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Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

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Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#351

I'm noticing that this election result has made a lot of people I know really hopeful. It's apparent that many people are fed up with the status quo so they're pushing towards more experimental candidates. If anyone here is well-read on his policies and they have specific opinions I'd love to hear what you think. Do you think Zohran will be successful with his agenda or will he get blocked by pushback from other poli…

Experiments have already been done. You just need to look at history. Or you can just look at north korea and Kabul .

Or, you know, current day European social democracies.

You can’t help but laugh at the amount of hysteria about Mamdani. No cost childcare? Free buses? Using existing rent control regulations to keep rent affordable? Oh no

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has moderated on the police funding issue, and the rent freeze is for already rent controlled apartments.

>He has moderated on the police funding issue So he already backtracked on a core election promise even before he got elected? Doesn’t bode well for his supporters expectations going forward.

Seems like before you’re elected is the perfect time to adjust policy positions. Or, really, any time you’re presented with new facts.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama took a mea culpa on parts of implementation, namely the federal marketplace website (they weren’t expected as many states to opt out of the marketplace) and the “keep your plan” narrative. It was a compromise law that was in alignment with Bush era mainstream conservatives. The fatal flaw of Obama and Biden is they underestimated the power of the nutcase wing of the Republican Party. (Along with the institution…

that isn’t the fatal flaw. the fatal flaw is campaigning and staking your entire political career on something and the delivering something sooooo subpar. the sad thing is, history will remember him as first black President and that’s really about it. and most of us cried watching that speech from lincoln park. our current president is causing most of us to cry daily but will be remembered as one of the most influent…

presidents don't pass legislation, and the original Obamacare was too radical even for all the Dem senators, not to mention needing some GOPs to get 60 votes

Maybe, if Obama had been as ruthless as Trump and used blatant lies and targeted attacks on senators to make them so fearful of re-election that they would play along, he might have gotten it passed, though probably not even then. Plus, as much as I wish we'd had the original Obamacare, I'd rather have a watered down version with balance of powers, than a tyrannical president who cowers the legislative branch into submission.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Atlantic had a good article on this and how it isn't the doom and gloom you lay out above: https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/11/mamdani-... As some of the replies note, it has been rather successful and popular in other cities like Berlin.

Rent control is always initially popular with the people who are already in apartments. But it is longer term effects on supply and quality that are corrosive. An alternative is Austin: https://www.texastribune.org/2025/01/22/austin-texas-rents-f... "Austin rents have fallen for nearly two years. Here’s why. Austin rents have tumbled for 19 straight months, data from Zillow show. The typical asking rent in the capita…

Extra supply is helping, but I would argue back-to-office and layoffs are the primary culprit.

You're not competing with 4+ techbros to an apartment in downtown Austin anymore.

Anecdotally, the local tech meetups are WAY off in participation since about June. About 1/3 of the people who used to regularly attend have completely left the city.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making it about "sides" is exactly why politics is as toxic as it is today. Is it inconceivable that one could look at the candidates and, without being a billionaire, decide that Mamdani is not a candidate they want to bet their chips on?

Politics is all about sides. To think it isn't is delusional. It's uncomfortable to take sides, but that's what politics is. It's finding out what you believe is important (e.g. helping average people make ends meet, even if it require regulation, or eliminating regulation), you will end up taking sides whether you like it or not. I think it's incredibly naive not to consider who our choices benefit. If your choices…

Doesn't this also apply in reverse? How many supporters of Mamdani acknowledge the groups that this choice will potentially harm? I am instead seeing people usually get defensive and downplay the potential harm on the more controversial issues. I also haven't seen anyone acknowledge that if the risk goes awry, it could end up causing even more harm to exactly those the policies were supposed to help.

If the goal is to vote for one's self interest, isn't it assuming a lot that this will always be aligned with one side? Sometimes self-interest means supporting one side on one issue, and a different side on a different issue. The act of taking a side is in of itself a form of compromise. I see nothing wrong with that, but that's not what people usually mean when they talk of sides.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ACA was essentially the Republican plan for healthcare reform. They just went scorched earth on it because they were pissy that he got the credit for their plan. That's also why they haven't been able to come up with a coherent replacement. Obama had a plan early on to be inspired by Lincoln's cabinet of rivals and to try to unite the parties. Because of that he didn't push nearly as hard on the right wing of his…

Republicans in Congress never wanted or proposed anything like ACA. It is weird half truth because Massachusetts, one the more liberal states, with Democratic supermajorities in both houses, passed something similar while Mitt Romney was Governor. It was the brainchild of Jonathan Gruber, MIT Economist and Democratic consultant who worked on the ACA for Obama. You can go back and read the GOP platforms of the time, t…

The 1993 HEART Act was very much like the ACA, built around the individual mandate to purchase private health insurance, primarily through your employer. Romneycare was massaged out of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Equity_and_Access_Refor...

This was the Republican alternative to the time's Hillarycare proposal, and was authored by the Heritage Foundation of Project 2025 fame.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#358
post #106

I hope this win signals (to both parties) that voters are receptive and will get engaged when a clear message is presented about cost of living and quality of life issues. Some of which are taken for granted in most other western countries. I’m no political wonk, and I’m curious what others with more insight might say about his ability to fund and implement his polices. I’m reminided of Obama and his hopeful message…

I kinda feel Obama is more of a Trojan horse. It was not he tried and failed to get what he campaigned for implemented, it was more like he did a U turn after he got elected. e.g. he called for universal health care but once he was elected he started saying it was "too radical". I hope the same doesn't happen with Zohran. If he was going to fail after all, I wish that will at least be after he had fought as hard as h…

I genuinely can't believe, still, that I have to spell this out for people.

Obama did not do a U-turn. It is the worst naivete to think that what happened was "he had big ideas and he changed his mind." He had to bring up big ideas to get elected, and then he got elected the first Black president and some of you seem entirely too dense to actually grasp what that means. President. Not King.

Subject to all of those checks and balances you hear about and then some.

You people act as if he could wave a wand and just sweep away everyone and everything who was against his big ideas, when the opposite was at play.

Please, grow a better sense of politics.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When your road is all the way to the right, then yea, none of it is middle of the road.

Please explain how city run grocery stores are middle of the road politics. Perhaps they’re middle of the road when your road is all the way to the left.

The state should step in and run anything that the private market cannot. I don’t live in NYC, but if there’s a market failure in groceries, do it.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality, which kinda sucks and is boring, is that generally people with money understand how money works, and why things like rent control, government grocery stores, and free [expensive service], are financially brutal policies.

Brutal to who? Wage theft is also brutal, but it's pretty obvious why the folk who "understand how money works" condone it. It's a tad credulous to think the billionaires donated against Mamdani out of a sense of noblesse oblige

Brutal to everyone. Society is a chain linked web, not a loose cluster.
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