Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race • Hacker News Board

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

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Post by TheCoelacanth » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 8:22 AM UTC

macNchz wrote: post #417

somenameforme wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people had rose colored glasses about Obama because he was, by far, the most charismatic President we've had in modern times. His speeches still give me goose bumps, even when I disagree with what he's saying! That man has the gift of gab. Him also being intelligent further, sadly, makes him an outlier in modern times. But many of the things he did were dubious and ACA is a perfect example of this. It's littl…

The ACA was, I believe, a highly intentional better-done-than-perfect effort, fully cognizant of the historical cycles of political will around major healthcare policy in America. If you review in depth the efforts in the 90s under Clinton, and earlier under Johnson, I think the approach was well considered. A more ambitious policy proposal ending in failure very well may have have put the topic to bed for another tw…

Yes, and many states blocking the Medicaid expansion also hurt it.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

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Post by johnnyanmac » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 8:22 AM UTC

parineum wrote: post #150

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #115

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…

> The bill that passes is better than the ideal that doesn’t. For your resume, sure. Sometimes reform only works when you fully commit and if half the country isn't on board, it's not better to pass some mutilated and watered down version.

>and if half the country isn't on board

By that logic, we can never pass anything, ever. And that more or less is represented with congredd Grdidlock for the past 20 years. Is that a better outcome?

I see it as Sprint vs. Waterfall. Except Waterfall takes 8-10 years in policy to do and no one is in office long enough to finish the task. So we gotta pass in a lot of smaller tickets until we get there.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

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Post by sebastos » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 8:24 AM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #526

crypto420 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peter Thiel and Mamdani are more alike than you may think. https://x.com/aphysicist/status/1937879912221667792 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-peter-thiel-warns... Nobody wants to hear this because it departs from the 'billionaire bad' trope. But Thiel has been remarkably consistent in his criticism of housing being the center of all of the Millenial economic woes.

Sure, Thiel is identifying some of the same problems, but the solutions he's proposing are basically the opposite of the ones Mamdani is. Unsurprisingly, he's proposing solutions that benefit billionaires rather than everyone else (e.g. just les us build whatever wherever we want, of course we'll build cheap housing that brings property houses down! Who could ever imagine we'll build luxury mansions that keep propert…

How many times must it be explained that building luxury mansions still brings property prices down. Nobody ever voluntarily builds crappy low income housing. That’s never how development works. You let people build the new fancy buildings they want to build with all the margins and high prices. Then, when a bunch of rich people move in, that’s people that are no longer chasing all the other apartments. Eventually, way down the road, these swanky apartments will be tomorrow’s old and crappy ones in the neighborhood that’s not hip anymore, and low income people can rent them. This is how things actually work, and it’s fine.

What is NOT fine is when you have banks and private equity bullshit chasing homes purely as an asset to flip. That’s the thing we need to curtail, because it’s just money laundering at the expense of the American homeowner.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

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Post by lisdexan » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 8:26 AM UTC

FridayoLeary wrote: post #570

I have some thoughts on this. Mamdani is a very charismatic person, and is in touch with a large segment of modern Democrat voters. It's the sort of stuff that can carry him to the White House as VP. He won more then 50% of the vote with a large turnout. As far as mandates go it's a pretty good one. Now for the other stuff. He is a pretty extreme socialist. He wants to raise taxes on rich guys, businesses. Make buses…

>My impression of him is he's basically a spoiled rich kid who's never worked a day in his life. That doesn't mean he's not allowed to be ambitious, but it does put into question his credentials as a genuine socialist. It's easy to hold popular opinions when they won't affect your lifestyle in any way.

Being a basically a edgy candidate from a Green EU party doesn't require a vow of poverty, nor an actual take-the-means-of-production Socialist for that matter. He's the son of a college professor and a filmmaker with award winning movies and docs with shitty box offices. Clearly extremely comfortable, but straight humble compared to "my daddy made me campaign manager" Cuomo.

I'm sure his proposals aren't optimal for his parents home equity.

> He has used the term "globalise the intifada"

He never said it. It just the ol' reliable "Mr Candidate, do you condemn the phrase 'I love kicking puppies'? No, saying that’s not the language that you use is not valid for some reason." I recommend to expand your news diet.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

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Post by politicalnit » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 8:26 AM UTC

xivzgrev wrote: post #415

reenorap wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama was hated by San Franciscan progressives because he came in with all of these promises and then backtracked on almost all of them. He basically turned into a Bush-lite, and he even maintained every single one of Bush's policies as well as deadlines. For example, he talked a lot about abortion and then immediately said it wasn't a priority for him once he got into office. He never closed Guantanamo and in both e…

I'll give you one reason, among many, it wasn't a failure. It made it illegal to deny people health insurance coverage based on pre existing conditions. That was a big step forward in a broken system to restore some humanity to the system.

Obama care was not a Democratic win it was another Republican win in a long list of Republican wins, where the dems tried to work with the republicans in good faith and implemented their policies for them. Sadly they realised to late that you should never work with right wing fascists because if you give those people your hand they will take the whole arm.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

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Post by TheCoelacanth » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 8:27 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #512

kortilla wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn’t read your own link. The peak value of minimum wage was $12.12/hr in 1968 after adjusting for inflation . https://www.epi.org/blog/the-value-of-the-federal-minimum-wa... You cannot with a straight face claim bringing it to $60 has anything to do with inflation when the value it would need is right in that article.

I misspoke by not including more detail. $66/hr to match homebuying purchasing power of Boomers in the 70s. You can get away with less per hour as a living wage assuming reasonable rent, and in NYC, that is likely $30/hr (which we will get to as older voters continue to age out, and younger voters age into the electorate, and are engaged to push wages higher [exit polls show ~75% of New Yorkers 18-29 voted for Mamdan…

That's more of an issue with housing prices drastically outpacing inflation because of dense housing construction being illegal in most of the country.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

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Post by johnnyanmac » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 8:27 AM UTC

yesbut wrote: post #376

jrm4 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

>Trump 2.0 is showing us what the president can do.

If a Democrat did any of the hundreds of actions performed this year, they'd be blocked by the SCOTUS, and then impeached by the House because they ignored the SCOTUS. And probably Convicted by Senate.

A democrat has not been able to do something as bold as blasting through the courts since FDR (and for that time, the term "democrat" may not even be the correct word to use), and that was under a depression with very popular support from the people. Imagine if congress flipped and fought as hard against SS as they did against the ACA. The Silent and Boomer generations would be in shambles decades later.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

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Post by eesmith » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 8:29 AM UTC

ComplexSystems wrote: post #404

nobody9999 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Mamdani's policies are incredibly controversial, that's why it's such big news. Which policies are "incredibly controversial?" And be specific. Here'a a direct link to his platform for your reference" https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform No rush. I'll wait.

I don't feel that you're going to get a lot of engagement with this attitude. It doesn't come off like a good-faith effort to have an honest intellectual conversation, which is what this forum is about. There are clearly policies on that page that break from the NYC status quo (like freezing the rent). Perhaps you are interested in explaining to us why you think these are economically sound ideas, rather than insisti…

> NYC status quo (like freezing the rent).

The platform page points out how the status quo was recently broken: "Eric Adams has taken every opportunity to squeeze tenants, with his hand-picked appointees to the Rent Guidelines Board jacking up rents on stabilized apartments by 12.6% (and counting)–the most since a Republican ran City Hall."

Sure sounds like Adams made a controversial change to the status quo to me.

The position is "As Mayor, Zohran will immediately freeze the rent for all stabilized tenants".

I read that as want to return to status quo ante Adams.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

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Post by TheCoelacanth » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 8:29 AM UTC

terminalshort wrote: post #267

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not clear to me why a multigenerational dynasty specifically is a bad thing? Aristocracies are more stable but less efficient. That creates an incentive for corruption when growth inevitably stalls. Which leads to catastrophic instability.

There is minimal incentive for corruption in a hereditary aristocracy. Status is determined by birthright rather than accumulation of money. And if you are a lord and do need money, you have the power to tax it legally anyway. So what incentive is there to make or take a bribe? It won't change who your parents are.

Aristocracy itself is state sanctioned corruption. The law is made to privilege certain people above others instead of serving the common good.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

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Post by johnnyanmac » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 8:31 AM UTC

omnimus wrote: post #596

whateveracct wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want my President to act like a dictator even if they're on "my side." Some things are more important than policy. Obama understood this and respected the office. Trump took a fat dump on the office and I'm not sure if our country's values will ever recover from this race to the bottom.

This is apologetic liberal tactic to keep the status quo. US president is still the most powerful political position on the planet. They can do stuff you know. Obama is not some good hearted hero who had his hands tied. He ran on pretty progressive campaign because it polled well and when he came to office he just did what his sponsors wanted - keep status quo. It was keeping the money in pockets of billionaires and…

>It was keeping the money in pockets of billionaires and corporations while talking about promise of potential change by the most charismatic president ever.

Are you talking about Obama or Trump?

> US president is still the most powerful political position on the planet. They can do stuff you know.

And this is why people don't trust republicans. They are all "checks and balances" and "Constitution" until the dictatorship they want is upon them.

Biden try to forgive student loans. The courts blocked him. They clearly cannot just "do stuff you know". Not without risk of impeachment for executive overreach.