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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

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he called for universal health care but once he was elected he started saying it was "too radical" ACA was the most radical package that could have passed, and it still cost Democrats the Congress. This line of argument reminds of the folks who complained about Sinema and Manchin. You know what we’d have with a few more Sinemas and Manchins in the party right now? A majority. The bill that passes is better than the…

No. I think an honest attempt at doing something "radical" economically for the working class can cross the divides we have.

I think there's an argument to be made that many of the allegedly "radical" Democratic policies fall into an uncanny valley of wonkiness, where they're enough of a reach to get people riled up emotionally but not enough to have the kind of punchy, obvious benefits that would get people to be supporting on a similarly gut-level basis. Arguments about whether the minimum wage should be $X or $X+2 seem like accounting tournaments. There's no appetite for saying stuff like "we will seize $100 billion from the wealthiest individuals and give it to everyone else as cash payments".

The other problem is that the Democrats don't seem to realize that incremental change doesn't really work when the system of government is messed up like it is. Every little small-ball policy the Dems try to push through can just be undone later by administrative gimmicks as long as we have the level of ambiguity we do about executive power. Beyond that, they can be rolled back by countervailing legislation because the Republicans are focused on gaming the system. "Substantive" radical policies like universal healthcare are unlikely to be achievable without first enacting "procedural" radical policies like anti-gerrymandering rules or abolishing the senate.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#372
Zohran is exactly the kind of change candidate that the San Francisco machine with Grow SF would actively seek to squash.

But Zohran's not alone, today's election was a massive swing back in almost every single race. School boards, city councils, state houses and senates, all swung radically left.

It should be ringing alarm bells that the SF / YC / startup community that used to champion utilitarian, meritocratic QoL improvements as a mission, is now so deeply forked from the base that sprung today's results. Politicians like Zohran won't be bought off by Palantir money. So, what's Peter Thiel and Gary to do? Where is Marc Benioff going to park his money? Reid Hoffman, Dustin Moskovitz, Michael Moritz, Reed Hastings, Eric Schmidt, Laurene Jobs, Ben Horowitz - all of these people aren't doing the normal pay for play donations, they are interested in shaping the party in their image. Well, Zohran doesn't look like you.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#373

I hope this turns out well for New York, but I am doubtful. Rent control is such a colossally bad idea, a rent freeze is going to be a disaster. This is going to further increase the lottery nature of New York City real estate, and reduce investment. His plans are set to drive finance and businesses out of the city in his goal to give away money to everyone, which will bankrupt the city. Socialism has a bad track rec…

>This isnt even getting into hos antisemitism “the boot of the nypd on your neck was laced by the idf” should have disqualified him, that kind of antisemitic talk was only on /pol/ like 2 years ago.

Is that antisemitic? It's a fact that American cops are routinely trained by a foreign military with a track record of disregarding human rights. It's a fact that the NYPD has a recent history of police brutality. What's next? Mentioning that the US trained deathsquads in LATAM is Gringophobic?

Also I'm not that sure 4chan is worried about police brutality even if it's a excuse to say antisemitic slurs.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mamdani's and by extension, his voters', ignorance about the effects of price controls Mamdani isn’t pitching widespread price controls, but rent control over a small section of New York housing twinned with abundance-style new development. “In a 2022 paper, the political scientists Anselm Hager, Hanno Hilbig, and Robert Vief used the introduction of a 2019 rent-control law in Berlin to study how access to rent-con…

Mamdani will learn that you need to be friends with the people your voters hate to get things done. Developers are the single most important players in lowering housing costs, but they are part of the "landlord" contingent in voters minds. If he doesn't learn that, the city is going to be in bad shape. Impossible to get an apartment unless you want to get an illegal sublet at regular old $4500/mo prices.

This is another example of a little radicalism is a dangerous thing. You don't need to be friends with landlords if you're prepared to simply seize all their property.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Society is a chain linked web, not a loose cluster.

I wish the people building bunkers, buying New Zealand citizenship, support razing social safety nets for tax cuts, and fetishize civilizational collapse (while simultaneously chipping at its foundations aggressively) realized this.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#376
post #358
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Consider the framing today: "Trump is doing all these terrible things, making all of these drastic changes, exploiting the system to his will."

The Dems can no longer use the excuse that the president is handcuffed. Trump 2.0 is showing us what the president can do. The dems consistently use that excuse to prevent popular policies from being enacted. Obama even had a ~6mo super majority where he could have codified abortion rights. But instead they keep it around as an outstanding issue because it is a good fundraising issue.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#377
post #73

You guys have it all wrong. There was only one candidate for the dem party, Here's the list: 1) Cuomo. Sexpest who has been accused by many women of some pretty shitty stuff. Also a member of a multi-generational dynasty, which is not good. 2) Mayor Adams. Federally indicted by the Feds. They have a 99% conviction rate. Not because they're corrupt, but because they only go after people who have dome some really egreg…

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Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#378
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Couldn’t do worse than the grocery stores in nyc that already exist. Terrible service, horrendous price, bad inventory, etc.

I did all my groceries in nyc via Amazon fresh for the last two years because of this.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#379
post #73

You guys have it all wrong. There was only one candidate for the dem party, Here's the list: 1) Cuomo. Sexpest who has been accused by many women of some pretty shitty stuff. Also a member of a multi-generational dynasty, which is not good. 2) Mayor Adams. Federally indicted by the Feds. They have a 99% conviction rate. Not because they're corrupt, but because they only go after people who have dome some really egreg…

> Mamdani. Millennial candidate. No dirt. Other that some stupid stuff he said while he was young, his policies are relatively common sense and middle of the road, and are aimed at leveling the playing field. Look, Mamdani ran a good campaign, and if I was an NYC voter (I am not) I'd probably vote for him out of the options provided. However, this just is not true. Many of his policies are neither "common sense" nor…

> And lots of his dumb comments were from like 2 years ago, not 12 - he was not "young" when he said them.

If you're talking about the "globalize the intifada" comment, he actually never even said that, but a whole lot of people (you among them, it seems like?) have been brainwashed into thinking he did through political maneuvering.

The root of that whole drummed up controversy was him refusing to blanket condemn the phrase when media people (never attributing it as something he himself had said) kept asking him to.

And he was always very clear what his reasons for that were, which were extremely reasonable to anyone who isn't a kneejerk ultra zionist.

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