Who’s afraid of Zohran Mamdani? The answer, it would seem, is the entire establishment. The 33-year-old democratic socialist and New York City mayoral candidate has surged in the polls in recent weeks, netting endorsements not just from progressive voices like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders but also his fellow candidates for the mayoralty, with Brad Lander and Michael Blake taking advantage of the ranked-choice voting system in the primary and cross-endorsing Mamdani’s campaign.

With the primary just around the corner, polls have Mamdani closing the gap on Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor of New York. This has spooked the establishment, which is now doing everything it can to stop Mamdani’s rise.

Take Michael Bloomberg, who endorsed Cuomo earlier this month and followed this up with a $5m donation to a pro-Cuomo Pac. The largesse appears motivated not by admiration for Cuomo – during his mayoralty, sources told the New York Times that Bloomberg saw Cuomo as “the epitome of the self-interested, horse-trading political culture he has long stood against” – but animosity towards Mamdani and his policies.

Mamdani wants to increase taxes on residents earning more than $1m a year, increase corporate taxes and freeze rents: policies that aren’t exactly popular with the billionaire set.

  • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Uh, I don’t share the Democratic party. Sure, I vote any time I can to direct them to suck a bit less, but it’s not because I think they represent me. The treaty is that whoever votes in their primaries decides who their candidate is. If you’re not voting in their primaries, you have no control.

    If the majority of the people really wanted a progressive candidate, they could get one by showing up in force to the primaries. Primary voting participation is like 15%, it would be easy to sweep that if people actually showed up. Get every leftist to show up to the primaries. If they still lose, that’s just democracy.

    Stop treating the DNC as a traitorous ally. They are not an ally. They are a tool used to effect future material conditions. The tent represents a collection of demographics with a common enemy that they pool their votes to defeat. Leaving the tent only makes that enemy harder to defeat.

    • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      If the majority of the people really wanted a progressive candidate, they could get one by showing up in force to the primaries.

      The primaries that the party successfully argued in court that they don’t have to run honestly.

      The primaries they didn’t even bother to have last year.

      Get outta here with that “pRiMaRy” shit. Democrats don’t do trustworthy primaries.

    • gobbles_turkey@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      Uh, I don’t share the Democratic party.

      You just got done saying you vote blue no matter who a few comments ago.

      • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        Frequently, answers are found by reading the entirety of a passage.

        Stop treating the DNC as a traitorous ally. They are not an ally. They are a tool used to effect future material conditions.