New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, once a figure of contention among leaders from both major political parties, has seen a remarkable surge in his political standing just six months into office.

The 34-year-old democratic socialist, a prominent figure on the progressive left, has garnered unexpected praise from both Donald Trump and New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

He has also emerged as the face of the region’s sports renaissance. Now, days before New York’s primary elections,

  • BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    92
    arrow-down
    12
    ·
    4 days ago

    But leftists are both useless and totally destructive at the same time according to neo-liberals.

    I hope this brings enough change to make the Democrats actually progressive instead of giving lips service to it then doubling down on corporatism.

    • DagwoodIII@piefed.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      20 hours ago

      There are Leftists in this thread who are saying Mamdani’s no good because he hasn’t done everything he promised.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      54
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 days ago

      Who cares if the Dems go progressive? It’s the voters who are important. The Republicans kept resisting the rising far right movements like the Tea Party, and then MAGA, but the voters just bulldozed right over them.

      The corporatist establishment Democrats all made it extremely clear that they would prefer a corrupt asshole like Adams for Mayor, but the people told them to go fuck themselves, and now the DNC has no choice but to get on board.

      The voters don’t have to do what the DNC demands, but the DNC has to live with whoever the voters force upon them.

    • Pollo_Jack@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      3 days ago

      It won’t be easy. We must keep getting progressives in office if you want more than lip service.

    • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      3 days ago

      True leftists, like any medium-small minority, can make or break any coalition of medium-small minorities. And likewise, they can’t really direct policy all on their own, because the rest of the minorities in the coalition aren’t on board yet. One minority can’t make it, but they can break it.

      I also hope this brings progressivism to the Democratic party. That would be a good way to bring more of the coalition on board.

      • DagwoodIII@piefed.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        3 days ago

        Thank you!

        The thing that drives me crazy is when progressives act like they have a massive majority of the people behind them.

        Back in the day, Jerry Falwell leveraged his Moral Majority into power by sending his church people into every local GOP club.

        If the usual attendance was twenty folks, the MMs would show up with fifty. They might only have fifty followers in the whole town, but all of them were there where it counted.

    • megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      3 days ago

      the Democratic Party is a lot less monolithic than people make it out to be, it’s just that a lot of influential people in the back end have been fighting to keep progressives out, arguing that they needed to stay close to republicans to win “moderate” voters.

      More visible progressive wins will erode that narrative and allow various parts of the coalition to abandon the neoliberal orthodoxy imposed on them by corporate consultants. We can’t get anywhere untill that dead weight is dropped. Maybe the Democratic Party won’t be the one to adapt to the new conditions, maybe something new will take their place, but nothing is going to happen till that narrative is dead.

      • BadmanDan@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 days ago

        The Democratic Party has HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of politicians in it. From far left to center right.

    • DagwoodIII@piefed.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      43
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      Leftists already attacked him for not firing the cops involved in last winter’s snowball fight.

      Kamala Harris received 1,748,140 votes in New York City,

      Zohran Mamdani received 1,036,051 votes

      Thank goodness he wasn’t getting more help from the Left.

        • DagwoodIII@piefed.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          3 days ago

          Kind of proving my point there.

          People had a choice between a known molester, an idiot, and the Democratic Socialist and the DS barely edged through.

          It’s almost as if the progressives don’t have a commanding majority and have to work with others if they want to advance.

          • megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            2 days ago

            I mean, he still won a significant majority even with the vote split. And he won a majority In precincts that trump won In the election.

            A more interesting question is, if there had been a been serious candidate to the left of Harris in the general election, would she have polled more like coumo did?

            I don’t think it’s safe to assume that she would have won more votes than mamadani did in the same situation. And comparing the outcomes of a national 2 candidate race to a local 3 candidate race is not really telling you anything unless you introduce the counterfactuals and do polling to fill in those gaps.

            Right now we’re seeing a lot of polling showing democrat socialists candidates outperforming corporate democrats in a lot of battle ground and purplish red states. Arguably attempting to appeal to coumo type voters damaged Harris’s chances In battle ground states by alienating unaffiliated voters.

          • Pollo_Jack@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            3 days ago

            Could just tell them what’s been told to progressives for decades, “Vote blue no matter who.”

            • DagwoodIII@piefed.social
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              2 days ago

              I can’t think of one time in recent US history that a 3rd Party candidate split the ticket and hut the GOP.

              In fact, the GOP regularly throws money to the Libertarians and/or the greens if they think it will help them.

              If people had voted blue we might not have the Supreme Court that threw out Roe V. Wade.

              You might want to read up on Frederick Douglas. In 1860 he had a choice of supporting a strong Abolitionist or Abe Lincoln. Lincoln had repeatedly said that he would keep slavery if it meant keeping the Union together.

              Douglas knew all the horrors of slavery first hand, and knew that it made more sense to win and be on the inside than to lose and no be heard.

        • DagwoodIII@piefed.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          34
          ·
          4 days ago

          I edited my comment to point out that Mamdani got fewer votes than Harris did when she ran in NYC, and Harris did worse against Trump than Biden did.

          People vastly overestimate how popular their positions really are

          • bthest@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            43
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            4 days ago

            lol You mean a presidential race got more votes than a mayoral race? Ya don’t say?

            • DagwoodIII@piefed.social
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              28
              ·
              4 days ago

              Mamdani got 51% of the vote going against sex criminal Cuomo and shock jock Silwa.

              Harris got about 65% of the NYC vote.

              No way can you pretend that ‘the Left’ beat the dems.

              • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                39
                ·
                edit-2
                3 days ago

                Mamdani got 51% of the vote going against sex criminal Cuomo and shock jock Silwa.

                That’s still over 9% more than the runner up got.

                In a three way election.

                Without the support of his own party.

                With tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars spent on 24/7 smear campaigns against him by both major parties.

                With a unanimous local billionaire-owned media alliance fearmongering about him.

                While spending a total of $10.7m


                Compared to all that, the unequivocal DNC leader getting 65% in a presidential election where 100% of the party political machine was behind her, she was the only alternative to a literal fascist idiot and also sex criminal experiencing severe cognitive decline, and they spent over a billion dollars is absolutely PATHETIC.

              • DrWorm@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                19
                ·
                4 days ago

                Because general elections historically always have higher turn out. I think that’s what they’re trying to get at specifically.

                • DagwoodIII@piefed.social
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  24
                  ·
                  4 days ago

                  Mamdani got fewer total votes AND a smaller percentage of the vote than Harris.

                  If you try to push the narrative that Mamdani and the Left were super popular you’re deluding yourself.

                  Hopefully he keeps doing a great job and brings in more voters.

                  But be real. He got very lucky when Adams got caught in a big scandal, and the only candidate the regular Party could find was already saddled with a giant scandal.

                  • arrow74@lemmy.zip
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    23
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    4 days ago

                    Higher voter turnout changes those percentages. You seem to be thinking that votes scale proportionally with turnout? That’s not always the case.

                    Anyway the more candidates you have the more split the vote will be. Plus the media/Trump campaign didn’t pump millions of dollars into a smear campaign against Harris in NY. Why? Because they didn’t expect to turn NY red so they focused resources elsewhere.

                    An insane sum of money was spent trying to put Mamdani down

    • Tolc@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      30
      ·
      4 days ago

      I hope this brings enough change to make the Democrats actually progressive instead of giving lips service to it then doubling down on corporatism.

      Its hilarious how people think this is even practically possible

      • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        23
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        4 days ago

        We’re literally talking about a progressive that just became the mayor of the city that is at the very heart of American finance and capitalism. AOC could get elected president and you would still be saying it’s not practical.