I get that millennials and zoomers are excited. You clearly are. But he is still firmly in the tongue-bath stage from him media allies and hasn't taken any heat yet. I see nothing here about whether a far-left anti-Israel candidate can win in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world. We'll see! I have my doubts.
I think Mamdani's betting that being a FREE FREE PALESTINE guy wins him more votes among zoomers and anti-establishment types than he loses by alienating Lubavitchers. (This is correct, insofar as no one whose #1 issue is "more material support for Israel" is voting for the Muslim guy, no matter how moderate his policies.)
No doubt he's run a great campaign so far, but I remain fairly convinced that he's a high floor-low ceiling candidate whose support is capped at a level not substantial enough to win the race. I don't think we've seen him take many hits yet (both from other candidates and from stories in the media), but they will undoubtedly come, and whether you agree with them or not on the substance, he certainly has many things that could be perceived as vulnerabilities. My guess is there is a waiting game going on, until this election increases in salience closer to June. I will be interested to see if and how other candidates employ an RCV strategy with him. I could see some avoiding it due to worries about getting tarred with his views, and others seeing it as a big boost to get a seal of approval for left/arab/south asian voters. Will be particularly interesting to see how Lander navigates this.
As an aside, I wonder how many of the "transplant" class - who you seem to indicate may be connecting most with his campaign and policy platform so far - actually live in rent stabilized housing.
I listened to him at recent candidates forum, CUNY students and staff, an impressive and dynamic speaker, the forum was sponsored by the PSC, the CUNY union, 150 in the audience, the other candidates also impressive, he’s polling at 8% … and the “we can’t have an anti-Semite mayor” talk hasn’t ratcheted up yet. I don’t see a large turnout, the usual 25% … I see Landor and Adrienne as defeating Cuomo …
Smearing people as anti-Semites without evidence is eventually going to stop working. I don’t know how many people you could trick into thinking Zohran is an anti-Semite
1) Polling at this stage is inaccurate at best. Remember Andrew Yang? 2) Ranked choice voting makes polling extremely hard to do. If Zohran outruns the other progressive/anti-Cuomo candidates, it will come down to who their second choices are. Remember Maya Wiley came extremely close to being mayor, which a pretty weak campaign that only benefited from late in the game implosions of other left candidates like Stringer and Morales. Had Garcia not gotten the NYT endorsement it easily could have been Adams vs Wiley for the last round and then who knows what could happen.
Cuomo is the favorite at this stage and people like Bill Ackman and other wall st types will certainly start spending huge against Zohran if they start to view him as a real threat, but your out of hand disregard for his viability is simplistic.
And no, running on popular policies that people support and get excited about is a great way to win an election, actually. The idea that being technocratically "right" about something rather than running on what people want is preferable is exactly why Dems lose over and over again.
Unmentioned is that he supports matching rent stabilization with building more social housing, which eliminates what I presume you object to about rent freezes
It absolutely doesn’t. “More social housing” that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit above even market rates is just not sustainable. You need to clear out the NIMBY thicket to do *both* YIMBY or PHIMBY. Period. There is no other solution to the equation.
The long term solution is abolishing the housing market entirely, but in the short term, building a ton of housing and disempowering slumlords from hiking rents and evicting tenants would obviously lower housing costs. Even in high rent cities this works if you’re serious about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/realestate/paris-france-housing-costs.html
Nope! I share some sympathies, but I’m ultimately just too skeptical of the entire political “theory of change”.
IMO Marxism has been best implemented in Western Europe’s capitalist social democracies. It’s just that his historical dialectic is happening at a much slower pace than actual Marxists care to tolerate, which is why the Bolsheviks revised everything to excuse their decision to jump the gun.
Thanks for this write-up!
I get that millennials and zoomers are excited. You clearly are. But he is still firmly in the tongue-bath stage from him media allies and hasn't taken any heat yet. I see nothing here about whether a far-left anti-Israel candidate can win in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world. We'll see! I have my doubts.
I think Mamdani's betting that being a FREE FREE PALESTINE guy wins him more votes among zoomers and anti-establishment types than he loses by alienating Lubavitchers. (This is correct, insofar as no one whose #1 issue is "more material support for Israel" is voting for the Muslim guy, no matter how moderate his policies.)
Assuming all Jews worldwide support the genocidal fascist government of Israel is anti-Semitism at its purest.
No doubt he's run a great campaign so far, but I remain fairly convinced that he's a high floor-low ceiling candidate whose support is capped at a level not substantial enough to win the race. I don't think we've seen him take many hits yet (both from other candidates and from stories in the media), but they will undoubtedly come, and whether you agree with them or not on the substance, he certainly has many things that could be perceived as vulnerabilities. My guess is there is a waiting game going on, until this election increases in salience closer to June. I will be interested to see if and how other candidates employ an RCV strategy with him. I could see some avoiding it due to worries about getting tarred with his views, and others seeing it as a big boost to get a seal of approval for left/arab/south asian voters. Will be particularly interesting to see how Lander navigates this.
As an aside, I wonder how many of the "transplant" class - who you seem to indicate may be connecting most with his campaign and policy platform so far - actually live in rent stabilized housing.
I listened to him at recent candidates forum, CUNY students and staff, an impressive and dynamic speaker, the forum was sponsored by the PSC, the CUNY union, 150 in the audience, the other candidates also impressive, he’s polling at 8% … and the “we can’t have an anti-Semite mayor” talk hasn’t ratcheted up yet. I don’t see a large turnout, the usual 25% … I see Landor and Adrienne as defeating Cuomo …
Smearing people as anti-Semites without evidence is eventually going to stop working. I don’t know how many people you could trick into thinking Zohran is an anti-Semite
1) Polling at this stage is inaccurate at best. Remember Andrew Yang? 2) Ranked choice voting makes polling extremely hard to do. If Zohran outruns the other progressive/anti-Cuomo candidates, it will come down to who their second choices are. Remember Maya Wiley came extremely close to being mayor, which a pretty weak campaign that only benefited from late in the game implosions of other left candidates like Stringer and Morales. Had Garcia not gotten the NYT endorsement it easily could have been Adams vs Wiley for the last round and then who knows what could happen.
Cuomo is the favorite at this stage and people like Bill Ackman and other wall st types will certainly start spending huge against Zohran if they start to view him as a real threat, but your out of hand disregard for his viability is simplistic.
And no, running on popular policies that people support and get excited about is a great way to win an election, actually. The idea that being technocratically "right" about something rather than running on what people want is preferable is exactly why Dems lose over and over again.
Unmentioned is that he supports matching rent stabilization with building more social housing, which eliminates what I presume you object to about rent freezes
It absolutely doesn’t. “More social housing” that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit above even market rates is just not sustainable. You need to clear out the NIMBY thicket to do *both* YIMBY or PHIMBY. Period. There is no other solution to the equation.
The long term solution is abolishing the housing market entirely, but in the short term, building a ton of housing and disempowering slumlords from hiking rents and evicting tenants would obviously lower housing costs. Even in high rent cities this works if you’re serious about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/realestate/paris-france-housing-costs.html
Ahh okay you’re a commie. Good to know, didn’t realize I was talking to a wall. Cheers! Have a nice day.
I have three jobs, five degrees, and I’m homeless. Are you surprised that I’m a communist?
Nope! I share some sympathies, but I’m ultimately just too skeptical of the entire political “theory of change”.
IMO Marxism has been best implemented in Western Europe’s capitalist social democracies. It’s just that his historical dialectic is happening at a much slower pace than actual Marxists care to tolerate, which is why the Bolsheviks revised everything to excuse their decision to jump the gun.