulls progressive, or it pulls centrist conservative, either way snuffs the Republican party out faster. Once they are gone, in the vacuum they leave, we can siphon the working class into a party that actually represents them.

But Republicans losing every possible race is my first priority.