It was perplexing to see many of the same folks haranguing progressives about the need to build a big tent party basically crash out last week over Mamdani. The Ruy Texiera TLP crew especially seemed bereft. A big tent cuts both ways! We need moderates in purple districts and we're going to get progressives in progressive districts.
If someone tries to gotcha a moderate democratic house member or candidate on Mamdani all they have to say is "We Democrats are a big tent party, and while I don't agree with everything Zohran says, he did a great job running a positive campaign that was laser focused on making life better for New Yorkers, and I'm excited to see new leaders emerging in our party."
Many left outlets did react to the election by claiming Mamdani as a mandate for their ideological project across the country, which is obviously flatly wrong. But agreed, then many moderates reacted in an equally childish manner.
Mamdani will definitely fail to enact anything close to his agenda in NYC. That also doesn't mean he'll be a governing disaster. He also very well could be. I want everyone to be a bit more normal about this.
The validation Mamdani gives to people with some of the worst politics and worst ideas is the worst aspect of his win. He makes me wish for an Adams reelection.
The idea, in 2025, that Mamdani is the person representing the "worst politics" requires actively avoiding reading about anything happening in the world.
If what you mean is that Mamdani is not the worst but some powerless people who have more extreme views are, that seems equally indefensible given who is currently in power.
Personally my worry is not that Mamdani is actually going to try and pull a Hugo Chavez or something on NYC - he won't be able to and even if he could, I don't think he's that stupid. Nor do I think he's going to trigger the next Kristallnacht or whatever other outlandish claims people are making.
My main worry is a "let the small stuff fly" approach to crime that degrades quality of life, particularly in the subways. I don't think it's an unreasonable fear, given it's happened with municipal leaders who ran more moderate campaigns than Mamdani. And Mamdani being one of the few candidates who wouldn't even commit to keeping Jessica Tisch on at the NYPD (which even Brad Lander, a solidly progressive candidate, did) didn't inspire confidence here.
That said, it's not inevitable. He seems like a really smart guy, and he may well be capable of learning lessons from even people to the right of him. I wish him the best and hope NYC continues its upward trajectory from the COVID years under him.
I'm also worried about the plan to replace Rikers with borough based jails, though this worry isn't specifically related to Mamdani, because none of the primary candidates - including Cuomo - really addressed it.
Yeah, no shit. Any candidate who generates enthusiasm is going to attract a bunch of narcissistic losers who vicariously live through said candidate's success. Why do you think Obama made Republicans so hopping mad? Because of all the Obama stans that declared ideological victory and leveraged every opportunity to rub it in conservatives' faces. Same dynamic with sports teams, musicians, etc. Whenever something becomes really successful, it gains a lot of super annoying fans.
I'm not so sure about this. The point of the "big tent" strategy, as I understand it, was
1. Dems were struggling with voters further to the right
2. Politically engaged people on the left are basically either (a) maximally mobilized, captive Dem voters or (b) unreasonable communists who can never be satisfied.
So it was a good idea for Dems to signal that they'd extend the tent to the *right*, not that they'd extend it to the *left*. I could see the latter easily causing counter-mobilization on the right.
I'd also note that there are definitely situations where throwing a Dem under the bus can be beneficial for the party as a whole. (Biden!)
What would sell better to swing voters? "Zohran's ideas are half-baked and his dog-whistling support for terrorism against Jews is troubling?" or "Zohran's ideas are going to lower the cost of living, and long live the intifada!" (Of course I'm exaggerating here.)
How will these statements of support look when, inevitably, his policies fail to lower the cost of living?
This is the "cuts both ways" part. Yes the party needs to allow for more right wing candidates to run in more right wing places. But you should check out the meltdown the TLP crew (especially John Halpin) was having late last week. The TLP crew and similar (Slow Boring too) has consistently said that progressives need to chill out on litmus tests and let the center to right edge of the party do its thing. Crashing out over a progressive winning a primary in New York is low-key bad faith on that effort.
As far as the choice you've given why do the Republican framing work for them? Both those messages suck. You can do a little bus throwing ("yeah globalize the infirada but the Trump movement is full of Nazis so let's not pretend who the bad guys are here") but just move past it.
I think it's good to acknowledge that Mamdani ran a campaign that was effective and should be studied by national Dems not for policy but for campaigning itself. He did well! He's charismatic! He broke through and could build a narrative! Not bad for a party getting whupped in the attention wars.
We'll see. I have a lot of Chicago ties and Brandon Johnson ran a good campaign, but has been a disaster in office.
Running with bad ideas is bad, and his rent control ideas are bad. Maybe he won't do them, but as the poli sci literature and Trump 2.0 would tell you politicians generally try to fulfill campaign policy promises.
This is exactly right. I am also seeing the same dynamic with the Mamdani campaign as I saw with Johnson's: a relatively unknown quantity that people project their aspirations onto. Matt even does a bit of this in his article.
Brandon Johnson ran a terrible campaign. Literally every time he spoke raised concerns over his preparedness and understanding of the issues. While campaigning he had several outstanding parking tickets and utility bills that called into question whether he could manage his own life much less a large city. He won purely because the field of candidates was terrible and the left-wing obstinately refused to vote for "basically Republican" Paul Vallas. No fewer than 5 candidates running in the NYC mayoral race could have beaten Johnson in a head-to-head.
>Running with bad ideas is bad, and his rent control ideas are bad.<
I hate rent-control* but I'm not so sure it's always bad to >run< with a bad idea or two, especially if those bad ideas won't be too destructive if implemented. AIUI Madmani is vowing only to extend the duration of current, controlled rents ("rent freeze") on already controlled units. Bill de Blasio did this three times during his two terms. Seems kinda dog bites man given that this is New York City we're talking about, but the media is making it into a the second coming of the October Revolution.
*Well, except for that time I personally scored a rent-controlled unit in Coolidge Corner, Brookline. TBH even back then I thought rent control was an atrociously bad policy, but I wasn't about to say no to the subsidy. I freaking loved that apartment!
The problem is that rent stabilized units haven't increased rents in real money since Bloomberg, and now we're at the point where income from rents isn't covering needed repairs.
I'm amused to see the quasi-property situation of US rent control. When we had it in the UK (in the 1970s), we had Rent Boards that set the rents across a whole city. This did remove a whole bunch of the bad incentives around US rent control (ie new tenants paid the same rent as old ones).
The problem that arose was that there was no market price at all for rented property, which gave the Rent Boards little to anchor around. They could look at the cost of maintaining the properties (and they had access to data from the then-large city-run housing systems so they could get accurate data on the actual costs), but they did not do a good job of considering the price of the properties and a suitable ROI - resulting in a situation where rent income less maintenance costs often did not cover the mortgage interest, much less any capital repayment.
The result was that the vast majority of rental landlords were "accidental" landlords - people who had for various reasons* ended up with two properties that were bought with the intention of owner-occupation and decided to rent one out and live in the other rather than selling one, perhaps with the plan to hand-off the rented property to a child when that child reaches adulthood.
*Usually either inheritance or multiple households consolidating into one, either through marriage or through an elderly parent moving in with their now-adult children.
My sister had a boss who had a rent controlled apartment somewhere like Central Park West that got locked in to 1970s rates for a while that was later converted into a home office. She was paying less in rent for the entire place than I was for one bedroom in a three bedroom apartment in a cheaper city.
I think I agree with most of this, but probably where we differ is that I think Matt/TLP/etc. may have made a mistake in terminology when asking for a “big tent.” It was probably more straightforward to just ask Dems to be more welcoming to people who are in the center. One of the most convincing ways to signal moderation (something Dems struggle with mightily) is to throw left-wingers in the party under the bus.
And I completely agree about learning from Zohran’s campaign. I think this is one of Matt’s biggest blind spots: here the charismatic candidate won rather than the one with the policy positions closest to the NYC median voter. Matt’s usual advice would have been useless in winning NYC’s primary.
I've seen a lot of people say "we need to study Mamdani's campaign" for the reasons you mentioned, and... I dunno, can you really teach charisma? I think the lesson here isn't "be more creative and clever in your campaign" because that requires underlying creativity and cleverness. I think the lesson is about recruiting those kinds of people to run in the first place. (Bonus points if they're good-looking, I guess?)
The basic point about a big tent is that 40%-50% of voters are Republicans while less than 2% are some kind of Stein or other far left voter, while you should reach out to both, reaching out to moderate voters is much more valuable.
They are twice as valuable: Bringing in a disaffected, non-voting leftist increases the margin of victory (or decreases the margin of loss) by 1 vote. Converting a moderate Republican to the tent counts as 2 votes. One for us and one less for them.
Mamdani won by bringing in young voters. It's hard to bring in young voters, but he did it. If other Democrats can expand the big tent by getting young voters to the polls, that's going to be a lot more than 2%.
He won young voters in a Democratic primary in NYC when his opponent was old and disgraced, I don't think we can generalise it to the November election, to say nothing about how well his brand of campaigning might work in purple states.
It's not that he WON young voters. It's that he brought out young voters who typically don't vote at the rates they voted. The youngest voters had the highest turnout, which is astonishing.
On edit: Turns out the New York Times made a mistake. The highest turnout was 30-34 year olds. Young voters had a high turnout though.
Well, Mamdani is ALREADY being tar and feathered by those further to the left than he is. Politicians should stay in their lanes. Israel / Gaza is a perfect example. The mayor of New York or any other city should not be making Israel a campaign issue because the mayor of any city has basically no ability, authority or power to change anything about it. Whatever his views are (which are not mine) are irrelevant, but so many on the far left and the far right want absolute purity in their candidates that you push everyone else out.
Yes. This drives me bananas. At candidate forums for city council, candidates are asked questions on all sorts of issues that they have absolutely no power over. And the candidates answer, wasting more time. I would love to start giving an answer like yours above - the city council has no control over this, next question - so we could get to things that I really want to know.
This is a great point and I would argue that the dynamic is even more pernicious: leaving the impression that any particular element government has control/oversight over something actually outside its purview promotes misunderstanding of what government actually does/can do and cynicism about what it doesn’t.
I see this regularly at “scoping meetings” for environmental reviews (yes I know that reform is desperately needed). People can come to a public forum and speak for a few minutes about basically anything. There’s no response by the project sponsor, just “thank you for sharing your views.” People get pissed off because they think they’re being ignored, and the lack of clarity about the actual process underway lets them think that their testimony matters when it very rarely does. I saw the same phenomenon at public meetings of the NYC Department of City Planning when I worked there.
IMO “public input” for land use decisions should be dramatically reduced, but in the absence of that, I think it would be better to be candid about what’s actually happening.
The public gets input when we elect representatives. Beyond that, there should be no further "public input" solicited for, well, anything.
The representatives are elected to exercise their judgement on our behalf. It is a sign of cowardice to continually go back to the voters to seek input. Just do the job and see what we think the next time elections are held.
That is interesting. At our School Board, members do not respond to public comment in the moment (meetings would go on even longer than they do and would get even more heated than they do), but the public comment definitely does matter and is taken into account when the School Board makes final decisions. But public comment on any particular issue is at one meeting, and the vote isn't until at least the following meeting.
If a mayoral candidate was against women's suffrage or in favor of reinstating slavery, should we note that a mayor has no ability to repeal constitutional amendments and dismiss further discussion as irrelevant?
Thanks, How I wish every camdidate would answer questions outside the scope of their job with "that issue is outside the scope of my job, next question."
It's bizarre to see people having such a hard time with endorsements: "Mamdani campaigned on the high cost of living in the Trump economy and I look forward to him making life better for working class New Yorkers."
Though I get the Big Tent point, I also understand why politicians from New York frickin’s City would be hesitant to endorse someone who says “Globalize the Intifada”
Yeah, that's the other part of the endorsement that centrists should give: "Before becoming mayor, Mandami said some things about public safety I disagree with, but as mayor, Mamdani will of course provide a safe city for all New Yorkers: Jews, Muslims, Christians, and others."
Furthermore, if a Democratic Socialist fails in the most visible mayoralty in the country, this will help moderates win factional fights.
The left really does have a serious “our policies have never really been tried” argument. Neither the Affordable Care Act nor the Inflation Reduction Act were left wing. The CARES Act was significantly to the left of the Great Society, but that point is lost because Trump was president.
Indeed, without trillions of debt funded socialism, Trump would have finished his first term fatally unpopular.
And never will, nothing that tries and has flaws or compromises will be acknowledged as true socialism by users of that phrase. The sewer socialists were too pragmatic, the USSR's dictatorship was actually right-wing, etc.
Thought about this in the shower and decided that I strongly agree with it. I came up with the phrase 'everyone wants to be a big tent party, until it's time to do big tent party things'. YMMV on my dorky phraseology
i simply don't wish to be in the same party, or even in a voting coalition, with a socialist or with someone who is supportive of antisemites and violent terrorists.
Is saying that Globalize the Intifada reflects, "a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights," not lending rhetorical support to antisemites? Maybe you don't think it is. Here's a hypothetical, What would you think if he had said that the phrase, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children," is simply an expression of fear about economic instability and a desperate desire for people to feel like their families aren't being left out of society. Would that represent support for antisemitism?
How is it antisemitic to wish for equal rights for Palestinians? It’s perhaps anti-Zionist (if one supports a one state solution where Jews and non-Jews have equal rights) but it’s not antisemitic in any meaningful sense of the word. The constant conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism is intellectually dishonest and corrosive to the debate. I think it also hurts the fight against actual antisemitism.
Personally, I’m okay with Zionism in the sense that I understand why Jews, for both historical and contemporary reasons, want a state of their own where they make up the large majority. Normally I would find that type of ethnonationalism problematic but Jews are a reasonable exception due to how much discrimination and violence they have faced and still face in some places. I’m highly critical of their ongoing intentional genocide (an oxymoron I guess) in Gaza, as any person without blinders should be, as well as in the West Bank. That doesn’t make me an antisemite.
The phrase "Globalize the Intifada" entered the lexicon during the second Intifada, a specific event characterized by suicide bombings of Israeli civilians, a strategy of terrorism adopted in an effort to drive Jewish people out of Israel. To call for Globalizing the Intifada is to call for engaging in targeted, terroristic acts against Jews outside of Israel. I don't know what else you could call that but antisemitic. I am sure some people are unaware of the origin of this phrase, just as I'm sure there are people who are unaware of the fact that the 14 words are associated with the Neo-Nazi David Lane, but that's all the more reason to forcefully say it's an evil thing to say and explain why, rather than pussyfoot around the subject.
I feel like not holding people accountable for adopting a position on phraseology that needs an explainer about its origin and interpretation--which per Joachim's link appears to be the subject of some dispute (albeit unambiguously identified with Palestinian resistance)--seems like a better equilibrium than insisting that politicians adopt a position on a speech issue they're unfamiliar with due to its political implications and then accusing them of dog-whistling when they demur. Mamdani was 9 years old when the Second Intifada began (and, similarly, it's not like David Lane is a household name).
If you want to know if Mamdani endorses violence against Jews, you could (and, I would argue, should) ask him "do you endorse violence against Jews? What are your policies regarding the Jewish community" rather than trying to infer what gloss he puts on a particular slogan.
Apparently it is controversial what this expression means and Mamdani has been explicit about what he meant which is not connected to antisemitism. Stupid and unnecessary? Sure. Antisemitic? Nope.
As for your second example: How is it similar to argue for Palestinian rights to some form of self-government, whether in Israel or in a state of their own (I prefer this latter two state solution), and to argue for preserving the white race?
there is quite a bit of evidence - including things he said and tweeted in the not so distant past and his past and current associations with people and organizations that have even more openly supported such positions.
A big tent doesn't cut both ways. Electing progressives in progressive districts doesn't help expand the tent at all. Electing extremists makes it harder to have a big-tent strategy, because centrist voters see the worst excesses of each side and are influenced by it.
The big tent strategy is all about accepting different varieties of less-extreme political views. You accept people who are generally Democrats but have the Republican point of view on a few issues. This makes it easier to win elections.
TLP is garbage and has been for a while. It's analogous to FDB: writes the same article over and over with slightly different seasoning, unwilling to examine their own flaws and has a comment section infested by the same Free Press level MAGA boomers. I used to read it but noticed a marked slide in the quality, culminating in them publishing an article defending NIMBYs (seems to have been scrubbed) which made me unsubscribe.
Cuomo would've been (and I guess still is) a terrible choice for mayor, and not just because he's a sex pest. As governor, he repeatedly clashed with NYC over stupid bs, that harmed the city. He was a massive NIMBY. He pushed Andy Buford out of the MTA. He even went against congestion pricing during the campaign, an enormously successful policy that I think has done even better than its proponents said it would. Say you what you will about Mamdani, but Cuomo does, and would, represent everything that's wrong with non-progressive Democrats.
"But Cuomo didn’t want to do many events because he thought he’d be interrupted by protesters and hounded by reporters. He avoided interviews because he thought he’d just get asked about the scandals that chased him from the governor’s office. He regularly canceled plans for both at the last minute.
When Cuomo released a housing plan determined to have been written partly by AI, or when his campaign’s mistakes led to problems with matching funds from the city campaign finance board, the coverage was vicious.
He would not apologize for Covid-19 nursing home deaths or the accusations that he harassed women while governor."
Like in a nutshell why Cuomo absolutely deserved to lose this primary. It may turn out that Mamdani is a bad mayor; maybe he'll actually follow through with draconian "rent freezes" that will badly damage the NYC rental market. Maybe his "abundance" turn is a fake one that is more Dean Preston variety; is for more housing only if it meets 100 different criteria that are literally impossible to meet all at once.
But Cuomo, as far as I can tell, wanted to be mayor out pure spite and "don't you know who I am?". It's honestly Trumpian in the worse possible way.
Matt, I'll also say, that Cuomo losing is actually a good thing for your (correct) take that Democrats need to run more moderates if they have any hope of taking the senate the next 8 years. I really think you underestimate how often recently run moderates is "let's run retreads that voters have already rejected or retreads who deservedly resigned in disgrace" under the mistaken MAGA formula Moderate = guy you're familiar from the past.
Not just voters rejected Cuomo - moderate Dems did it themselves! They pushed him out of office for sexual harassment four years ago. Ezra Klein said some Dem official told him Cuomo was a psychopath then endorsed him two days later.
It's like these people want to lose. Just incomprehensible decision-making.
Can add the New York Times editorial section...which is more unforgivable to me since it's not like David Leonhardt has the excuse of crass machine politics reasons for supporting a terrible candidate, even tepidly.
To maybe add to my diatribe or clarify, I think Matt would do well to have a Slow Boring post that's basically "my take that we need more moderates running doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to candidate quality or not pay attention to the need for new blood".
I really think Matt is underestimating how much "nominate moderates" in real life is just "establishment closing ranks to protect a 'good ole boy'".
The stupidest thing about the whole kerfluffle is that it was a *ranked choice primary.* The messaging as between Mamdani and Cuomo should have just been "put this guy fifth and don't rank the other. But *actually* you should vote for Scott Stringer." There was no need to treat this is as a two-horse race and it became one anyway.
The moderate faction of the New York party (both city and state) just seems stuck in a perpetual cycle of self-own. It's probably the worst state party we have in the country for the Democrats. You have the biggest city in the country and the fourth-biggest state in the country to draw candidates from. You have everything from business leaders, union organizers, doctors, professors, NGO heads, reporters, and bureaucrats to draw candidates from. Nobody made them rally around Cuomo over literally every other eligible person in New York.
Good thing NYC has a third option compared to Cuomo and Mamdani. Right now there is an actual sewer socialist who is putting trash into containers, which I am told is a hot new policy idea among New Yorkers.
What does it say that the media has been obsessed with Mamdani and his primary victory and what it portends about the future of the Democratic Party when right across the river Mikie Sherrill scored an impressive win over plenty of more left wing candidates in a state that is FAR more representative of the places that Democrats need to win and I don’t see any think pieces about her and what her victory means?
Sherrill won with way less than a majority, is a generic Democrat, has no interesting policy agenda or controversy, and is going to be Governor of New Jersey.
It should be noted that Sherill has had a hefty lead against a divided field for a long time. A complete unknown, like Mamdani coming out of nowhere and crushing the former governor in the mayoral race is just way more dramatic.
The biggest risk, from my perspective, is that he governs with Very Online Algorithm Brain. By that I mean he reacts not to the real issues in New York faced by real people but rather algorithm promoted click bait.
Think in terms of Freddie - very little reference to things that are happening to a statistically significant degree in the real world but a huge focus on whatever is happening online.
Unfortunately, after listening to the Plain English interview I’m incredibly bearish about how effective Zohran would be as Mayor. I thought the most telling part of the interview was the discussion of Zohran’s city-owned grocery store proposal, which occurred shortly after a discussion of Chicago failing at building affordable housing for a reasonable cost. Derrick attributed this failure in part to Chicago using a myriad of criteria for awarding projects other than how much the developer will be able to manage costs (one example is how diverse the developer’s management team is). The grocery store discussion came shortly after this, and Zohran was critical of an existing city grocery program, partially on the basis of the current participants of this program not collectively bargaining with their employees.
This begs the same question that the Chicago example does - is the purpose of these government initiatives, whether it is creating affordable housing or access to affordable/healthy food, to actually solve those issues, or is it to address progressives’ other many pet issues (DEI, pro-union matters, etc)? I fear that despite his stated desire to make government effective, he will not check the progressive impulses to weigh these programs down with other interests.
I think the supporters think it can be all those things, because once you eliminate all of the wasteful profit, there's so much left over than every dream can come true.
The concept that they have single digit profit margins to work with, assuming that they're every bit as efficient as the private sector, is beyond them. These are not math people.
Two observations. I saw the same wish-casting that Matt mentioned, of how his mayoralty will be smarter than his platform. Thats a bet with lot of downside risk. The second is that there is a larger upside in a Socialist star that isn't Bernie Sanders. They note how much more inclusive, pluralist, and less grievance filled Mamdani is than much of the left. Even going on the Bulwark or Odd lots and listening to critiques of his policy is a lot more than Bernie would have done and I respect that.
He seems to be clear about only promising things he can actually do. (He actually said this on "subway takes" when the host asked him to promise to lower the price of a latte.)
He's also named Zohran Mamdani. Like, you know who didn't make dumb mistakes? Barack Hussein Obama. This is why people freaked out about the tan suit, he was careful and hard to pin anything real on.
Zohran Mamdani seems very cognizant of being on thin ice. I don't see him wanting to win the New York mayorship just to get a plum speaking position on "Pod Save America."
I’m cautiously optimistic but the free buses give me pause. The sewer socialists were successful because they cared about the details of an issue (sewers) and ensured that their solution worked well. Saying “let’s make the buses free” shows someone who has not engaged deeply in the issue and the fact that almost every survey we have seen of bus riders shows that they would prefer improved service over lower fares. It shows someone who didn’t do their homework (or did and just doesn’t care).
But I am willing to give a pass on this until he gets in office.
Ok, this is my example. In the Philippines, there is a program called the "4P" program (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program). It's a program designed to incentivize poor families to get health checks and keep their kids in school.
Basically, if you are poor and your kids stay in school and go to the doctor, you get some money from the federal government every 2 months. It covers 4 million people.
When Duterte came in 2016, he promised that everyone in this program would get 20 kilos of rice, in addition to the money, every 2 months.
Now, this was actually a horrible idea. Rice in the Philippines is under price controls and has to be imported and sold at special rates and the agency that controls the rice has limited capacity anyway. Distributing funds to the eligible families is easy, it is just one guy with a backpack full of essentially debit cards. He can give out 400 of those in a day and the money then goes automatically via bank transfer. However, imagine doing the same with 400 x 20 kg rice bags. That's 8 tons of rice that has to be procured and distributed individually via drivers and trucks.
Anyway, in 2017, there was an analysis done with National University of Singapore and it made recommendations to the Philippines government on how to actually implement Duterte's rice pledge. What they said was, "Giving rice as a transfer in kind is way too costly and kind of impossible." What the Philippines government did instead was that it upped the bimonthly stipend and urged the families very strongly to use the increased funding to buy rice.
So when I hear the "Free buses"... it's a bad idea, but I am willing to wait and see if he decides to talk to.... literally anyone who works in transit professionally... and they will tell him it's a bad idea. You can do things that achieve the similar ends that are far less destructive like sending prepaid transit passes for certain categories of riders.
The problem is what policies I see- state run grocery stores and free buses- are pretty bad policies. The thing is, as Matt says, policy matters a lot less than personnel in running New York. I don’t know how his personnel are gonna make progress on the biggest problems for his constituency though.
The biggest problem is that his biggest constituency- college educated people who can’t afford housing- probably in equilibrium cannot earn returns on their skills that provide housing, healthcare, and the education they want for their kids where they want to live. I don’t think your modal middle class person with a union job and healthcare who didn’t go to college and is fine sending their kids to CUNYs has this problem? I dunno.
I've read a bunch of things about the grocery stores that suggest it might be pretty sensible: at the moment NYC pays chain groceries subsidies to run grocery stores in "food deserts". If you take it as a given that they're going to be paying subsidies, then running loss-making groceries themselves is not necessarily going to be more inefficient (businesses that depend on subsidies tend to be run to maximise the subsidy, not to maximise business efficiency).
I think this makes the case there much more marginal.
Free buses are a stupid idea. The thing he should be doing is having a multi-modal hopper ticket, so you buy a ticket, whether for bus or subway and it covers one journey by any combination of the two, so you can ride a bus to the nearest subway stop - meaning that you don't need a super-dense subway grid as passengers will be OK to ride the bus to the subway.
On your second para: a majority of young adults did go to college: the modal person went to college. But yes, the modal New Yorker went to CUNY, and the costs there aren't outrageous like Columbia.
EDITED TO ADD: The best argument for free buses is that the majority of riders transfer to the subway, where they'd have to pay anyway, which is why the Staten Island Ferry is free. This is still a bad argument.
Best case scenario on the grocery store thing is Singapore’s trade union stores. But I don’t know if they make money. If you’re comfortable losing a shit ton of money forever so that you maintain availability and affordability (and maybe induce demand for some things), a state run grocery store in the US might make sense. The problem is what it does to extant grocery stores and selection. It doesn’t have to drive other grocers out of business- that didn’t happen in Singapore.
Bad and misguided seem like different things to me. What is the worst outcome to a few City owned grocery stores? The assumption is these things are going where currently there is insufficient profit for a typical grocery chain to justify their own operations.
These will not drive Whole Foods out of Manhattan or ShopRite out of Queens.
I don't know if they are the best solution to the problem they're supposed to address, but I don't we'll find Soviet bread lines at the end of the experiment.
A lot of the wishcasting seems to be based on that he went to the right schools and comes from the right background, but you look closer and what exactly is preventing him from being the next Brandon Johnson? It's an awfully thin resume.
If I had to steelman a case for Mamdani being better than Johnson, I'd note that Johnson was entirely a creature of the teacher's union, and as such followed a policy of giving that one narrow constituency everything while letting everything else go to rot.
Mamdani doesn't have a single comparable base, so even if his inclinations are to be as corrupt and ideological as Johnson, he would need to balance the interests of different groups to some extent.
(I guess "Brooklyn DSA types" are the closest analogue, so perhaps Mamdani's top priority will be paying off student debt from MFA programs)
Well, if Mamdani actually WANTS to be an effective Mayor, the DOGE stuff probably gives him a huge advantage in recruiting really top notch people who do understand how government works if he wants to. Yes, City, state and federal government are different, but a City the size of NY is so massive, and the plumbing of procurement, government fiscal management, grants, has enough common threads that smart sewer socialists leaving the right federal roles would actually have useful skills for building things that work in NYC.
He had a great campaign but so many of his central issues are either beyond his power to implement or policies that are likely to be insignificant or actually harmful.
I'm totally on board with his focus on affordability: that's been the biggest issue for decades and it's ultimately the fault of the voters that their imaginations are captured by rent freezes (that may take housing off the market) and free buses (that reduce transit revenue).
Good salesmen know that everyone wants "one simple trick" to solve their problems instead of the shelves of incremental improvements offered by the likes of Kamala and Hillary, but policy wonks are going to have to figure out this problem too.
Does anyone remotely believe he can make the slightest dent in affordability in NYC? Seems to me like he's benefitting from a novelty effect where, by virtue of being new, young, and ideologically heterodox, everyone is imputing an ability to address problems he both can't and won't even if he could.
I think most of the people here believe he could make housing more affordable by sharply increasing the supply though most of us are probably skeptical that is likely to happen.
So lets add a further dose of realism to this discussion: City of Yes took four years for Adams to do and hasn’t made the slightest dent in housing costs - because building housing takes a long time! Mamdani best case could be the long awaited NY YIMBY messiah (12th imam?) - and it won’t matter because the housing inventory will only materialize half a decade later at least.
I think EVEN IF you take the best case version of him and his platform as a given, he’s writing a lot of checks he can’t cash in 4 years.
Oh please, we're going to polarize ourselves into biasing towards candidates with "diverse" names? In real life, spending 10 minutes in corporate America introduces you to more Abhis and Jianyus than Andrews. And in real life, the candidate named Zohran Mamdani is promising to turn NYC rent stabilization into a bigger dumpster fire than it is, and to create government-run grocery stores for the sole purpose of having yet more public union employees in NYC.
The most practically effective socialist in American history might be Donald J. Trump, who, between the CARES Act and subsequent relief bills, presided over over $5 trillion in emergency fiscal transfers — nearly a quarter of U.S. GDP. This included $1,200 and $600 stimulus checks, massive unemployment expansions, and over $800 billion in forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans. In 2020 alone, poverty fell by nearly 3 points, the largest single-year drop on record, with child poverty cut almost in half. It was the most aggressive anti-poverty program in American history — and it happened under a Republican president.
And it wasn’t just transfers: the pandemic shock and labor shortages helped compress wages. From 2019 to 2021, real wages grew faster for the bottom quartile than the top. For many downscale Republicans and independents, it was the first time in decades they felt like the system might be working for them.
Instead of consistently helping working stiffs, he tried to kill the ACA. Imagine if he'd embraced it, slapped his name on it, and expanded coverage slightly. He might be genuinely popular by now.
The tragedy of Trumpism is that it stumbled into effective policy and only dimly realized it.
It's really amazing to think more so than basically any previous president in modern times, the best move Trump could have made is to literally do nothing.
As has been noted many times now, the GOP is basically a cult at this point. There was no need to push this draconian BBB that nobody likes except for a handful of GOP donors (it's really astonishing how little support there is for this bill even within the GOP). Like if he said "no tax cuts for the rich" the senate at least probably would have been fine with it.
No insane tariffs, no BBB and the 10-year is probably below 4% and the Fed would have probably cut interests rates again. Investment would have taken off and Trump could have ridden the wave to adulation next summer hanging out with world leaders at next years Olympics and maybe most importantly the World Cup.
I honestly think the latter taking place next summer in the US (mostly) is a bigger deal than we realize even for those of you who could care less about sports let alone soccer. The US is literally doing everything possible to be as unwelcoming to foreign visitors as possible. There is literally nothing in the world that will capture the world's attention more than this. Is the administration really going to try to prevent the Iran team from playing if they qualify? Are they going to arrest attendees coming out of matches? Like I think there is a real possibility of this stuff happening.
Why did Trump indulge the politics of joylessness rather than go on a blue ribbon cutting tour and take credit for things improving is nuts.
I think at the core of Trumpism is a vindictive malice that demands satiation. A desire to cause harm to others as a means of validation. It is joyless.
I'm not sure Trump has ever had fun or taken joy in anything that was not directly at someone else's expense. Everything in his life is dedicated to proving to himself and everyone that he is not a loser, which means he needs to make someone else the loser.
Yeah I think his base hates that people they hate did really well under Trump 1.0, and it’s more important that those people suffer than that his base prospers.
The vindictive malice could be expressed more cleanly. There are some entitled, unproductive bureaucrats. Take the time to find bad actors rather than DOGEing entire agencies.
There are some intolerant universities. Wait until a moderate speaker is deplatformed and cut grants proportionally rather than issuing ultimata.
Ban gender dysphoric men from women’s sports, show sympathy to detransitioners the woke have betrayed, and then call out conservatives who are backsliding on gay marriage.
America at 250 is vast and beautiful and insanely prosperous and Trump really could just do the Eisenhower thing and let the economy hum.
You caught me being a bad determinist. Trump is incapable of inactivity the cuts against his urges. However, a normal, effective politician in his position really would play Eisenhower. I sort of thought Trump ran mainly to avoid prison and would chill out and enjoy being exalted at sporting events and galas.
And even some of the things he DID do that were a net positive for many voters, he's disavowed, disparaged, or pretended he didn't even do, in some cases, because he either didn't want to own any of the downside of those efforts (the inflation that followed wage growth and stimulus), or because some segment of his base turned on that particular issue (like the COVID vaccine). He could have remade the Republican party into a pro-growth party that embraced a lot of moderate and conservative goals, and in the process maybe upended our present moribund left vs right stalemate. It's not just that he stumbled into effective policy and didn't understand the implications; he and most of his supporters seemed to jerk away from it like they touched a hot stove.
It’s nice to see the Matt Y “abundance” faction giving into the reality that yes, a populist message is going to win, and they’d be better off working behind the scenes positively to help those candidates succeed — rather than treating this as an adversarial engagement where everyone loses. Hoping that trend continues.
As Matt likes to say, politics is complicated and multi-faceted. It’s a combination of coalition building, candidate selection, policy generation AND policy adaptation and fine-tuning. You cannot possibly start a blog named for the famous Max Weber quote and then pull back to “well, it’s just a policy debate.” It isn’t. There are consequences to picking overt policy fights and supporting loser candidates, even when you’re sure you’re right on the policy merits.
I'd be much happier seeing Democrats come to terms with shared end goals, rather than beating the crap out of each other over how to accomplish them or how to phrase them. Mamdani might have some flakey ideas, but if he sincerely wants to make it easier for families to live in the city, or create more abundant housing, or generally remove some public service-created friction from the everyday lives of citizens, those are shared goals moderates should be able to work with him (or any other progressive) on accomplishing. (And I don't know if those shared goals exist, mind you; I don't live in New York). Republicans pull themselves together, regardless of their differences, to accomplish what are often kind of horrible things.
Exactly. To read the “centrist” substacks this past three months, you’d think centrists were at war with the left instead of MAGA. It’s been somewhere between embarrassing and shameful.
What does that mean in the context of NYC, though? If Matt hadn't tried to push for better candidates (RIP Myrie), how would things have been different?
I agree that it's important to not overindex on the far left being bad in a national context. If somehow 2028 is like AOC vs. Vance, it would be important to back her regardless. But I am nearly certain that Matt would do this already (he endorsed Bernie in 2020!).
The Democratic Party has had an enthusiasm gap and a young voter problem. They need smart, charismatic candidates who can convince broad electorates that they’re interested in change. To the extent that your political judgement tells you “I would have ranked Cuomo”, you’re failing a simple exam *in a political environment that a liberal commentator should understand well*, so how can we believe you’ve got the formula to win elections nationwide?
I mean half of popularism is explicitly about doing this, most prominently on immigration; see Matt’s disagreement with David Leonhardt’s recent arguments about immigration.
I mean, you and I don’t have to, but there are all sorts of reasons for someone actually involved in politics to lie about this. Otherwise it’s weird that it’s been happening for centuries!
I'm confused by this comment. Is the subtext, "MY should expect that positions taken by socialists are just populist chum, and we shouldn't expect them to actually govern on any of that"?
There is no subtext whatsoever. I’m saying: future elections will go better for democrats if they support popular (and populist) figures and then find a way to influence their policies in positive directions behind the scenes. The best case alternative is that centrists substantively lose the policy debate, and the worst case is that the stupid fights between left and center cause us all to substantively lose the country.
The is a very populist, sensible center left message that resonate with plenty of voters if you give up the very unpopular social issues and belief that government exists to give your political supporters good jobs.
I worked at the Wisconsin Historical Society for several years, and the Victor Berger Papers was one of our most popular collections with researchers, so I especially appreciate the intro to this column. Even now, years later, I do a double-take when I see a Sherwin-Williams Paint logo - a can with SWP on the label and red paint pouring out of it that says "cover the world" - thinking for a minute that it means Socialist Workers Party.
What probablities would commenters give of him being a sewer socialist, a total sellout (a good thing in my view), a successful far left mayor or an embarrassing failure?
Hard to define for formal betting, but I would say there is probably a 50% chance of embarrassing failure, with another 25% chance he governs exactly like Cuomo and abandons all of his (largely terrible) principles.
Oh, now I need to read up on Wu. I am a native Bostonian, but haven't lived there in years. Almost everyone I know loves Wu, and I have never bothered to delve further into why. Well, beyond her making cameo appearances with the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops. Which is kind of funny, since the people I know don't often go to the concerts, but they love the idea that their mayor can play that well.
Boston is safe and has gotten safer, she's prioritized bike lanes and some transit improvements, but bigger changes would require more from the state which hasn't happened, or allowing more housing which she hasn't done that much.
I agree, although I think that would mostly be some combination of the options I listed plus the way a mayor is different than a back bench congresswoman.
It's impossible to define unless there are like, objective criteria that separate these categories.
The most likely scenario is he has a deBlasio-style tenure, with some wins and losses that different people will call a disaster, a huge success, or one that was sabotaged by outside forces.
I suspect the secret third thing is he just gets into fights with institutions (NYPD) and political actors that DSA socialists don't like, and otherwise is heavily stalled in moving taxing or spending all that much from the status quo. Maybe he runs a few public grocery stores as a small trial at high losses to divide budget analysts (this isn't solving anything) and middle class voters (cheaper groceries!) A downgrade over Eric Adams, but one that holds on for a while. He can be the Biden of NYC, in other words.
I think this is the safe bet. All you have to do is try to imagine ‘How exactly would mayor Mamdani handle the Columbia protests?’
Beyond bickering with local institutions, it feels safe to predict that a defiant young Muslim mayor of NYC will turn into one of Donald Trump's favorite toys to knock around. That might even help Mamdani's approval ratings for a while, but it will not be great for residents of NYC.
I think this example illustrates that an inherent predispositional advantage of the left is a tendency to genuinely care about public sector delivery (by which I mean, that while La Guardia was quite right to say "There is no Republican or Democratic way to pick up the garbage", it's not equally likely that politicians of both parties will care to get it done).
I’m not entirely sure I agree with the latter point. My sense is that if you have a Republican/Libertarian mindset you likely think that the government shouldn’t be in the business of providing various services (and those you would be inclined to let atrophy / “starve the beast” in a way that has some perverse political feedback loops, where discretionarily poorly-implemented programs create voter skepticism about the program itself), but for the things you think the government actually should be doing (and I’m not aware that R mayors are particularly against municipal trash pickup) there doesn’t seem to be a clear reason to expect there to be a commitment to bad implementation (cf. R favor of defense spending).
How much will Mandami be beholden to the city unions? Like, if the sanitry workers union wanted to get rid of garbage containerization, would Mandami do it? Would he take out a loan with horrible terms to pay city employees (like Brandon Johnson)?
Re your second point— he literally can’t. (FWIW, I don’t actually think he would either, but NYC can only expand its debt within limits set by Albany.)
It was perplexing to see many of the same folks haranguing progressives about the need to build a big tent party basically crash out last week over Mamdani. The Ruy Texiera TLP crew especially seemed bereft. A big tent cuts both ways! We need moderates in purple districts and we're going to get progressives in progressive districts.
If someone tries to gotcha a moderate democratic house member or candidate on Mamdani all they have to say is "We Democrats are a big tent party, and while I don't agree with everything Zohran says, he did a great job running a positive campaign that was laser focused on making life better for New Yorkers, and I'm excited to see new leaders emerging in our party."
There! Easy!
Many left outlets did react to the election by claiming Mamdani as a mandate for their ideological project across the country, which is obviously flatly wrong. But agreed, then many moderates reacted in an equally childish manner.
Mamdani will definitely fail to enact anything close to his agenda in NYC. That also doesn't mean he'll be a governing disaster. He also very well could be. I want everyone to be a bit more normal about this.
The validation Mamdani gives to people with some of the worst politics and worst ideas is the worst aspect of his win. He makes me wish for an Adams reelection.
These people are the left wing equivalent of right wingers who shout "RINO!" whenever a rep deviates from Trump.
The idea, in 2025, that Mamdani is the person representing the "worst politics" requires actively avoiding reading about anything happening in the world.
Lying about what was actually written is an example of the linguistic nihilism those with the "worst politics" love to abuse.
If what you mean is that Mamdani is not the worst but some powerless people who have more extreme views are, that seems equally indefensible given who is currently in power.
Personally my worry is not that Mamdani is actually going to try and pull a Hugo Chavez or something on NYC - he won't be able to and even if he could, I don't think he's that stupid. Nor do I think he's going to trigger the next Kristallnacht or whatever other outlandish claims people are making.
My main worry is a "let the small stuff fly" approach to crime that degrades quality of life, particularly in the subways. I don't think it's an unreasonable fear, given it's happened with municipal leaders who ran more moderate campaigns than Mamdani. And Mamdani being one of the few candidates who wouldn't even commit to keeping Jessica Tisch on at the NYPD (which even Brad Lander, a solidly progressive candidate, did) didn't inspire confidence here.
That said, it's not inevitable. He seems like a really smart guy, and he may well be capable of learning lessons from even people to the right of him. I wish him the best and hope NYC continues its upward trajectory from the COVID years under him.
I'm also worried about the plan to replace Rikers with borough based jails, though this worry isn't specifically related to Mamdani, because none of the primary candidates - including Cuomo - really addressed it.
Yeah, no shit. Any candidate who generates enthusiasm is going to attract a bunch of narcissistic losers who vicariously live through said candidate's success. Why do you think Obama made Republicans so hopping mad? Because of all the Obama stans that declared ideological victory and leveraged every opportunity to rub it in conservatives' faces. Same dynamic with sports teams, musicians, etc. Whenever something becomes really successful, it gains a lot of super annoying fans.
Asking the internet to be normal is no small thing
This makes way too much sense. So I'm sure that people won't take this perspective lol.
I'm not so sure about this. The point of the "big tent" strategy, as I understand it, was
1. Dems were struggling with voters further to the right
2. Politically engaged people on the left are basically either (a) maximally mobilized, captive Dem voters or (b) unreasonable communists who can never be satisfied.
So it was a good idea for Dems to signal that they'd extend the tent to the *right*, not that they'd extend it to the *left*. I could see the latter easily causing counter-mobilization on the right.
I'd also note that there are definitely situations where throwing a Dem under the bus can be beneficial for the party as a whole. (Biden!)
What would sell better to swing voters? "Zohran's ideas are half-baked and his dog-whistling support for terrorism against Jews is troubling?" or "Zohran's ideas are going to lower the cost of living, and long live the intifada!" (Of course I'm exaggerating here.)
How will these statements of support look when, inevitably, his policies fail to lower the cost of living?
This is the "cuts both ways" part. Yes the party needs to allow for more right wing candidates to run in more right wing places. But you should check out the meltdown the TLP crew (especially John Halpin) was having late last week. The TLP crew and similar (Slow Boring too) has consistently said that progressives need to chill out on litmus tests and let the center to right edge of the party do its thing. Crashing out over a progressive winning a primary in New York is low-key bad faith on that effort.
As far as the choice you've given why do the Republican framing work for them? Both those messages suck. You can do a little bus throwing ("yeah globalize the infirada but the Trump movement is full of Nazis so let's not pretend who the bad guys are here") but just move past it.
I think it's good to acknowledge that Mamdani ran a campaign that was effective and should be studied by national Dems not for policy but for campaigning itself. He did well! He's charismatic! He broke through and could build a narrative! Not bad for a party getting whupped in the attention wars.
We'll see. I have a lot of Chicago ties and Brandon Johnson ran a good campaign, but has been a disaster in office.
Running with bad ideas is bad, and his rent control ideas are bad. Maybe he won't do them, but as the poli sci literature and Trump 2.0 would tell you politicians generally try to fulfill campaign policy promises.
This is exactly right. I am also seeing the same dynamic with the Mamdani campaign as I saw with Johnson's: a relatively unknown quantity that people project their aspirations onto. Matt even does a bit of this in his article.
Brandon Johnson ran a terrible campaign. Literally every time he spoke raised concerns over his preparedness and understanding of the issues. While campaigning he had several outstanding parking tickets and utility bills that called into question whether he could manage his own life much less a large city. He won purely because the field of candidates was terrible and the left-wing obstinately refused to vote for "basically Republican" Paul Vallas. No fewer than 5 candidates running in the NYC mayoral race could have beaten Johnson in a head-to-head.
>Running with bad ideas is bad, and his rent control ideas are bad.<
I hate rent-control* but I'm not so sure it's always bad to >run< with a bad idea or two, especially if those bad ideas won't be too destructive if implemented. AIUI Madmani is vowing only to extend the duration of current, controlled rents ("rent freeze") on already controlled units. Bill de Blasio did this three times during his two terms. Seems kinda dog bites man given that this is New York City we're talking about, but the media is making it into a the second coming of the October Revolution.
*Well, except for that time I personally scored a rent-controlled unit in Coolidge Corner, Brookline. TBH even back then I thought rent control was an atrociously bad policy, but I wasn't about to say no to the subsidy. I freaking loved that apartment!
The problem is that rent stabilized units haven't increased rents in real money since Bloomberg, and now we're at the point where income from rents isn't covering needed repairs.
Rent control in NY is bad, but Mamdani isn't going to make it much worse. Maybe he would if he could, but it's not under his power.
I'm amused to see the quasi-property situation of US rent control. When we had it in the UK (in the 1970s), we had Rent Boards that set the rents across a whole city. This did remove a whole bunch of the bad incentives around US rent control (ie new tenants paid the same rent as old ones).
The problem that arose was that there was no market price at all for rented property, which gave the Rent Boards little to anchor around. They could look at the cost of maintaining the properties (and they had access to data from the then-large city-run housing systems so they could get accurate data on the actual costs), but they did not do a good job of considering the price of the properties and a suitable ROI - resulting in a situation where rent income less maintenance costs often did not cover the mortgage interest, much less any capital repayment.
The result was that the vast majority of rental landlords were "accidental" landlords - people who had for various reasons* ended up with two properties that were bought with the intention of owner-occupation and decided to rent one out and live in the other rather than selling one, perhaps with the plan to hand-off the rented property to a child when that child reaches adulthood.
*Usually either inheritance or multiple households consolidating into one, either through marriage or through an elderly parent moving in with their now-adult children.
What about larger apartment buildings? Also chiefly owner-occupied flats / condominiums?
My sister had a boss who had a rent controlled apartment somewhere like Central Park West that got locked in to 1970s rates for a while that was later converted into a home office. She was paying less in rent for the entire place than I was for one bedroom in a three bedroom apartment in a cheaper city.
"... He did well! He's charismatic! He broke through and could build a narrative!...."
His career is over once people find out that he was really born in Kenya.
A Muslim socialist born in Africa? What are Republicans scared of, he sounds just like Obama!
“… just like Obama….”
Or at least, Republican fever-dreams of Obama, since Obama was not in fact born in Africa.
We need a sarcasm font.
Uganda right?
I think I agree with most of this, but probably where we differ is that I think Matt/TLP/etc. may have made a mistake in terminology when asking for a “big tent.” It was probably more straightforward to just ask Dems to be more welcoming to people who are in the center. One of the most convincing ways to signal moderation (something Dems struggle with mightily) is to throw left-wingers in the party under the bus.
And I completely agree about learning from Zohran’s campaign. I think this is one of Matt’s biggest blind spots: here the charismatic candidate won rather than the one with the policy positions closest to the NYC median voter. Matt’s usual advice would have been useless in winning NYC’s primary.
I've seen a lot of people say "we need to study Mamdani's campaign" for the reasons you mentioned, and... I dunno, can you really teach charisma? I think the lesson here isn't "be more creative and clever in your campaign" because that requires underlying creativity and cleverness. I think the lesson is about recruiting those kinds of people to run in the first place. (Bonus points if they're good-looking, I guess?)
I think the idea might be, study it for an idea of where to put resources, what horse to back.
The crashing out will be with moderate swing voters
The basic point about a big tent is that 40%-50% of voters are Republicans while less than 2% are some kind of Stein or other far left voter, while you should reach out to both, reaching out to moderate voters is much more valuable.
They are twice as valuable: Bringing in a disaffected, non-voting leftist increases the margin of victory (or decreases the margin of loss) by 1 vote. Converting a moderate Republican to the tent counts as 2 votes. One for us and one less for them.
Mamdani won by bringing in young voters. It's hard to bring in young voters, but he did it. If other Democrats can expand the big tent by getting young voters to the polls, that's going to be a lot more than 2%.
He won young voters in a Democratic primary in NYC when his opponent was old and disgraced, I don't think we can generalise it to the November election, to say nothing about how well his brand of campaigning might work in purple states.
It's not that he WON young voters. It's that he brought out young voters who typically don't vote at the rates they voted. The youngest voters had the highest turnout, which is astonishing.
On edit: Turns out the New York Times made a mistake. The highest turnout was 30-34 year olds. Young voters had a high turnout though.
Getting young voters to participate in a primary election in a non Presidential or even Congressional year is an amazing feat.
That actually makes me sit up and take notice, because that's an Obama level accomplishment of new engagement.
I don't doubt it impressive, I am questioning if it translates into something more.
Well, Mamdani is ALREADY being tar and feathered by those further to the left than he is. Politicians should stay in their lanes. Israel / Gaza is a perfect example. The mayor of New York or any other city should not be making Israel a campaign issue because the mayor of any city has basically no ability, authority or power to change anything about it. Whatever his views are (which are not mine) are irrelevant, but so many on the far left and the far right want absolute purity in their candidates that you push everyone else out.
Yes. This drives me bananas. At candidate forums for city council, candidates are asked questions on all sorts of issues that they have absolutely no power over. And the candidates answer, wasting more time. I would love to start giving an answer like yours above - the city council has no control over this, next question - so we could get to things that I really want to know.
Perhaps more broadly, the social media era has taught everyone that they should have an opinion on every topic, and their opinion should matter.
You shouldn't, and it usually doesn't. More listening and less talking.
This is a great point and I would argue that the dynamic is even more pernicious: leaving the impression that any particular element government has control/oversight over something actually outside its purview promotes misunderstanding of what government actually does/can do and cynicism about what it doesn’t.
I see this regularly at “scoping meetings” for environmental reviews (yes I know that reform is desperately needed). People can come to a public forum and speak for a few minutes about basically anything. There’s no response by the project sponsor, just “thank you for sharing your views.” People get pissed off because they think they’re being ignored, and the lack of clarity about the actual process underway lets them think that their testimony matters when it very rarely does. I saw the same phenomenon at public meetings of the NYC Department of City Planning when I worked there.
IMO “public input” for land use decisions should be dramatically reduced, but in the absence of that, I think it would be better to be candid about what’s actually happening.
The public gets input when we elect representatives. Beyond that, there should be no further "public input" solicited for, well, anything.
The representatives are elected to exercise their judgement on our behalf. It is a sign of cowardice to continually go back to the voters to seek input. Just do the job and see what we think the next time elections are held.
Based
I regret I have but 1 like to give this comment
That is interesting. At our School Board, members do not respond to public comment in the moment (meetings would go on even longer than they do and would get even more heated than they do), but the public comment definitely does matter and is taken into account when the School Board makes final decisions. But public comment on any particular issue is at one meeting, and the vote isn't until at least the following meeting.
If a mayoral candidate was against women's suffrage or in favor of reinstating slavery, should we note that a mayor has no ability to repeal constitutional amendments and dismiss further discussion as irrelevant?
Yes!
I admire your commitment to decoupling!
Thanks, How I wish every camdidate would answer questions outside the scope of their job with "that issue is outside the scope of my job, next question."
It's bizarre to see people having such a hard time with endorsements: "Mamdani campaigned on the high cost of living in the Trump economy and I look forward to him making life better for working class New Yorkers."
Though I get the Big Tent point, I also understand why politicians from New York frickin’s City would be hesitant to endorse someone who says “Globalize the Intifada”
Yeah, that's the other part of the endorsement that centrists should give: "Before becoming mayor, Mandami said some things about public safety I disagree with, but as mayor, Mamdani will of course provide a safe city for all New Yorkers: Jews, Muslims, Christians, and others."
I believe he didn't say "globalize the Intifada" himself, he just refuses to condemn people who do say it.
IMO an encouraging anti-cancel culture take that helps the party's image!
Furthermore, if a Democratic Socialist fails in the most visible mayoralty in the country, this will help moderates win factional fights.
The left really does have a serious “our policies have never really been tried” argument. Neither the Affordable Care Act nor the Inflation Reduction Act were left wing. The CARES Act was significantly to the left of the Great Society, but that point is lost because Trump was president.
Indeed, without trillions of debt funded socialism, Trump would have finished his first term fatally unpopular.
We’re already seeing “Brandon Johnson isn’t a true socialist” stuff I doubt that will change
"True socialism has never been tried."
And never will, nothing that tries and has flaws or compromises will be acknowledged as true socialism by users of that phrase. The sewer socialists were too pragmatic, the USSR's dictatorship was actually right-wing, etc.
Tax cuts aren't socialism
No, but they do tend to make Republicans conveniently forget that they care about deficits.
Thought about this in the shower and decided that I strongly agree with it. I came up with the phrase 'everyone wants to be a big tent party, until it's time to do big tent party things'. YMMV on my dorky phraseology
Everyone's real tough till someone farts in the tent
i simply don't wish to be in the same party, or even in a voting coalition, with a socialist or with someone who is supportive of antisemites and violent terrorists.
Have you found a party you’re comfortable voting for?
Can you point with a link to his support of terrorists and antisemitism? No you can’t.
Is saying that Globalize the Intifada reflects, "a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights," not lending rhetorical support to antisemites? Maybe you don't think it is. Here's a hypothetical, What would you think if he had said that the phrase, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children," is simply an expression of fear about economic instability and a desperate desire for people to feel like their families aren't being left out of society. Would that represent support for antisemitism?
How is it antisemitic to wish for equal rights for Palestinians? It’s perhaps anti-Zionist (if one supports a one state solution where Jews and non-Jews have equal rights) but it’s not antisemitic in any meaningful sense of the word. The constant conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism is intellectually dishonest and corrosive to the debate. I think it also hurts the fight against actual antisemitism.
Personally, I’m okay with Zionism in the sense that I understand why Jews, for both historical and contemporary reasons, want a state of their own where they make up the large majority. Normally I would find that type of ethnonationalism problematic but Jews are a reasonable exception due to how much discrimination and violence they have faced and still face in some places. I’m highly critical of their ongoing intentional genocide (an oxymoron I guess) in Gaza, as any person without blinders should be, as well as in the West Bank. That doesn’t make me an antisemite.
The phrase "Globalize the Intifada" entered the lexicon during the second Intifada, a specific event characterized by suicide bombings of Israeli civilians, a strategy of terrorism adopted in an effort to drive Jewish people out of Israel. To call for Globalizing the Intifada is to call for engaging in targeted, terroristic acts against Jews outside of Israel. I don't know what else you could call that but antisemitic. I am sure some people are unaware of the origin of this phrase, just as I'm sure there are people who are unaware of the fact that the 14 words are associated with the Neo-Nazi David Lane, but that's all the more reason to forcefully say it's an evil thing to say and explain why, rather than pussyfoot around the subject.
I feel like not holding people accountable for adopting a position on phraseology that needs an explainer about its origin and interpretation--which per Joachim's link appears to be the subject of some dispute (albeit unambiguously identified with Palestinian resistance)--seems like a better equilibrium than insisting that politicians adopt a position on a speech issue they're unfamiliar with due to its political implications and then accusing them of dog-whistling when they demur. Mamdani was 9 years old when the Second Intifada began (and, similarly, it's not like David Lane is a household name).
If you want to know if Mamdani endorses violence against Jews, you could (and, I would argue, should) ask him "do you endorse violence against Jews? What are your policies regarding the Jewish community" rather than trying to infer what gloss he puts on a particular slogan.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalize_the_intifada
Apparently it is controversial what this expression means and Mamdani has been explicit about what he meant which is not connected to antisemitism. Stupid and unnecessary? Sure. Antisemitic? Nope.
As for your second example: How is it similar to argue for Palestinian rights to some form of self-government, whether in Israel or in a state of their own (I prefer this latter two state solution), and to argue for preserving the white race?
Ok
What is one piece of evidence that Mamdani is supportive of antisemites or violent terrorists?
there is quite a bit of evidence - including things he said and tweeted in the not so distant past and his past and current associations with people and organizations that have even more openly supported such positions.
I note that you couldn’t back up your statement and that 5 people didn’t care about this but liked your lie nevertheless.
A big tent doesn't cut both ways. Electing progressives in progressive districts doesn't help expand the tent at all. Electing extremists makes it harder to have a big-tent strategy, because centrist voters see the worst excesses of each side and are influenced by it.
The big tent strategy is all about accepting different varieties of less-extreme political views. You accept people who are generally Democrats but have the Republican point of view on a few issues. This makes it easier to win elections.
Bill Clinton wasn’t trying to drum Ron Dellums or whomever out of the Democrats.
There are factions on both sides of the Dem "big tent" that prefer to lose rather than win if they don't get to set the terms.
TLP is garbage and has been for a while. It's analogous to FDB: writes the same article over and over with slightly different seasoning, unwilling to examine their own flaws and has a comment section infested by the same Free Press level MAGA boomers. I used to read it but noticed a marked slide in the quality, culminating in them publishing an article defending NIMBYs (seems to have been scrubbed) which made me unsubscribe.
Cuomo would've been (and I guess still is) a terrible choice for mayor, and not just because he's a sex pest. As governor, he repeatedly clashed with NYC over stupid bs, that harmed the city. He was a massive NIMBY. He pushed Andy Buford out of the MTA. He even went against congestion pricing during the campaign, an enormously successful policy that I think has done even better than its proponents said it would. Say you what you will about Mamdani, but Cuomo does, and would, represent everything that's wrong with non-progressive Democrats.
Byford, but yes.
Autocorrect is truly a bain of my commenting here.
This "tik tok" was so revealing https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/29/politics/andrew-cuomo-new-york-mayor-zohran-mamdani
Key quote
"But Cuomo didn’t want to do many events because he thought he’d be interrupted by protesters and hounded by reporters. He avoided interviews because he thought he’d just get asked about the scandals that chased him from the governor’s office. He regularly canceled plans for both at the last minute.
When Cuomo released a housing plan determined to have been written partly by AI, or when his campaign’s mistakes led to problems with matching funds from the city campaign finance board, the coverage was vicious.
He would not apologize for Covid-19 nursing home deaths or the accusations that he harassed women while governor."
Like in a nutshell why Cuomo absolutely deserved to lose this primary. It may turn out that Mamdani is a bad mayor; maybe he'll actually follow through with draconian "rent freezes" that will badly damage the NYC rental market. Maybe his "abundance" turn is a fake one that is more Dean Preston variety; is for more housing only if it meets 100 different criteria that are literally impossible to meet all at once.
But Cuomo, as far as I can tell, wanted to be mayor out pure spite and "don't you know who I am?". It's honestly Trumpian in the worse possible way.
Matt, I'll also say, that Cuomo losing is actually a good thing for your (correct) take that Democrats need to run more moderates if they have any hope of taking the senate the next 8 years. I really think you underestimate how often recently run moderates is "let's run retreads that voters have already rejected or retreads who deservedly resigned in disgrace" under the mistaken MAGA formula Moderate = guy you're familiar from the past.
Not just voters rejected Cuomo - moderate Dems did it themselves! They pushed him out of office for sexual harassment four years ago. Ezra Klein said some Dem official told him Cuomo was a psychopath then endorsed him two days later.
It's like these people want to lose. Just incomprehensible decision-making.
Can add the New York Times editorial section...which is more unforgivable to me since it's not like David Leonhardt has the excuse of crass machine politics reasons for supporting a terrible candidate, even tepidly.
To maybe add to my diatribe or clarify, I think Matt would do well to have a Slow Boring post that's basically "my take that we need more moderates running doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to candidate quality or not pay attention to the need for new blood".
I really think Matt is underestimating how much "nominate moderates" in real life is just "establishment closing ranks to protect a 'good ole boy'".
This is like divorcing a guy, getting a restraining order, then getting engaged again four years later out of boredom and laziness.
The stupidest thing about the whole kerfluffle is that it was a *ranked choice primary.* The messaging as between Mamdani and Cuomo should have just been "put this guy fifth and don't rank the other. But *actually* you should vote for Scott Stringer." There was no need to treat this is as a two-horse race and it became one anyway.
The moderate faction of the New York party (both city and state) just seems stuck in a perpetual cycle of self-own. It's probably the worst state party we have in the country for the Democrats. You have the biggest city in the country and the fourth-biggest state in the country to draw candidates from. You have everything from business leaders, union organizers, doctors, professors, NGO heads, reporters, and bureaucrats to draw candidates from. Nobody made them rally around Cuomo over literally every other eligible person in New York.
Texas is worse
Good thing NYC has a third option compared to Cuomo and Mamdani. Right now there is an actual sewer socialist who is putting trash into containers, which I am told is a hot new policy idea among New Yorkers.
He just really, really likes Istanbul
Ironically, he HATES Constantinople.
The Sewer Sultan of The Empire City.
He needs a very big hat.
Steve-Rogers-I-understood-that-reference.GIF
I wonder who the other Three Lads are?
What does it say that the media has been obsessed with Mamdani and his primary victory and what it portends about the future of the Democratic Party when right across the river Mikie Sherrill scored an impressive win over plenty of more left wing candidates in a state that is FAR more representative of the places that Democrats need to win and I don’t see any think pieces about her and what her victory means?
I think it reveals some deep-rooted left-wing biases.
Boring moderates are boring moderates. What story is the media supposed to run with?
It says that New York City has a GDP higher than every state other than California, Texas, and Florida and is also the media centre of America?
The parochial media interests of NYC.
Sherrill won with way less than a majority, is a generic Democrat, has no interesting policy agenda or controversy, and is going to be Governor of New Jersey.
New Yorkers think New Jersey is gross.
It should be noted that Sherill has had a hefty lead against a divided field for a long time. A complete unknown, like Mamdani coming out of nowhere and crushing the former governor in the mayoral race is just way more dramatic.
It says they have faint disdain for anything with a whiff of bridge and tunnel.
The biggest risk, from my perspective, is that he governs with Very Online Algorithm Brain. By that I mean he reacts not to the real issues in New York faced by real people but rather algorithm promoted click bait.
Think in terms of Freddie - very little reference to things that are happening to a statistically significant degree in the real world but a huge focus on whatever is happening online.
Perhaps we should take Mamdani seriously, but not literally?
I love the reference 😂
Unfortunately, after listening to the Plain English interview I’m incredibly bearish about how effective Zohran would be as Mayor. I thought the most telling part of the interview was the discussion of Zohran’s city-owned grocery store proposal, which occurred shortly after a discussion of Chicago failing at building affordable housing for a reasonable cost. Derrick attributed this failure in part to Chicago using a myriad of criteria for awarding projects other than how much the developer will be able to manage costs (one example is how diverse the developer’s management team is). The grocery store discussion came shortly after this, and Zohran was critical of an existing city grocery program, partially on the basis of the current participants of this program not collectively bargaining with their employees.
This begs the same question that the Chicago example does - is the purpose of these government initiatives, whether it is creating affordable housing or access to affordable/healthy food, to actually solve those issues, or is it to address progressives’ other many pet issues (DEI, pro-union matters, etc)? I fear that despite his stated desire to make government effective, he will not check the progressive impulses to weigh these programs down with other interests.
Is there something about the socialist, anti-market worldview that necessarily does not even consider policy trade offs?
I think the supporters think it can be all those things, because once you eliminate all of the wasteful profit, there's so much left over than every dream can come true.
The concept that they have single digit profit margins to work with, assuming that they're every bit as efficient as the private sector, is beyond them. These are not math people.
Really recommend a podcast from Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes that came out over the weekend about Mamdani, focusing mainly on his communication breakthrough but on substance as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/opinion/ezra-klein-show-chris-hayes.html
Two observations. I saw the same wish-casting that Matt mentioned, of how his mayoralty will be smarter than his platform. Thats a bet with lot of downside risk. The second is that there is a larger upside in a Socialist star that isn't Bernie Sanders. They note how much more inclusive, pluralist, and less grievance filled Mamdani is than much of the left. Even going on the Bulwark or Odd lots and listening to critiques of his policy is a lot more than Bernie would have done and I respect that.
Agreed good pod
There is so much pessimism here.
He seems to be clear about only promising things he can actually do. (He actually said this on "subway takes" when the host asked him to promise to lower the price of a latte.)
He's also named Zohran Mamdani. Like, you know who didn't make dumb mistakes? Barack Hussein Obama. This is why people freaked out about the tan suit, he was careful and hard to pin anything real on.
Zohran Mamdani seems very cognizant of being on thin ice. I don't see him wanting to win the New York mayorship just to get a plum speaking position on "Pod Save America."
I’m cautiously optimistic but the free buses give me pause. The sewer socialists were successful because they cared about the details of an issue (sewers) and ensured that their solution worked well. Saying “let’s make the buses free” shows someone who has not engaged deeply in the issue and the fact that almost every survey we have seen of bus riders shows that they would prefer improved service over lower fares. It shows someone who didn’t do their homework (or did and just doesn’t care).
I don't like the free buses either.
But I am willing to give a pass on this until he gets in office.
Ok, this is my example. In the Philippines, there is a program called the "4P" program (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program). It's a program designed to incentivize poor families to get health checks and keep their kids in school.
Basically, if you are poor and your kids stay in school and go to the doctor, you get some money from the federal government every 2 months. It covers 4 million people.
When Duterte came in 2016, he promised that everyone in this program would get 20 kilos of rice, in addition to the money, every 2 months.
Now, this was actually a horrible idea. Rice in the Philippines is under price controls and has to be imported and sold at special rates and the agency that controls the rice has limited capacity anyway. Distributing funds to the eligible families is easy, it is just one guy with a backpack full of essentially debit cards. He can give out 400 of those in a day and the money then goes automatically via bank transfer. However, imagine doing the same with 400 x 20 kg rice bags. That's 8 tons of rice that has to be procured and distributed individually via drivers and trucks.
Anyway, in 2017, there was an analysis done with National University of Singapore and it made recommendations to the Philippines government on how to actually implement Duterte's rice pledge. What they said was, "Giving rice as a transfer in kind is way too costly and kind of impossible." What the Philippines government did instead was that it upped the bimonthly stipend and urged the families very strongly to use the increased funding to buy rice.
So when I hear the "Free buses"... it's a bad idea, but I am willing to wait and see if he decides to talk to.... literally anyone who works in transit professionally... and they will tell him it's a bad idea. You can do things that achieve the similar ends that are far less destructive like sending prepaid transit passes for certain categories of riders.
The freeze the rent is even stupider
It is, but people know it's dumb in the popular consciousness.
The problem is what policies I see- state run grocery stores and free buses- are pretty bad policies. The thing is, as Matt says, policy matters a lot less than personnel in running New York. I don’t know how his personnel are gonna make progress on the biggest problems for his constituency though.
The biggest problem is that his biggest constituency- college educated people who can’t afford housing- probably in equilibrium cannot earn returns on their skills that provide housing, healthcare, and the education they want for their kids where they want to live. I don’t think your modal middle class person with a union job and healthcare who didn’t go to college and is fine sending their kids to CUNYs has this problem? I dunno.
I've read a bunch of things about the grocery stores that suggest it might be pretty sensible: at the moment NYC pays chain groceries subsidies to run grocery stores in "food deserts". If you take it as a given that they're going to be paying subsidies, then running loss-making groceries themselves is not necessarily going to be more inefficient (businesses that depend on subsidies tend to be run to maximise the subsidy, not to maximise business efficiency).
I think this makes the case there much more marginal.
Free buses are a stupid idea. The thing he should be doing is having a multi-modal hopper ticket, so you buy a ticket, whether for bus or subway and it covers one journey by any combination of the two, so you can ride a bus to the nearest subway stop - meaning that you don't need a super-dense subway grid as passengers will be OK to ride the bus to the subway.
On your second para: a majority of young adults did go to college: the modal person went to college. But yes, the modal New Yorker went to CUNY, and the costs there aren't outrageous like Columbia.
Subway-bus transfers are already free.
EDITED TO ADD: The best argument for free buses is that the majority of riders transfer to the subway, where they'd have to pay anyway, which is why the Staten Island Ferry is free. This is still a bad argument.
Best case scenario on the grocery store thing is Singapore’s trade union stores. But I don’t know if they make money. If you’re comfortable losing a shit ton of money forever so that you maintain availability and affordability (and maybe induce demand for some things), a state run grocery store in the US might make sense. The problem is what it does to extant grocery stores and selection. It doesn’t have to drive other grocers out of business- that didn’t happen in Singapore.
Bad and misguided seem like different things to me. What is the worst outcome to a few City owned grocery stores? The assumption is these things are going where currently there is insufficient profit for a typical grocery chain to justify their own operations.
These will not drive Whole Foods out of Manhattan or ShopRite out of Queens.
I don't know if they are the best solution to the problem they're supposed to address, but I don't we'll find Soviet bread lines at the end of the experiment.
That comment on "subway takes" didn't mean anything. He is regularly promising things he cannot do and are mostly up to Albany.
Of course, the meaning is limited, but the point is he easily could have made a nothing promise to this YouTube guy and he chose not to.
A lot of the wishcasting seems to be based on that he went to the right schools and comes from the right background, but you look closer and what exactly is preventing him from being the next Brandon Johnson? It's an awfully thin resume.
If I had to steelman a case for Mamdani being better than Johnson, I'd note that Johnson was entirely a creature of the teacher's union, and as such followed a policy of giving that one narrow constituency everything while letting everything else go to rot.
Mamdani doesn't have a single comparable base, so even if his inclinations are to be as corrupt and ideological as Johnson, he would need to balance the interests of different groups to some extent.
(I guess "Brooklyn DSA types" are the closest analogue, so perhaps Mamdani's top priority will be paying off student debt from MFA programs)
Well, if Mamdani actually WANTS to be an effective Mayor, the DOGE stuff probably gives him a huge advantage in recruiting really top notch people who do understand how government works if he wants to. Yes, City, state and federal government are different, but a City the size of NY is so massive, and the plumbing of procurement, government fiscal management, grants, has enough common threads that smart sewer socialists leaving the right federal roles would actually have useful skills for building things that work in NYC.
He had a great campaign but so many of his central issues are either beyond his power to implement or policies that are likely to be insignificant or actually harmful.
I'm totally on board with his focus on affordability: that's been the biggest issue for decades and it's ultimately the fault of the voters that their imaginations are captured by rent freezes (that may take housing off the market) and free buses (that reduce transit revenue).
Good salesmen know that everyone wants "one simple trick" to solve their problems instead of the shelves of incremental improvements offered by the likes of Kamala and Hillary, but policy wonks are going to have to figure out this problem too.
Does anyone remotely believe he can make the slightest dent in affordability in NYC? Seems to me like he's benefitting from a novelty effect where, by virtue of being new, young, and ideologically heterodox, everyone is imputing an ability to address problems he both can't and won't even if he could.
I think most of the people here believe he could make housing more affordable by sharply increasing the supply though most of us are probably skeptical that is likely to happen.
I agree they do.
So lets add a further dose of realism to this discussion: City of Yes took four years for Adams to do and hasn’t made the slightest dent in housing costs - because building housing takes a long time! Mamdani best case could be the long awaited NY YIMBY messiah (12th imam?) - and it won’t matter because the housing inventory will only materialize half a decade later at least.
I think EVEN IF you take the best case version of him and his platform as a given, he’s writing a lot of checks he can’t cash in 4 years.
Oh please, we're going to polarize ourselves into biasing towards candidates with "diverse" names? In real life, spending 10 minutes in corporate America introduces you to more Abhis and Jianyus than Andrews. And in real life, the candidate named Zohran Mamdani is promising to turn NYC rent stabilization into a bigger dumpster fire than it is, and to create government-run grocery stores for the sole purpose of having yet more public union employees in NYC.
The most practically effective socialist in American history might be Donald J. Trump, who, between the CARES Act and subsequent relief bills, presided over over $5 trillion in emergency fiscal transfers — nearly a quarter of U.S. GDP. This included $1,200 and $600 stimulus checks, massive unemployment expansions, and over $800 billion in forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans. In 2020 alone, poverty fell by nearly 3 points, the largest single-year drop on record, with child poverty cut almost in half. It was the most aggressive anti-poverty program in American history — and it happened under a Republican president.
And it wasn’t just transfers: the pandemic shock and labor shortages helped compress wages. From 2019 to 2021, real wages grew faster for the bottom quartile than the top. For many downscale Republicans and independents, it was the first time in decades they felt like the system might be working for them.
Instead of consistently helping working stiffs, he tried to kill the ACA. Imagine if he'd embraced it, slapped his name on it, and expanded coverage slightly. He might be genuinely popular by now.
The tragedy of Trumpism is that it stumbled into effective policy and only dimly realized it.
It's really amazing to think more so than basically any previous president in modern times, the best move Trump could have made is to literally do nothing.
As has been noted many times now, the GOP is basically a cult at this point. There was no need to push this draconian BBB that nobody likes except for a handful of GOP donors (it's really astonishing how little support there is for this bill even within the GOP). Like if he said "no tax cuts for the rich" the senate at least probably would have been fine with it.
No insane tariffs, no BBB and the 10-year is probably below 4% and the Fed would have probably cut interests rates again. Investment would have taken off and Trump could have ridden the wave to adulation next summer hanging out with world leaders at next years Olympics and maybe most importantly the World Cup.
I honestly think the latter taking place next summer in the US (mostly) is a bigger deal than we realize even for those of you who could care less about sports let alone soccer. The US is literally doing everything possible to be as unwelcoming to foreign visitors as possible. There is literally nothing in the world that will capture the world's attention more than this. Is the administration really going to try to prevent the Iran team from playing if they qualify? Are they going to arrest attendees coming out of matches? Like I think there is a real possibility of this stuff happening.
And the 250 anniversary too.
Why did Trump indulge the politics of joylessness rather than go on a blue ribbon cutting tour and take credit for things improving is nuts.
I think at the core of Trumpism is a vindictive malice that demands satiation. A desire to cause harm to others as a means of validation. It is joyless.
I'm not sure Trump has ever had fun or taken joy in anything that was not directly at someone else's expense. Everything in his life is dedicated to proving to himself and everyone that he is not a loser, which means he needs to make someone else the loser.
The cruelty is the point as the now famous essay once said.
Yeah I think his base hates that people they hate did really well under Trump 1.0, and it’s more important that those people suffer than that his base prospers.
The vindictive malice could be expressed more cleanly. There are some entitled, unproductive bureaucrats. Take the time to find bad actors rather than DOGEing entire agencies.
There are some intolerant universities. Wait until a moderate speaker is deplatformed and cut grants proportionally rather than issuing ultimata.
Ban gender dysphoric men from women’s sports, show sympathy to detransitioners the woke have betrayed, and then call out conservatives who are backsliding on gay marriage.
America at 250 is vast and beautiful and insanely prosperous and Trump really could just do the Eisenhower thing and let the economy hum.
> Trump really could just do the Eisenhower thing and let the economy hum.
We're back to that age-old question--*could* he? Does he have the capacity?
You caught me being a bad determinist. Trump is incapable of inactivity the cuts against his urges. However, a normal, effective politician in his position really would play Eisenhower. I sort of thought Trump ran mainly to avoid prison and would chill out and enjoy being exalted at sporting events and galas.
"Celebrity-in-chief", as Silver's excellent 14 Versions of Trump article put it in 2017.
And even some of the things he DID do that were a net positive for many voters, he's disavowed, disparaged, or pretended he didn't even do, in some cases, because he either didn't want to own any of the downside of those efforts (the inflation that followed wage growth and stimulus), or because some segment of his base turned on that particular issue (like the COVID vaccine). He could have remade the Republican party into a pro-growth party that embraced a lot of moderate and conservative goals, and in the process maybe upended our present moribund left vs right stalemate. It's not just that he stumbled into effective policy and didn't understand the implications; he and most of his supporters seemed to jerk away from it like they touched a hot stove.
It’s too bad Trump 2.0 is going all in on insane destructive policy.
It’s nice to see the Matt Y “abundance” faction giving into the reality that yes, a populist message is going to win, and they’d be better off working behind the scenes positively to help those candidates succeed — rather than treating this as an adversarial engagement where everyone loses. Hoping that trend continues.
There is no reason to lie about bad policy proposals being bad, even if the person making them is more personally admirable than a Republican.
As Matt likes to say, politics is complicated and multi-faceted. It’s a combination of coalition building, candidate selection, policy generation AND policy adaptation and fine-tuning. You cannot possibly start a blog named for the famous Max Weber quote and then pull back to “well, it’s just a policy debate.” It isn’t. There are consequences to picking overt policy fights and supporting loser candidates, even when you’re sure you’re right on the policy merits.
I'd be much happier seeing Democrats come to terms with shared end goals, rather than beating the crap out of each other over how to accomplish them or how to phrase them. Mamdani might have some flakey ideas, but if he sincerely wants to make it easier for families to live in the city, or create more abundant housing, or generally remove some public service-created friction from the everyday lives of citizens, those are shared goals moderates should be able to work with him (or any other progressive) on accomplishing. (And I don't know if those shared goals exist, mind you; I don't live in New York). Republicans pull themselves together, regardless of their differences, to accomplish what are often kind of horrible things.
Exactly. To read the “centrist” substacks this past three months, you’d think centrists were at war with the left instead of MAGA. It’s been somewhere between embarrassing and shameful.
What does that mean in the context of NYC, though? If Matt hadn't tried to push for better candidates (RIP Myrie), how would things have been different?
I agree that it's important to not overindex on the far left being bad in a national context. If somehow 2028 is like AOC vs. Vance, it would be important to back her regardless. But I am nearly certain that Matt would do this already (he endorsed Bernie in 2020!).
The Democratic Party has had an enthusiasm gap and a young voter problem. They need smart, charismatic candidates who can convince broad electorates that they’re interested in change. To the extent that your political judgement tells you “I would have ranked Cuomo”, you’re failing a simple exam *in a political environment that a liberal commentator should understand well*, so how can we believe you’ve got the formula to win elections nationwide?
I mean half of popularism is explicitly about doing this, most prominently on immigration; see Matt’s disagreement with David Leonhardt’s recent arguments about immigration.
I mean, you and I don’t have to, but there are all sorts of reasons for someone actually involved in politics to lie about this. Otherwise it’s weird that it’s been happening for centuries!
I'm confused by this comment. Is the subtext, "MY should expect that positions taken by socialists are just populist chum, and we shouldn't expect them to actually govern on any of that"?
There is no subtext whatsoever. I’m saying: future elections will go better for democrats if they support popular (and populist) figures and then find a way to influence their policies in positive directions behind the scenes. The best case alternative is that centrists substantively lose the policy debate, and the worst case is that the stupid fights between left and center cause us all to substantively lose the country.
The is a very populist, sensible center left message that resonate with plenty of voters if you give up the very unpopular social issues and belief that government exists to give your political supporters good jobs.
I worked at the Wisconsin Historical Society for several years, and the Victor Berger Papers was one of our most popular collections with researchers, so I especially appreciate the intro to this column. Even now, years later, I do a double-take when I see a Sherwin-Williams Paint logo - a can with SWP on the label and red paint pouring out of it that says "cover the world" - thinking for a minute that it means Socialist Workers Party.
What probablities would commenters give of him being a sewer socialist, a total sellout (a good thing in my view), a successful far left mayor or an embarrassing failure?
Hard to define for formal betting, but I would say there is probably a 50% chance of embarrassing failure, with another 25% chance he governs exactly like Cuomo and abandons all of his (largely terrible) principles.
0% Cuomo (corrupt creature of the establishment)
50% Wu (doesn't accomplish much but popular)
20% DeBlasio (accomplishes things, controversial)
20% Johnson (unpopular failure)
10% Hoan (associated with socialist success in 100 years)
Perfect
Oh, now I need to read up on Wu. I am a native Bostonian, but haven't lived there in years. Almost everyone I know loves Wu, and I have never bothered to delve further into why. Well, beyond her making cameo appearances with the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops. Which is kind of funny, since the people I know don't often go to the concerts, but they love the idea that their mayor can play that well.
Boston is safe and has gotten safer, she's prioritized bike lanes and some transit improvements, but bigger changes would require more from the state which hasn't happened, or allowing more housing which she hasn't done that much.
She’s a huge NIMBY who is LOVED by online center-left people who completely ignore her signature issue
I think this makes sense, though I'd add some percentage of AOC (pragmatist on policy, consistent values/advocacy)
I agree, although I think that would mostly be some combination of the options I listed plus the way a mayor is different than a back bench congresswoman.
It's impossible to define unless there are like, objective criteria that separate these categories.
The most likely scenario is he has a deBlasio-style tenure, with some wins and losses that different people will call a disaster, a huge success, or one that was sabotaged by outside forces.
I think seeing him as De Blasio level mayor is an optimistic take.
I suspect the secret third thing is he just gets into fights with institutions (NYPD) and political actors that DSA socialists don't like, and otherwise is heavily stalled in moving taxing or spending all that much from the status quo. Maybe he runs a few public grocery stores as a small trial at high losses to divide budget analysts (this isn't solving anything) and middle class voters (cheaper groceries!) A downgrade over Eric Adams, but one that holds on for a while. He can be the Biden of NYC, in other words.
This is describing the Brandon Johnson scenario: the NYPD quiet quits, crime goes up, everybody blames the mayor.
I think this is the safe bet. All you have to do is try to imagine ‘How exactly would mayor Mamdani handle the Columbia protests?’
Beyond bickering with local institutions, it feels safe to predict that a defiant young Muslim mayor of NYC will turn into one of Donald Trump's favorite toys to knock around. That might even help Mamdani's approval ratings for a while, but it will not be great for residents of NYC.
I think this example illustrates that an inherent predispositional advantage of the left is a tendency to genuinely care about public sector delivery (by which I mean, that while La Guardia was quite right to say "There is no Republican or Democratic way to pick up the garbage", it's not equally likely that politicians of both parties will care to get it done).
I’m not entirely sure I agree with the latter point. My sense is that if you have a Republican/Libertarian mindset you likely think that the government shouldn’t be in the business of providing various services (and those you would be inclined to let atrophy / “starve the beast” in a way that has some perverse political feedback loops, where discretionarily poorly-implemented programs create voter skepticism about the program itself), but for the things you think the government actually should be doing (and I’m not aware that R mayors are particularly against municipal trash pickup) there doesn’t seem to be a clear reason to expect there to be a commitment to bad implementation (cf. R favor of defense spending).
Really?
Florida has the best schools in the country. Mississippi is closing the gap
Republicans might disagree on what should be provided, but they do want those services to be good and cost effective
It's not true that Florida has the best schools in the country, on either a demographics adjusted or plain basis.
I’m a hard “NO” on any person who wants to Globalize the Intifada. Once someone says that, I don’t care about anything else.
Global war does indeed seem awful
Did he say that, or was he just in places where other people said it?
If the latter, then he shouldn’t have been in those places! Either way, I’m for the crook, not the Communist.
If you don't know the answer to that then probably you should try to get more information before coming to the strong conclusions you seem to have.
No. Shan’t.
That seems like an unsound epistemic approach.
What I love about politics, as opposed to economics, is that a sound epistemic approach is not a prerequisite in this business.
As someone living in NYC, I also hope he does a good job!
How much will Mandami be beholden to the city unions? Like, if the sanitry workers union wanted to get rid of garbage containerization, would Mandami do it? Would he take out a loan with horrible terms to pay city employees (like Brandon Johnson)?
Re your second point— he literally can’t. (FWIW, I don’t actually think he would either, but NYC can only expand its debt within limits set by Albany.)