Outside Rep. Adriano Espaillat’s primary night party, four men on the sidewalk were dressed in full neon sequins, trying to get the party started. Inside, the bar had barely opened.
Espaillat spent 20 years trying to get to Washington and another 10 years in Congress. He arrived to give his concession speech and left in under 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, the real party was going on about three miles away. That’s where Zohran Mamdani was completing his victory lap of three celebrations with candidates who likely would not have gotten near Congress without his endorsements, just a year after he stunned the political world by beating Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary.
I just want to say, Mamdani is excellent. But I feel like he’s getting a lot of undue credit when the candidates he endorsed are just great people. For example, Brad Lander was a similarly-strong candidate for NYC mayor who was arrested by ICE for attempting to prevent them from detaining someone. When Mamdani won the Primary for Mayor everyone kinda just knew Brad had a future somewhere else.
Mamdani deserves some credit for endorsing good people, and using his brand to boost them, but it seems like the accomplishments of those he endorsed are getting overshadowed in articles and headlines by what seems like an attempt to turn real progressive momentum into “Mamdani’s little club.”
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Mamdani, or even him being the face of the movement. It just seems like there are people in power trying to undermine him and the movement by making him the face of it.
You’ve got it backwards.
People seeing Mamdani as the face of Progressivism is a good thing.
Most people are idiots, and vote for stupid reasons. Donald Trump, born a millionaire, managed to convince people he was ‘anti-establishment.’
You’re going to get a lot more votes with a handsome couple than you will with a million well researched position papers.
Exactly. The goal is to stop the change of politics from a money machine to a force that creates positive change (for the bottom 90%).
They cannot attack the policies, because the US has proven they have billions for useless stuff and never for improving the lives of the citizens who live here. So instead they have to make it seem like the party who is starting this change is using underhanded tactics or is driven by one person. Otherwise they would have to acknowledge that this is what the base wants from their politicians.
No.
Think of it this way. Look at all the GOPs who have swung Far Right after Trump won. Plenty of folks who pooh-poohed him in 2015 are all for him when they saw he was winning elections.
Heck, the GOP has been ‘The Party of Lincoln’ since 1865, no matter what changes they’ve made in actual policy.
A lot of people vote for pretty faces. Many, many more than vote for policy.
Make up your mind.
“You’re going to get a lot more votes with a handsome couple than you will with a million well researched position papers.” That’s the end of my first comment.
“A lot of people vote for pretty faces. Many, many more than vote for policy.” That’s the end of my second comment.
What confused you?
Ah my bad. I though you said, “Many, many more vote for policy.” I missed the ‘than’.
I disagree. We will see who is right as history moves forward. We haven’t had politicians who actually deliver positive life altering changes for a very long time.
Mamdani has proven already that he is using his positional power to change NY for the better. If you want to see the ways he has taken action, drop by his YT page. He has a great PR team that highlights the things he is working on or has done.
I think this is only partially true. Say what you will about Obama, but he did meaningfully improve a huge number of people’s lives just by raising the age restriction for kids on their parents’ insurance plans and a few other programs for the expansion of medical care coverage.
He’s still a shithead who authorized the bombing of hospitals abroad and failed to deliver universal healthcare, but it was nice—even for me—to get just a crumb of progress for the first time at a point in my life where it made the biggest impact.
Same thing with Trump-- I think the stimulus checks were both objectively and subjectively a good thing.
The problem is, we can do so much better than crumbs.
Personally I like Mamdani. I voted for him.
That said, he was incredibly lucky to get elected. Incumbent Mayor Adams got caught in a massive scandal, and Andrew Cuomo was tainted by another scandal.
Even with that, he barely won, with 51% of the vote. Kamala Harris got 65%.