New York City did some voting last night after months of intense news and social media coverage.
From The Gothamist:
For the past three mayoral races, victory in the Democratic primary all but guaranteed a move to Gracie Mansion thanks to the party’s overwhelming majority of registered voters and the weak roster of GOP and independent candidates in the November general election. Not so this year. The general election could now become a five-way race.
Mamdani is poised to secure the Democratic nomination after Cuomo, who hoped to make a political comeback after resigning in 2021, conceded defeat late Tuesday night. Mamdani – a relatively unknown state assemblymember before his campaign – received about 43.5% of the vote. The city’s Board of Elections will still complete the ranked-choice tally on Tuesday, July 1, until a candidate gets above 50%.
Democratic political strategist Trip Yang called Mamdani’s stunning victory “the biggest upset in modern New York City history.”
New York mayoral candidate, State Rep. Zohran Mamdani (D-NY) speaks to supporters during an election night gathering at The Greats of Craft LIC on June 24, 2025 in the Long Island City neighborhood of the Queens borough in New York City.
Zohran Mamdani speaks to supporters during an election night gathering in Queens.Yang predicted that Mamdani would win the general election in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans eight to one, but said it would be a “chaotic” race.
That’s because Cuomo may stick around. He has registered to run on the Fight and Deliver ballot line and said Tuesday that he is still considering staying in the race. And Adams is running for reelection as an independent after cozying up to the Trump administration.
“I want to look at all the numbers as they come in and analyze the rank choice voting,” Cuomo said in a statement. “I will then consult with my colleagues on what is the best path for me to help the City of New York.”
If he does decide to continue, Cuomo is set to battle Adams for moderate voters in places like Eastern Queens, Southern Brooklyn and Staten Island.
But the electoral realities of more voting to come will do nothing to prevent the making of national narrative hay out of this election while the news media sun shines bright. Cue the NY Times:
That Mr. Mamdani had such success while running on a far-left agenda, including positions that once were politically risky in New York — like describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide and calling for new taxes on business — may challenge the boundaries of party orthodoxy and unnerve national Democratic leaders.
His views on Israel are likely to force some national Democrats into an uncomfortable position, said David Axelrod, a native New Yorker and Mr. Obama’s chief strategist. But he said that Mr. Mamdani’s relentless focus on economic affordability resonated widely and could be a playbook for the party’s success as well.
“There is no doubt that Trump and Republicans will try and seize on him as a kind of exemplar of what the Democratic Party stands for,” Mr. Axelrod said. “The thing is, he seems both principled and agile and deft enough to confront those sort of conventional plays.”
The primary results raised questions about how Democrats on the national level would react. Would they embrace Mr. Mamdani as a next-generation leader of the party who can articulate a resonant economic message in a way that former Vice President Kamala Harris failed to do in November? Or would they distance themselves from his democratic socialist ideas and move more directly toward the center to court independent voters?
The enthusiasm that Mr. Mamdani generated among a swath of New Yorkers looking for fresh leadership called to mind the insurgent campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential race and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her upset victory in a 2018 House primary.
Scaling up one primary election to national implications is something that is easy for media content but very hard in actual electoral real-world practice. Those two examples in particular are interesting. The moment Bernie Sanders looked like he might actually win the Democratic Primary for president, Democratic primary voters ran not walked to the polls to vote for Joe Biden and put a quick end to that possibility. AOC, while maintaining her progressive bone fides in word and deed, has also managed to moderate and play the game in congress well enough to avoid the fate of other “squad” members and hold her seat. The Congresswoman will have decisions to make, as she has as safe a district as there is, has a real shot at meaningful leadership positions in the House, or get ambitious and go for a US Senate seat or more. She tight roped the “primary Schumer” calls earlier this year well enough for the time being, but AOC is smart enough to know the test isn’t just winning a primary but being able to win the general that follows. Betting or not betting her safe House seat on higher office will be the decision of her political life.
As for Zohran Mamdani, if he were to become mayor he would be far more restrained than AOC and Bernie are by having to govern the largest city in America. Not only the challenges of the calcified New York City way of getting things done, but also — thanks to his now-higher profile — a very large national focus by the MAGA folks who love throwing around the word “socialist” almost as much as they enjoy evoking “Trump.” And that is if he can win the primary that might have as many as five people on the ballot. As loud as the progress left will be on the interwebs in joyous support of the newest great left hope, all those hypocritical establishment types who ran off Cuomo before running him for mayor will harden their opposition. The 2026 midterms will also feature an embattled New York Governor Hochul up for election, who will have all sorts of motives to keep the restraints on the more radical proposals from being a campaign headache. Then there is just the massive lift of governing the eight million residents of the five boroughs, as task that has chewed up plenty of ambitious pols in the last 359 years since Thomas Willet.
But at least the next mayor shouldn’t have to worry about a Dutch occupation, like Willet had to deal with. We think. Hard to tell, these days…
New York’s citywide general election starts with early voting October 25th through November 2nd, and ends on Election Day November 4th.
Trump was a warning.
Did Democrats think that they couldn’t be MAGAed?
You have incredibly different definition of MAGA than most people.
Even if you are using it to purely mean ‘populist’ (Which is silly because that’s already a word.), Mamdani isn’t a populist. A populist has to run against ‘the establishment’, and Mamdani didn’t.
Now, the establishment ran against _him_, which is an interesting thing that should result in people realizing how utterly useless the Democratic establishment is and how they will support a disgraced sex pest over someone who wants things done, but that doesn’t mean he ran against _them_. He ran a pretty normal campaign of promising things that seem _mostly_ within his power to do and are not particularly far off Democratic ideas.
You can’t just wave a hand and pretend he is the same as MAGA.
The New Deal would cause a panic among today’s normie libs.
I think the most out-there idea Mamdani has is the city-run grocery store one, which was also proposed by Brandon Johnson in Chicago a few years ago, and there have been state-run grocery stores in the U.S., even in red states, in this century. A city run grocery stores in NY is perhaps more radical because there are longstanding shipping monopolies for grocers in the city, and challenging them would have a (very positive, I think) ripple effect throughout the city.
A city run grocery stores in NY is perhaps more radical because there are longstanding shipping monopolies for grocers in the city, and challenging them would have a (very positive, I think) ripple effect throughout the city.
So, I will admit, I have only heard about this third hand, and don’t know what he has said there.
But knowing progressive ideas, I’m going to speculate he’s talking about having them in food deserts? Places where there are not grocery stores, where if you are lucky you can buy milk and bread and some prepacked meat at the gas station/corner store/bodega(1), but you cannot get real groceries without going some distance.
The idea of just having a government run store that sells those thing at essentially market cost, essentially breaking even (because they’re not trying to make a profit.) is a pretty reasonable idea.
It’s only a bad idea because *waves hands spookily* socialism. Socialism for providing a service the free market has basically given up providing to those communities because there is not enough profit to be made there.
1) Bodega is NYC idea, mystical concept completely unrelated to any other small disorganized store that sells random junk elsewhere, no one else has ever thought of it, do not steal!
Here’s what his platformsays:
I think the general understanding is that he’d put them in low incomes areas, not necessarily food deserts, first.
With New York City already spending millions of dollars to subsidize private grocery store operators
I actually want to hear more about this.
I think the general understanding is that he’d put them in low incomes areas, not necessarily food deserts, first.
…are there low income areas that are not food deserts?
There are lots of places around the world where gov “run” industries “for the poor” consume so much of the budget that they’re a problem.
The gov responds to political pressures, it ends up supplying stuff below cost because that’s popular, the real suppliers of [whatever] can’t compete and go out of business, and we end up with a mess.
Laughably, I live in a food desert. This has no impact on my ability to access food. I drive.
Insisting that I personally don’t have access to real food suggests the definition of “food desert” doesn’t measure anything useful which means it’s a political fiction.
The gov responds to political pressures, it ends up supplying stuff below cost because that’s popular, the real suppliers of [whatever] can’t compete and go out of business, and we end up with a mess.
Unlike in the current model, where supplies don’t even exist in certain locations, which I’m sure is worse then them going out of business.
Meanwhile, in actuality, NYC has 20 million people in it, and *quick google* 5576 grocery stores.
I really doubt the city building a few dozen could possibly impact them in any statistical sense.
Laughably, I live in a food desert. This has no impact on my ability to access food. I drive.
You have discovered that people who live in food deserts can spend both time and money to access food.
Now, I want you to imagine a person who does not have an extra hour to spend on transport getting to and from food.
I want you to imagine a person who does not have an extra hour to spend on transport getting to and from food.
“Food Desert” means “more than one mile away in an urban setting” (gov definition, google)
So if it takes you more than 15 minutes to walk then you’re in a food desert.
Unlike in the current model, where supplies don’t even exist in certain locations…
Unless you can point to hungry people, there is no problem.
People are trying to use this definition, not because “supplies don’t exist”, but because they do exist by any sane definition. They want the problem to exist politically to do what they want or to justify their existence.
So the definition of “food desert” has been set to insane levels where access to food doesn’t matter.
Unless you can point to hungry people, there is no problem.
Okay, so this is you not understanding the premise here. The situation is not that people do not have food. The situation is that the food they have access to is a bodega. Or a gas station. And that food sucks.
Time is the actual problem here. Poor people cannot spend an extra hour or more round trip (Which, yes, that is how long at-least-a-mile-long round trip walking takes.) going to the grocery store.(1)
The time of poor people is often worth more than money. That sounds weird, I know, and the obvious answer is ‘Why don’t they work less, then?’, and that, right there, is why workers often have demands about controlling their own schedule, because they usually can’t. They have to work whatever hours they are told to. They can’t stop work an hour early because they need to go buy food today.
So they do not have any time, and end up buying expensive corner-store food that often doesn’t have basic necessities, and is unlikely to have the sort of cheap basics that poor people often live on, like rice or black beans or whatever. They’re no generic brand, everything is marked-up 25% over grocery stores, and it’s often in very small packages, which also makes it more expensive.
Basically, they’re having to buy food in every way that poor people shouldn’t. They’re trying to be responsible with their money, but literally cannot, they simply do not have the time to trek to a grocery store.
And thing is, you’re about to argue they don’t need to do things that way, but clearly they do or they wouldn’t be doing it. This is actual real thing, a measured thing, and the explanation for why people shop at these stores is exactly the thing I explained and pretty well known. You’re arguing against _facts_, asserting that they must not be true.
1) Although, incidentally, this is why this problem is worse in urban areas. The part that differs is that rural workers sometimes _work near grocery stores_ just because they often work in a town. It doesn’t matter if they have to drive a long distance to the store if that’s where they already are. In contrast, transportation is way more complicated for urban residents, and that is a lot less practical.
You live in a food and(apparently) education desert but also have the economic means to purchase your way out of that through buying time and a car to alleviate your food related condition. As David notes, most people living in urban food deserts lack the economic means to buy their way out of that situation.
But you have proven once again that – like every “good” conservative – if a problem doesn’t impact you you see no reason to act to correct it.
Because you don’t need a better society around you apparently.
“You have no right to emigrate!”
I’ve never understood open borders fans who take this attitude.
See my answer to David.
Unless you walk to the food store, you live in a “food desert”. If the food store is further way than one mile it doesn’t count.
Philip: if a problem doesn’t impact you you see no reason to act to correct it.
I am questioning who this affects. Being more than a mile away from a food store is a terrible way to measure “hunger” or “access to food”.
“Food Deserts” conceptually assumes no one has a car. The average number of vehicles per household is 1.8 and 92% of households have access to one or more cars. 2.3% of the US live in nursing homes. Another 2% or so live in college dorms (the large ones will have cafeterias).
The claim seems to be “in order to access quality food it must be within easy walking distance”.
Unless better stats are presented this seems like an effort to create a problem to keep activists and politicians busy.
That people on this board don’t understand the basic definition of “food desert” is strongly suggestive.
That you want to use a national average to determine transportation availability in select urban locations is telling as well.
The national averages I’m using suggest more than 97% of the country either have access to a car or have chosen not to for good reason. That number could be a lot higher.
So how many of that remaining 3% live in “food deserts”?
Or is the claim that everyone living in these “select urban locations” is both without a car and in poverty? BTW, the poverty level of 11% is unfixable by design because that’s measuring people before gov handouts.
We should be concerned when rhetoric which suggests vast problems flies in the face of data which suggests the problem is either minor or doesn’t exist. We should especially be concerned when the basic definitions don’t make any sense.
Rather than forcing the construction of boondoggles, the “meals on wheels” program might be more appropriate and cost a heck of a lot less.
BTW “meals on wheels” serves roughly 2 million seniors per year which is almost another percentage point to that 97% up top.
Phillipe Bourgois points out that most of the people “living in poverty” in Spanish Harlem cannot, in fact, actually afford to live there. (Yes the book is old. Its message still stands).
They’re all employed in the underground economy (selling drugs, in the main, but money that doesn’t get understood by the Fed).
https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2011/december/data-feature-mapping-food-deserts-in-the-u-s
For example, looking at the Atlanta map (above) and clicking on one of the food desert tracts indicates that over 200 households, or 23 percent of households in the tract, are over 1 mile from a supermarket and do not own a vehicle.
It’s almost like being poor causes _both_ a lack of grocery stores _and_ a lack of a vehicle.
Incidentally, you cannot walk a mile in 15 minutes in Atlanta. At least, not with the slightest bit of safety.
Actually, I’m a little confused as to why you think a mile is a fifteen minute walk anyway. That is a fairly brisk speed for people who are physically fit, which of course not all people are, and the premise of this is that groceries are carried half the trip. The average walking time for a 20-29 year old is 19:52, and I would argue that should actually be slower on the return trip, so, let’s say 25.
So at that point we’ve pretty close to an hour for just thee trip…at minimum, because you’ve also somehow turned this into walk ‘one mile’ instead of ‘walk at least a mile’, which seems a bit dishonest.
Yes, putting an additional _minimum hour tax_ on poor people, who generally do not have much time at all, is indeed is a pretty high tax.
we’ve pretty close to an hour for just the trip
The slight of hand is skipping the question, “how do they get food now?” You’re assuming they walk. I would think we should actually ask the poor who we’re trying to help rather than impose a solution on them.
Remembering the periods of my life when I was poor, didn’t have a car, & also did a lot of walking, I still wasn’t walking to the food store.
why you think a mile is a fifteen minute walk anyway.
I do 5 of them every night. If you walk regularly it gets easier and you’ll feel better about a lot of things.
If your lifestyle includes a lot of walking then your lifestyle includes lots of walking.
“The New Deal would cause a panic among today’s normie libs.”
This isn’t true but thanks for the use of the obvious tell word normie
I’m not waving a hand and pretending that Mandami is the same as MAGA.
I am waving a hand and pretending that the DNCe is the same as the GOPe.
Ah.
I’m not even sure how that analogy is supposed to work.
Do you mean that the Dem establishment will quickly drop their opposition and cave to Mamdani? I mean, I guess they could, but I don’t really think he’s popular enough outside of NYC for that to even matter.
They also haven’t actually ‘opposed’ him in the same way that the Republican establishment opposed Trump at the start.
Do you mean that the Dem establishment will quickly drop their opposition and cave to Mamdani?
Remember McMullin? I’d say that Cuomo, if he still runs, will be a good analogue to him.
They also haven’t actually ‘opposed’ him in the same way that the Republican establishment opposed Trump at the start.
I remember the early days of Trump somewhat differently. “We’re not going to take him seriously. He’s a clown.”
Things didn’t change until the polling changed at which point the long knives came out. When did the polling change for Mamdani? It wasn’t weeks ago, I don’t think. It was days ago, right? The Mayoral debate was one week ago and I remember how Mamdani’s statements were “disqualifying”.
And then… boom. He won.
It’s *NOW* that I want to see what the Democrats do in response. I’ve heard that Cuomo is definitely going to run and now I’m hearing that maybe he won’t?
And if/once he’s in office, we still don’t know how the folks who he has to work with will work with him. McConnell was happy to work with Trump on judges and tax cuts but the MAGA stuff died in committee.
I don’t know how the donors will respond either. There’s so much up in the air!
But the DNCe was found, once again, with its pants around its ankles watching the unthinkable happen. And that reminds me a lot of the GOPe.
Oooh, wait a second. It looks like Hillary Clinton has already pivoted to Mamdani support…
Remember McMullin? I’d say that Cuomo, if he still runs, will be a good analogue to him.
I’ll admit I had to Google him to remember who the hell that was, but, sure, now I remember. But I’m not really sure what you mean…McMullin didn’t have some huge Republican backing before, he was just a random elected Republican guy…he wasn’t even in the primary.
If Cuomo goes independent it would be like if…Ted Cruz (I honestly cannot believe he was in second, and in fact that’s so unbelievable I’m going to reject reality) if Marco Rubio had decided to run as an independent.
It’s *NOW* that I want to see what the Democrats do in response. I’ve heard that Cuomo is definitely going to run and now I’m hearing that maybe he won’t?
Honestly, I’m not sure what Cuomo is doing has anything to with what the Dem establishment in general is doing. The establishment already looks pretty bad promoting a disgraced sex pest who the voters then pretty soundly rejected, they’d look even _worse_ if they tried to now push him as a independent.
And if/once he’s in office, we still don’t know how the folks who he has to work with will work with him. McConnell was happy to work with Trump on judges and tax cuts but the MAGA stuff died in committee.
But the people he has to work with is city government of New York, who is not going to have much a problem with him besides the police (Who, of course, hate anyone who does not bow to them.), and to some extent, the government of New York State, which…we’ll see about that.
New York Post has reported that Cuomo won’t run.
I mean, someone on twitter pointed out that there’s one hell of a negative ad campaign just waiting to be picked up: “No Means No.”
I’m not sure what Cuomo is doing has anything to with what the Dem establishment in general is doing.
The Dem establishment, until a day or so ago, was behind Cuomo. Now it’s Cuover. We get to see whether the DNC slips into “it’s inevitable!” mode and embraces the guy or whether they flail around and try to figure out something that might work to beat him.
How long did it take the GOPe to slip into “it’s inevitable!” mode? Somewhere around 2025?
Jerry Nadler has endorsed Mamdani.
Well done, NY. Here’s hoping he’s the first of many.
He’ll help turn NYC into 2022 San Francisco only without the mask mandates.
I doubt that.
He’s gonna have the entirety of the media and Democratic Party establishment against him, though.
Also the NYPD, most likely.
For sure.
Well, there are two (or three, maybe) possible outcomes:
1. Mamdani actually believes things.
2. Meet the New Boss. Same as the Old Boss.
3. The Mayor doesn’t have a whole lotta power, really.
In the case of 3, we’re not going to see a whole lot of difference between Adams and Mamdani. He doesn’t have the power to increase rent control. He doesn’t have the power to defund the police. He doesn’t have the power to do half the stuff he campaigned on. He’s the 4th grade student council president promising longer recesses. Sounds nice, I’d vote for that, but recess time belongs to the House of Lords, not the House of Commons.
In the case of 2, hey, won’t even come up.
In the case of 1? My goodness… we’ll see how true #3 actually is, won’t we?
And we’ll also see how much people pay attention to the media and/or the Democratic Party establishment.
Yeah, I’m confused by New Yorkers who seem to all agree he won’t be able to accomplish much of what he wants to, while still freaking out about what he wants to accomplish. In terms of the NYPD, I mean they will definitely campaign hard against him until the general, although I don’t think anyone believes he’ll be able to cut their budget if he wins anyway.
Eh, this makes a little more sense to me.
Imagine, if you will, a particularly racist candidate winning the primary.
It still makes sense to freak out because a racist won the primary even if his (or her, I suppose) policies won’t touch on anything that involves race.
“What are you worried about? It’s not like he’ll be able to make racist policies!”
“That ain’t the point.”
“The ban on large soda cups didn’t actually go into effect before it was repealed!”
“Right, but don’t you think it means something that it got even that close?”
I think (1) is true, but as Andrew says in the post, he’s going to be seriously constrained. I’m hoping he tries free buses, and maybe increasing bus frequency, are his first attempts at fulfilling campaign promises. I think buses are the easiest win to start. A rent freeze for rent-stabilized apartments will piss off one of the most powerful classes in NYC (landlords). Dealing with the cops will be particularly difficult. His plan is to make it so that they can focus on crime and not have to worry about things like mental health crises, but cops will see it as defunding. I doubt he’ll make any progress there, if elected. I doubt he’ll get far on the grocery store thing too (though I would really love to see this one), because the logistics are complicated. No cost childcare is also unlikely, because it’s very expensive, but I’d love to see that as well.
My suspicion is that the media will slam him, the cops will do a partial work stoppage (as they have here in Austin), and Democrats will try to undermine him. If, despite so many powerful forces against him, however, he succeeds, I think he will spawn a thousand candidates like him.
“I think he will spawn a thousand candidates like him.”
I agree with this, but I think he represents something different than what I think you think he represents.
I think he represents the hollowness and failure of the Democratic Party. The machine that could only give us Cuomo does not have the strength to give us anything but.
We will be blessed with thousands of politicians that the machine isn’t able to stop anymore.
That said, if you look at the demographics of who voted for whom, you’ve got yourself another head-scratcher. Mamdani was the pick for White Progressives. Cuomo was the pick of the much more authentic demographics.
I’m not a Democrat, and it’s difficult, well-nigh impossible, for me to get excited about any politician. However, what I think he represents is exactly what the Democratic Party has needed for some time: a candidate with ideas, values, and a focus on people, particularly working people. Cuomo is in the category of Democrats who’ve dominated the party since at least Clinton’s second term: largely idea-less, message-less, in some ways overtly anti-democratic technocrats whose only value was efficiency, whose commitment to corporations outweighed any commitment to people, especially workers, and whose following of trends among progressives, be it Black Lives Matter of climate change, was purely cynical and easily abandoned. The exception that proves the rule is the ’08 Obama campaign, which had a message, (“Hope and Change” and “Yes We Can!”, along with a promise to end our wars of choice), even if the policies behind it were for the most part not particularly ambitious, and Obama abandoned all of that pretty much as soon as he was elected (e.g., by hiring Rahm as his Chief of Staff), never delivered on even the central parts of the message (e.g., ending the wars).
There’s a reason Bernie has been among or the most popular politician, from either party, for the better part of a decade, and that’s because he has something to say, and he sticks to it. I think Mamdani is similar, and unlike Bernie, he has the potential to succeed electorally (Vermont, which is the size of a mid-sized American city, doesn’t count. Why don’t we just consolidate New England already?). If he does so, I think it will inspire other candidates who actually care about things, and are good at talking about the things they care about, to run for office, and I think those candidates will make the Democratic Party much better than it’s been since the days of the New Deal.
On the other hand, I think should Mamdani lose the general (I assume both Cuomo and Adams will run as independents), it will be a clear sign to a lot of people that running on a platform aimed at building a government for most of us is impossible in the current system, and maybe, just maybe, that would inspire people to start thinking we need a new system.
If I were a gambling man, I would drop a hundred bucks or so on Adams winning re-election.
The white progressive vote will go for Mamdani, sure… but there’s a lot of skepticism about the promises that Mamdani has since stopped making.
On one level, the argument might be that Mamdani has learned that some policies don’t work in practice. On another, the argument might be that he’s a fad-chaser. Those old policies aren’t fads anymore so of course he isn’t following them. The next big thing might be Service Weasels and so the election will have Mamdani talking about the importance of NYC bars and restaurants making rats available. To be dropped when whatever the next big thing rolls around.
FWIW, I work with a Bengali guy who was really pulling for Mamdani, along with all of his family, which makes sense; a Dominican guy, who also voted for him; and a Mexican-American, who also voted for him, although both of them were a little less fired up. I believe my Jewish girlfriend also voted for him, for whatever that’s worth. JFREJ endorsed Mamdani and Lander.
I have seen Lander in action at some protests and leaned towards him because he knows how to work the system better.
The main thing is none of the veteran NYers I know could figure out why Cuomo was running. All of them told me something along the lines of “he killed old people!” along with the sexual harassment.
Here’s the NYT map.
I’m looking at that map and scratching my head.
The Bronx and Staten Island agreed?
Crown Heights went for Mamdani? Crown Heights?
Huh.
https://archive.is/9HV8E
For non-subscribers.
A friend of ours, who’s not in NY but a nationally-known progressive Democrat, is more ideologically aligned with Mamdani, but endorsed Landers (he and Landers have a long-standing professional/personal relationship). I still think he should have endorsed Mamdani, but I take this as a sign that Landers is just more of a known entity, even among “squad”-type Democrats.
I also think he endorsed Landers before it was clear that Mamdani not only had a chance, but was the only candidate other than Cuomo who had one.
From my vague understanding, Landers has more realistic goals, but Mamdani actually is much better at messaging, hence the skyrocketing support.
But sometimes things aren’t really either/or. They endorsed each other, it sounds like the vast majority of candidates who are not Cuomo were pretty much okay with each other being elected. And thanks to a much saner primary voting system in NYC, did not have to constantly attack each other to remove the others so they stood a chance against Cuomo. (Although it’s possible Mamdani would won even then, but who knows how badly other attacks would have hurt him.)
I have no interest in Landers. This strikes me as Sanders vs. Warren redux, except in this case the Warren understands that a Sanders will pretty much always be more appealing than a Warren.
It’s a pity that Lander can’t play the “sexism” card.
I think it’s pretty much understood now that Mamdani/Lander are a package deal, and Lander will help him get things done if he’s mayor.
Lander is out. There was also a primary for Comptroller. I suppose Lander could become a deputy mayor of something or other.
The MTA already loses about $1B a year and is run by the State of New York. A free bus system is essentially a non-starter.
I’m sure it’s been a while since you graced the website of this publication, but here ya go: https://jacobin.com/2025/06/zohran-mamdani-free-bus-proposal
Honestly, as someone who rides the bus from time to time, it looks like it’s already de facto free for a lot of the riders anyway, since you can board at the back and be on the honor system to pay.
“Mamdani proposes replacing fare revenue (a user fee) with tax revenue. The MTA would have the same revenue just from different sources.”
It’s just that simple!
I appreciate how the author completely ignores the gigantic operating budget deficit. A gap that the new congestion pricing revenue barely dents. (It took 10 years, and metric ton of political capital to be spent, for that new revenue stream to get across the line).
My point being, Mandani will have to persuade state lawmakers and their MTA appointees to enact his proposal. That’s just not happening.
If Mandani wants to be successful, he should make sure the roads are plowed in the outer boroughs. That’s something he can actually influence.
I think if he can present a compelling enough financial case (he has to makeup like $600 million in operating revenue from fares, minus the cost of processing fares) to sway some board members, along with the presumably free-bus friendly members he will appoint, he’ll have a pretty good shot at it.
What is this weird obsession conservatives have with public services “loosing money?” Public services are just that. They have costs. Revenue is allocated to them. But they aren’t supposed to make a profit because … they are public services.
They don’t have to make a profit. That’s just silly. But at some point the cost could be too high, measured in some reasonable way against the benefits of the expenditure. There is obviously some public benefit, and probably some private benefit, in free mass transit. I have no idea how to measure it, but responsible estimates can probably be made. Then we can talk about how much we are willing to spend to get it.
The longest running ding against Amtrak (more recently deployed against st USPS as well) is its not profitable.
Say what you will about Amtrak, it’s still more profitable than CSR per kilometer travelled.
(I originally put “per mile” but thought that using a French measurement would be funnier.)
Yes, it is. And that’s the wrong question. The right question is whether the service Amtrak provides is worth what we pay for it. Talking about profit doesn’t answer that question. And probably isn’t intended to.
“What is this weird obsession conservatives have with public services “loosing[sic] money?”
Why are we paying fares for the service? If the fares aren’t supposed to cover operating costs and the service is losing money, shouldn’t we do something about non-payment of fares? If the point isn’t to cover operating costs then why are we paying fares at all, why not just have a donation bucket at the train door and I can throw in a couple bucks if I feel like it?
We have fares to keep the riff raft off the train.
Weiner ran in a city council primary. He lost to Epstein.
My girlfriend ran into him campaigning in the neighborhood and compared it to a jump scare.
That’s funny.
Apparently, there was an SNL skit about Epstein and his unfortunate name, but I haven’t the time to look for it.
So, I mean, no one’s going to mention how this directly undercuts the ‘Democrats need to run to the center on social issues’ narrative the media and Dem establishment has been pumping out?
Yes, yes, New York is a fairly liberal place, but Mamdani pretty much blew things out of the water simply by doing the odd thing of ‘having progressive ideas and clearly presenting them to the public’. (And not being a elderly sex pest, an added bonus.)
Win a New York City Democratic primary election with this one weird trick
Did Mamdani ever point out that when Cuomo was governor, he did everything he could to cripple NYC’s infrastructure?
Yes. So did many others.
Here is an interesting chart on the racial breakdown of the primary vote. Cuomo clobbered Mamdani in Black neighborhoods in NYC, had a healthy margin of victory in Hispanic neighborhoods but lost to Mamdani among Asian-American voters:
https://x.com/SteveKornacki/status/1937932336164647397?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1937932336164647397%7Ctwgr%5E40082c6b73e783592bcb249a2b9a6b247ad3ada3%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D15203620https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D152036t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20252F062Fagainst-the-politics-of-exhaustion-and-retributiont_e%3DAgainst20the20politics20of20exhaustion20and20retributiont_d%3DAgainst20the20politics20of20exhaustion20and20retributiont_t%3DAgainst20the20politics20of20exhaustion20and20retributions_o%3Ddescversion%3D4a092bfab44682d034770f63364925a1
some nasty implications in the idea of blacks and hispanics voting heavily in favor of a guy whose whole deal was Being The Dude Who Goes On TV And Yells At Deadbeats To Shape Up Already.
Anyone who spends time in black or hispanic communities knows that deadbeats are constantly being yelled at to shape up already by their own people. Sometimes, the high-profile messenger (Bill Cosby telling the kids to pull up their pants) is unfortunate, but the people you never heard of are on the job already.
Some disjointed thoughts:
1. If the Establishment Dems or whatever you want to call them, wanted an Establishment candidate, they probably shouldn’t have gone with the guy who resigned for sexual harassment and was also found to be exaggerating his COVID safety record. There were plenty of non-DSA Dems to choose from.
2. Moderate Democrats in surrounding suburbs seem to be seething hard against Mandami. I suppose his “return him to the burbs” campaign against Cuomo doesn’t help. The establishment fear appears to be that leftier-leaning Democrats are going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in November 2026 or before by making the Democrats have their Jeremy Corbyn turn.
2a. There is an interesting and probably unanswerable question on whether Democrats like AOC or Mandami act as a drag on more moderate Democrats in light blue, light red, and purple districts we need to win for majorities.
3. The complacency caucus is really misreading the room on how Democrats, including non-DSA Democrats (waves hand) wants them to react to Trump and Co. We want maximum fight and resistance.
4. NY Democrats appear to be falling in line behind Mandami. Nadler endorsed him. Jefferies did not endorse him but praised him highly. Cuomo appears to be close to announcing he will not mount an independent campaign.
5. The question I suppose is how much do business owners and/or other very rich or establishment types try and resurrect the deeply unpopular and comical Eric Adams in a bid to make sure Mandami doesn’t win. Adams’ approval rating is about 20 percent right now. It is really bad.
6. I’m fairly confident that Mandami wins a three-way race in either the Mandami-Cuomo-Silwa mode or the Mandami-Adams-Silwa mode. I’m not sure what happens if the race is Mandami, Cuomo, Silwa, and Adams. Also the November election in NYC is still first past the post which is stupid.
Mamdani’s victory among Asian-Americans, although it might be for ethnic pride reasons so not that strange, seems a bit odd because Mamdani wants to fiddle with the entry requirement for selective high schools. This is usually something Asian-American voter resist tooth, claw, and nail when it is attempted. They tend to not like progressive ideas about education.
I don’t think Cuomo is going to run as independent. Even if Mamdani turns out to be an incompetent, he is still going to be better the Silwa who is nuts. Mamdani or really anybody has a tough job ahead of him because being Mayor of NYC involves both the need for a machine politics person that can factor balance and a technocrat.
Related to (2) is the difficulty of dealing with so many of the ‘burbs being in other states. It makes a “we’re all in this together” approach much harder. Some of that perception on my part may be a matter of having spent most of the last 40 years in the Denver metro area. Lots of regional planning and (more importantly) regional taxes. A simple example is Denver could not afford the Denver Performing Arts Center on its own. A majority of its tax revenue comes from the surrounding ‘burbs. Same for the Regional Transportation District.
New York burbs also remained economically dependent on New York in ways that the burbs of other big cities aren’t necessarily dependent on them. Most residents of San Francisco’s burbs do not work in San Francisco. Most New York burbs are tiny villages with maybe 15,000 residents at most, and probably a lot less, where most people commute into the city regularly.
I don’t think this is true in NYC like it is in other metros. The burbs of NYC are commuter towns. There are businesses in the burbs of NYC but it is nothing like say Silicon Valley.
If the Establishment Dems or whatever you want to call them, wanted an Establishment candidate, they probably shouldn’t have gone with the guy who resigned for sexual harassment and was also found to be exaggerating his COVID safety record.
Do you think that the Establishment Dems made a mistake or did they deliberately choose to get behind someone that they knew would never succeed?
More fun with demographics:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/25/nyregion/nyc-mayor-election-results-map-mamdani-cuomo.html
Mandami did better in higher income and middle income districts, Cuomo did better in lower income districts. Mandami also won the college-educated districts and districts with more renters. Mandami’s best districts were in Hipster Brooklyn and Queens. Lander’s best districts were Brownstone Brooklyn
So the people who won’t actually use the free buses that mysteriously won’t show up or be forced to shop at the city grocery stores, whenever it is they’re open, for whatever merchandise they may have? Assuming any of that happens of course.
But whatever I say let NY experiment. If he somehow succeeds at delivering better quality public services at an affordable price where every other leftist has failed the world will by definition be better because of it. But if he fails, and he probably will, I’d like to think his constituents would learn something constructive from that too. Not that there’s any reason to be optimistic for that either.
FWIW, I would have voted for Lander first and then probably Adrienne Adams. I probably would have ranked Mandami third and not ranked Cuomo.
The thing here though is that Cuomo apparently ran a lackluster campaign and assumed an easy victory. He also forgot how many NYC residents really hate him. I don’t think free bus fair is the greatest policy choice in the world and I prefer a YIMBY approach to housing.
The other thing is that the Democratic Leadership really dropped the ball in deciding that if they needed an establishment candidate, it had to be Cuomo. The resigned in disgrace governor. That was a stupid move. They could have endorsed Lander, the Comptroller or Adrienne Adams, the NYC Council Speaker. It’s not like there is a paucity of Democrats in New York.
I’m not nearly as close to it but yea, I’d have to figure the establishment alternatives of a well passed his sell by date former governor whose most recent time in the limelight involved a sex scandal, and presumably a third party run by an apparently corrupt incumbent factored into the voters’ thinking. One way to read Mandami’s nomination is the natural result of so openly insulting people’s intelligence.
But if he fails, and he probably will, I’d like to think his constituents would learn something constructive from that too.
It would have succeeded if it weren’t sabotaged.
I said constructive not onanistic.
TL/DR the American constituency for socialism is college educated middle and high income earners in deep blue cities and nobody wants to admit this.
It’s not as insane as it seems, in a fun house mirror kind of way. Real socialism like they have in the heaven of western Europe where all problems are solved requires way heavier taxing down the income ladder than people in the US really understand. As a result people there live more modestly, but you can make the case that, to the extent their welfare states/public services function well and stay solvent, they get a reasonable deal out of it. If you’re an upper middle class, high social capital American living in a deep blue city or burb, you pay a bit less than they do, but factor in paying for education and healthcare, etc. and the out of pocket isn’t that different. The less you know about various means testing and other caveats to other systems the more you can convince yourself that it also might work in America and you would net out at least even or maybe a little better.
However if you’re in, I don’t know, the 40th-80th percentile, that extra money out of your paycheck matters a lot more to your standard of living, even if it is more precarious than it would be in name your other country. Moreover the further down the chain you are the more likely it is you’ve had to interact with the state, mass transit, whatever, in various capacities that make you more distrustful of its ability to deliver. You also have a lot more to lose if it fails.
Or at least that’s how I pencil this out, from a barstool, after a few drinks.
Europe isn’t exactly a place bereft of luxury goods and services. They seem to have quite a lot of them. Otherwise, I basically agree. The European welfare state seems like a better deal to educated upper middle class Americans and a stress reliever more so than it does for lower income Americans.
For sure and by ‘more modestly’ I didn’t mean poor or even a low standard of living or anything like that.
“TL/DR the American constituency for socialism is college educated middle and high income earners in deep blue cities and nobody wants to admit this.”
People for whom the choices about their lives matter to the outcome, but don’t feel like they have the cleverness to tell good choices from bad (or the connections or the wealth to turn bad choices into good ones). And so they hope desperately for someone to take the responsibility of that choice away from them, to do it for them, to give them Just One Objectively-Best Option so they don’t have to worry so much anymore.
GOP heavy hitters are, apparently, calling Curtis Silwa and asking him to drop out and endorse Adams.
This strikes me as silly but… maybe it’ll work? If they want it to happen, they should figure out a sufficient bribe.
The only reason I could see anyone voting for Adams is the same reason anyone voted for Cuomo — name recognition.
Eh, just something as simple as “good lines went up, bad lines went down” might make for a “don’t rock the boat” inclination to vote for the incumbent.
Why would that be any truer in NYC than anywhere else?
If we agree that it’s a trivial truism that not only applies to anywhere else but also to NYC, I think that we agree that there are more reasons to vote for Adams than merely name recognition.
I have a vague recollection of lots of folks here, you included, pooh-poohing arguments based on the lines on a chart. Crime is down by any objective measure? Doesn’t matter. People have feelings about it. Your income is growing faster than inflation? Doesn’t matter. People have feelings about it. Gas prices, in real terms, are about what they were when I got my driver’s license in 1969? Doesn’t matter. People have feelings about it. Why would the lines on the chart help Adams when they don’t seem to help anyone else?
Oh, I guess the fact that counter-arguments exist means that reasons don’t also exist.
So why would the lines on the chart help Adams when they don’t seem to help anyone else? Is there a “reason”?
“when they don’t seem to help anyone else”?
I’m not sure that they don’t seem to help anyone else.
I’m pretty sure that they have helped people in the past.
Are you asking “why would they help Adams when Kamala Harris didn’t benefit from how awesome everything was under Biden?”
The rule that the lines on the chart argument is good when applied to my candidate and bulls**t when applied to yours is, if nothing else, easy to administer.
Is it easy enough to apply that it constitutes a reason to vote for Adams that is not “name recognition”?
The easiest way not to be wrong is not to say anything. The usual way not to say anything is — not to say anything. Of course, there are ways of not saying anything that don’t actually require silence. As we see.
It’s even easier if you refuse to answer a direct question.
Here is the lesson, you vote for the anti-Trump candidate without an R behind his or her name no matter what. \. This is dependent on location. If you are in an R+1 to R+5 district or state were the moderate mom but anti-Trump candidate has a good chance of winning and defeating the Trumpist candidate, you vote for her. If you are in NYC and the Democratic candidate is a socialist-leaning guy named Zohran Mondami, you vote for him. That is all it is. The rest is commentary. Now go learn it.
Apparently, Mamdani has started deleting his old tweets from five years ago calling for stuff like Defunding the Police.
He hasn’t said anything about it yet, but there’s room for you to feel like deleting those tweets are something he has to do, pragmatically, while being able to believe that he still believes it *AND* giving you room to call people who say stuff like “he only deleted those for cynical reasons!” paranoid.
Wait, wait… he still has it up.
So maybe we can still hope.
I’m still enough of a small ‘r’ republican and decentralist that I like the idea of different political factions having a crack at what they think good governance should look like. Sometimes it could work and we could all take away a few nuggets for other political projects; likewise when those projects fail.
However, as I tell all of my fellow wacky political idea fellow travelers: ‘start with governing one small thing well, then see if your grandiose theories scale.’
NYC is already a thing, you can’t reform NYC in an administration… you’re already creating your fail category.
My question for the people invested in NYC and this potential administration, what is the *one* thing you’d like him to do that maybe moves the needle a small fraction or fixes one thing that needs fixing? Is it the grocery stores? If that’s the case, then just do that… do it well… iterate on all the things that are going to fail and then figure out if we really fixed a problem. And, if grocery stores aren’t really the one thing, pick a better thing. But abandon the vibe governance… NYC has a vibe and it will eat a pretend vibe. Better then to start in a smaller place, govern one small place well and see if that scales.
It’s kind of funny how despite all the argle-bargle about Ranked Choice Voting, the result was “the top two Names in the race got votes that were proportional to their pre-election poll numbers and there was no need to go to a second ballot”.
This Peter Thiel email is going around and it’s pretty insightful:
It’s this part that makes the most sense to me:
But when 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why. And, from the perspective of a broken generational compact, there seems to be a pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, then one will have negative capital for a long time and/or find it very hard to start accumulating capital in the form of real estate; and if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it.
There does seem to be a broken generational compact.
Unless government addresses it, the people will.
Peter Thiel owns Palantir – which thanks to Elon Musk and DOGE now owns all the data the government has on you. He’s also a pro apartheid white South African refugee who thinks he does, in fact know better then you how humans should be governed.
Plenty of other people – even on this esteemed site – have pointed out that the generational compact was and is broken. That Thiel Proposes to “fix” it by dismantling modern American democracy in favor of corporately controlled authoritarianism makes him a pernicious threat, not an insightful guru.
The fact that he’s intelligent enough to look out and say “we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed” makes him a pernicious threat indeed.
He’s a bad person, with a bad company, but he’s right here.
And Mamdani is of course the first step toward resolving these issues: make housing more affordable, make it less expensive to have and care for children, make health care affordable and more readily available, make work pay more and cost less (so transit cheaper, wages higher), etc.
I think where most people (generally, not on this site) is on cops, and he’s not even an abolish type guy. He just wants to make sure they can focus on crime, and not respond to things like mental health crises. Seems like pro-cop people should be all for that sort of thing.
Well, Mamdani has deleted his “defund the police” tweets, so maybe you’re right. We should assume you’re right.
As for him being the first step toward resolving those issues… um… I’m not sure that even more rent control will, in fact, make housing more affordable. I am pretty sure that it won’t.
That said, it *IS* a policy that attempts to address the problem and it *FEELS* like doing something in service to resolving the issue so that puts him ahead of the people who are saying stuff like “we just need to pave central park and put high rise luxury condos there and the extra bedrooms available will provide a release valve for prices via the mechanisms of the invisible hand!”
Anything not to say something nice about a Democrat, huh? I guess we are the real social fascists.
Jane Coaston said something really awesome when she said that politicians should be treated like offensive coordinators.
There’s this perspective out there that seems to think that politicians should, instead, be role model or avatar or something like that and any criticism of a politician is a sneaky way to criticize every person who looks up to this role model or a way to undermine every single person for whom this politician immanatizes the eschaton.
But if you just see the politician as an offensive coordinator, you suddenly stop seeing this as a moral argument and, instead, as one where what matters is the scoreboard.
Oh, your offensive coordinator screwed up? You’re supposed to yell at him. You’re supposed to *SCREAM* at him. You’re supposed to nitpick every single little mistake he makes. Oh, he won a game for once? Don’t let it go to his head. The second he screws up badly enough, you need to send him back down to the minors. NO NOT THOSE ONES, ANTHONY WEINER!!!!
If you see it as about winning versus losing rather than about being sufficiently moral, suddenly you see the people who are demanding that you not criticize the team’s offensive coordinator lest you give away that you aren’t *REALLY* a fan in a different light.
Nice to see them finally recognize that Keeping Old People In Office As Long As Possible was a bad plan. (Regrettable that they recognized it twenty years too late to do anything with it.)
Peter Thiel is a fascist who hates Democracy and he is afraid of death and gets involved in kooky medical trials involving young blood. He is not insightful or trustworthy.
Oh but according to Jay he must be because he can correctly diagnose a social
I’ll!
There are people who put Faust down and say “Well, I simply would not have had a conversation with Mephistopheles.”