i think it's basically telling that the Mamdani campaign is basically the economic focused campaign that pollsters say voters want, but it doesn't code that way because his proposals are well to the left of the status quo
Replies
It makes sense that the moderates dislike him despite doing what they want, what’s funnier is the progressives who aren’t frothing at the mouth with rage at a campaign that prioritizes talking about the price of Halal truck food over Cuomo’s misdeeds
aug 25, 2025, 3:21 am • 29 0 • view
Even in the Zcavenger hunt, there were a couple of quick jabs at Addams, in an otherwise unrelated campaign event. Eating from the bag of chips that were in the bribe controversy from the day before, and then the "not a wad of cash" cutaway.
aug 25, 2025, 2:40 pm • 5 0 • view
The thing is, nearly every positive, issue-focused communication by Mamdani I saw included a dig aimed at Cuomo (or Adams, as with the scavenger hunt announcement)
aug 25, 2025, 3:33 pm • 2 0 • view
You're pretending to be surprised that progressives like a guy who's doing the things progressives have been asking politicians for since always? Just because whatever smirking fascist you hitched your wagon to got the flack they deserved?
aug 25, 2025, 5:36 pm • 1 0 • view
RCV made it where once the field of possible options narrowed Lander and the other also ran candidates turned all their focus to going negative on Cuomo while Mamdani just hand to hint at it
aug 25, 2025, 2:29 pm • 1 0 • view
please stop posting until your frontal lobe has fully developed
aug 25, 2025, 2:22 pm • 0 0 • view
The primary campaign was incredibly negative against Cuomo - not necessarily by Mamdani himself as by literally everyone in and around the city who preferred a non-mass murderer, non-rapist, non-crook mayor.
aug 25, 2025, 3:25 am • 24 0 • view
The brief but brutal ripostes at the debate also helped with that urge
aug 25, 2025, 5:24 am • 8 0 • view
I do think there is a hunger for politicians that will talk about putting powerful people who commit crimes in jail.
aug 25, 2025, 1:24 pm • 2 0 • view
Does anyone else miss Spitzer?
aug 25, 2025, 1:25 pm • 0 0 • view
My internal (inside my head) polling shows surprising support
aug 25, 2025, 1:25 pm • 0 0 • view
No.
aug 25, 2025, 2:06 pm • 1 0 • view
I thought it might just be me, but no one else even talks about arresting the crooks
aug 25, 2025, 2:18 pm • 0 0 • view
If I agree with your proposed solutions to everyday folks' day-to-day problems it's "kitchen-table issues"; if I *don't* agree with your proposed solutions to everyday folks' day-to-day problems it's "populism"
aug 25, 2025, 3:29 pm • 2 0 • view
It feels like he is a member of the community and that he genuinely cares about his neighbors. This is a difficult thing to fake.
aug 25, 2025, 3:13 am • 17 0 • view
Zohran should propose loan forgiveness to pell grant recipients who start a business in staten island
aug 25, 2025, 5:06 am • 15 0 • view
*after three years Let’s not forgive those loans too hastily!
aug 25, 2025, 1:39 pm • 5 0 • view
Basically.
aug 25, 2025, 9:23 am • 0 0 • view
I think it’s worth noting that though his proactive messaging is about economics, he’s been very reliable to not bend on other non-economic issues. When the spectrum seems like it runs from Emanuel to Buttigieg, Mamdani feels like a social issue warrior for simply not throwing people under the bus.
aug 25, 2025, 5:14 pm • 2 0 • view
It feels like his campaign is about more than economics not because he’s bringing up other things, but because when other things are brought up he doesn’t give any ground. It feels like Palestinian liberation, trans rights, immigrant rights, etc are all non-negotiable, nothing to talk about.
aug 25, 2025, 5:14 pm • 3 0 • view
As opposed to proposed “economic focused” campaigns where the implication is “we can win on 'kitchen table' issues (as long as we throw everything else in the garbage)”
aug 25, 2025, 5:14 pm • 1 0 • view
Caveat: I’m not from NYC, I live in a city in the desert that could only dream of having a candidate this great.
aug 25, 2025, 5:15 pm • 0 0 • view
Status quo is pretty fucking far-right.
aug 25, 2025, 1:50 pm • 1 0 • view
hard to avoid the conclusion that when they say "economic focused" they actually mean "republican" because the idea that only republicans are good for the economy haunts us in the form of ronald reagan
aug 25, 2025, 3:18 am • 164 8 • view
I also feel like they know there’s a right answer (focus on bread and butter economic issues), but they know they can’t do that bc they don’t actually care about the economic issues their voters face. And they’re willing to cede that ground rather than start caring.
aug 25, 2025, 6:04 am • 6 0 • view
I think a lot of the time when people (politicians, business owners, etc) say 'economy' they very specifically mean literal stock prices & benefits to economic stakeholders, not the economy as the general system of trade and the well-being of those in it in general
aug 25, 2025, 2:13 pm • 9 1 • view
I think it’s more that when they say "economic focused" they mean "economic focused, but within a neoliberal framework" which today equates to Republican as neoliberalism has proven to fall short of its goals for the center left.
aug 25, 2025, 3:42 am • 33 0 • view
They want the 90s back, but don’t understand that the ship has long sailed and there is no coming back.
aug 25, 2025, 3:46 am • 27 0 • view
clinton was like 70% reagan by volume and it may have been healthier to have been hedged out of power for another decade than it was to have him
aug 25, 2025, 3:47 am • 29 0 • view
I wonder how things are going in the timeline where Perot won
aug 25, 2025, 5:00 am • 1 0 • view
The federal judges he appointed alone made his victory in ‘92 extremely meaningful!
aug 25, 2025, 1:27 pm • 9 0 • view
A Bush presidency with a Newt Gingrich Congress would have given us a debt break or balanced budget amendment and we’d be stuck in the lost decade like Europe.
aug 25, 2025, 1:29 pm • 10 0 • view
No the fuck it would not. Republicans haven’t delivered a balanced budget since Eisenhower. Bush Gingrich would’ve cut all the entitlement programs then turned around and wasted at least triple the money that saved on the military and cops snd corporate tax breaks
aug 25, 2025, 1:40 pm • 3 0 • view
I’m saying that they would have done things things and that it would be bad?
aug 25, 2025, 1:42 pm • 3 0 • view
And I’m saying it would have been far, far worse. Bush already gave us the worst economic crash & recession since the Great Depression. It would’ve been 10x worse
aug 25, 2025, 2:09 pm • 1 0 • view
aren't we talking about bush 1 atm
aug 25, 2025, 2:43 pm • 1 0 • view
The other 30% was Epstein.
aug 25, 2025, 6:45 am • 3 0 • view
we should make the 2030's so awesome it's the decade everyone's nostalgic for
aug 25, 2025, 5:52 am • 2 0 • view
He’s getting the double credit, he comes across as a kitchen table guy to the low-engagement gang and a hardass to the ideological lock ins.
aug 25, 2025, 3:16 am • 62 3 • view
He might, and hear me out, be communicating differently to different audiences while maintaining the same policies.
aug 25, 2025, 3:18 am • 35 0 • view
Trump’s good at this.
aug 25, 2025, 3:20 am • 9 0 • view
smh I knew the left and MAGA were the same /j /s /can't stress enough I'm making fun of someone else here
aug 25, 2025, 4:43 pm • 3 0 • view
Honestly since I learned to laugh at myself in 2007 it’s been easy street since then getting roasted
aug 25, 2025, 4:50 pm • 1 0 • view
I forget who pointed out on Twitter years ago that a candidate of color has an easier time just talking about socioeconomic issues while still being perceived well by nonwhite leftists. Obama could do it, but HRC had to use explicitly woke rhetoric back when it was called SJW and not woke.
aug 25, 2025, 3:20 am • 9 0 • view
(This was before Kamala Harris.)
aug 25, 2025, 3:20 am • 5 0 • view
I’m mulling over this theory that liberal (broadly defined) politics skews towards material politics. There’s not as much room for peasant brained agitation to take up space. For one reason or another, medieval peasant brain has gained a crucial 10-20% of the electorate, and here we are.
aug 25, 2025, 3:28 am • 4 0 • view
I look at the polling of, say, Buchanan, already uncomfortably strong in the 90s, but it just wasn’t quite enough yet to take control.
aug 25, 2025, 3:29 am • 0 0 • view
when you screw poor people on economics, poor racists just vote on racism instead of economics
aug 25, 2025, 5:53 am • 9 0 • view
Desperation also yields bad politics. But you know what also predicts a Republican White House? Unemployment under 5%. It is shocking to me how quickly some people take the most meager prosperity and then go hunting, but there it is. I wouldn't have thought that twenty years ago.
aug 25, 2025, 5:59 am • 8 0 • view
Eh, it also explains how Clinton led to Bush.
aug 25, 2025, 6:07 am • 0 0 • view
Freedom from want breeds interclass friction
aug 25, 2025, 6:04 am • 0 0 • view
I wouldn't call it "freedom from want," I think this is the disappointing part about the human condition, it's just that people start looking at outgroups well before they're comfortable. "Medieval peasant brain." Medieval peasants didn't have it particularly good.
aug 25, 2025, 6:07 am • 1 0 • view
only a peasant would have in/out group biases 🙃
aug 25, 2025, 7:53 am • 0 0 • view
not *only* a peasant: some (most?) people may have them but decline to make it their whole politics, other people don't have medieval peasant brain but are all in on the project.
aug 25, 2025, 8:46 am • 0 0 • view
Like, Stephen Miller: I don't think he fits in that category.
aug 25, 2025, 8:47 am • 0 0 • view
I'm saying comfort breeds paranoia, both about the continued persistence of said comfort and your own comfort relative to the comfort of others, which leads to reactionaries getting elected.
aug 25, 2025, 6:09 am • 0 0 • view
but clearly there's contrary effects, right? Desperation makes people pretty radical and nasty, too. Plus, I think there's an ethical obligation to try to improve material conditions for the many. I just don't expect a political payoff for the people that put it in place, it's quite chaotic.
aug 25, 2025, 6:12 am • 0 0 • view
If people believe that the state can't improve their material conditions, but can only dole out pain, politics becomes about aiming that pain at people you don't like.
aug 25, 2025, 2:43 pm • 1 1 • view
That’s true, but I think many people also believe they can improve their lives somehow by doling out pain to others. I didn’t say it had to make sense, part of the whole problem is people signing up for stuff that doesn’t make any sense!
aug 25, 2025, 3:22 pm • 2 0 • view
Consider anything involving transgender politics: could this occupy anything more than page 13 twice a year in material politics? I don’t think so! But some people just had to bring the fight to them.
aug 25, 2025, 3:25 pm • 0 0 • view
The Democrats have a long and storied history of trying to figute out how racist/sexist/etc they need to be to win over enough right-wing voters to allow themselves to ignore their left-wing voters. Clinton managed it, and they've been trying to recreate it since.
aug 25, 2025, 11:39 am • 8 0 • view
Obama did too, but benefitted from Bush II's trainwreck, so I don't really think that counts. Any Democrat probably could have one in '08, which is why many Dems were salty about Clinton's losing her turn.
aug 25, 2025, 11:39 am • 4 0 • view
Clinton benefited from Bush I’s trainwreck as well The two presidents who succeeded by doing what carville wanted had multiple thumbs they didn’t control on the scale in their favor
aug 25, 2025, 1:58 pm • 4 0 • view
clinton & obama were charismatic, fiercely intelligent, spectacular public speakers who even had The Jokes. those were all vibes elections. this is a very different world/country & those vibes don't hit any more. we had only a handful of billionaires back then. now they are legion & insane.
aug 25, 2025, 2:58 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes, they’re both charismatic in ways that the current Dem system shoves down instead of elevating, BUT: Clinton also had an opponent who had so pissed off his base by reneging on “no new taxes” that he was primaried from the right of his own party despite being the incumbent
aug 25, 2025, 3:47 pm • 3 0 • view
Democrats hate the voters they need to win over.
aug 25, 2025, 3:48 am • 3 1 • view
Somebody please tell me what's wrong with the city government providing city-owned groceries in NYC's food deserts. But, then, I don't see anything wrong if New York State, California, & others decide to withhold tax revenue from the federal government to make up for cuts to Medicaid & SNAP.
aug 25, 2025, 3:08 am • 4 0 • view
by kitchen table issues they mean tax cuts
aug 25, 2025, 5:07 am • 0 0 • view
These pundits just want more socially liberal chamber of commerce democrats in office
aug 25, 2025, 4:45 pm • 1 0 • view
A lot of white cis straight able nt Americans say “I draw the line at being forced to help anyone! They can burn!”
aug 25, 2025, 3:06 pm • 1 0 • view
As is 90% of the country
aug 25, 2025, 7:24 am • 0 0 • view
Yes and the same pollsters have been hesitant to embrace him or lift him up as a model because he is a socialist Muslim!
aug 25, 2025, 2:58 am • 8 0 • view
Kitchen table issues, but for households paying 45% of their take home to rent the kitchen.
aug 25, 2025, 5:08 am • 9 0 • view
I think the "not focus tested to death" thing is key. Regardless of what your specific message/platform is, you have to sound like you believe in it.
aug 25, 2025, 9:57 am • 5 0 • view
I'd disagree that his proposals are well to the left of the status quo. Like he's proposing a modest expansion of rent control in a city that already has it
aug 25, 2025, 4:38 pm • 0 0 • view
like, he has focused pretty strongly on economic concerns of average New Yorkers! especially inflation and cost of living! but pundits citing pollsters have a tendency to be like "dems should move to the center in order to show improvements in economic management to the median voter"
aug 25, 2025, 2:59 am • 387 18 • view
Economy has always been the scarecrow of all politicians. It's still mostly a masquerade that lost its straws to the ravens they claim it will chase.
aug 25, 2025, 3:29 am • 62 2 • view
I would never vote for a party who promised to make the economy better. That's not a political program. A good political program is about answering the needs of your citizens. That is what politicians should be good at. If you get this, the economy will follow. 1/..
aug 25, 2025, 12:38 pm • 54 6 • view
If you try to do the reverse, it can look like it's working until you find out there are just bubbles in the pipes. Money is too much of a fungible instrument to be a good measure of the health of a society, let alone a mean of control. 2/2
aug 25, 2025, 12:38 pm • 33 2 • view
GDP is a refuge for scoundrels
aug 25, 2025, 2:39 pm • 5 0 • view
There is wisdom in this: focus on answering the needs of your citizens and the economy will follow.
aug 25, 2025, 5:00 pm • 2 0 • view
It's also interesting that Mamdani also does not spend a lot of time attacking Trump directly, but he does regularly point out that Cuomo/Adams are connected to him. He just takes as a given that his voters hate the guy and uses that brush to tar his opponents.
aug 25, 2025, 2:34 pm • 50 1 • view
The fact is that people actually do care about making the economy more fair, and they're not gonna believe tax breaks and subsidies help on that front after decades of trickle down economics.
aug 25, 2025, 5:06 am • 9 0 • view
they want him focused on CONCERNS and to STOP talking about solutions
aug 25, 2025, 6:39 am • 2 0 • view
They're not even that far left.
aug 25, 2025, 1:28 pm • 1 0 • view
Yeah. Voters are actually way to the left of where voters think they are, and much further left than centrist politicians would ever admit. There's just a very successful propaganda program to obscure what left means.
aug 26, 2025, 1:20 am • 1 0 • view
Mamdani... talking about money using ArAbiC nUmeRaLs!
aug 25, 2025, 1:42 pm • 0 0 • view
There is no longer a Status Quo.
aug 25, 2025, 1:39 pm • 0 0 • view