this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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chapotraphouse
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AMERICANS STOP THINKING DEMOCRATS WILL SAVE YOU CHALLENGE: DIFFICULTY IMPOSSIBLE
does anyone seriously think a mayor is going to affect the party's foreign policy positions? i just want things to improve somewhat.
Like even Zohran has said explicitly that he doesn't think his victory will bring socialism but rather at this stage of organization he things electoralism is an effective tool for consciousness-raising and movement-building
While this is not wrong, I feel like it gives the wrong implications. Demonstrating how Liberals will immediately turn into fascists the second their "passive income" schemes are called into question raises consciousness. Drawing out genocidal billionaire freaks like Bill Ackman into conspiring openly on TWITTER about how to undermine an election raises consciousness. Having the President of the US threaten to deport the leading candidate in a mayoral election with no pushback from the liberal media because they're too busy trying to extract a loyalty pledge for Israel raises consciousness.
All the Jacobin variety slop about how Zorhan represents a new dawn socialism in America is mostly cope. I don't think it is helpful to make assumptions about what will happen if he is elected, optimistically or pessimistically though. What makes it worthwhile in my opinion is that it makes it clear who our enemies are. Even Sanders, the decrepit old bum, made these people show how much they completely despise working people. The mountains they moved to ensure universal healthcare would remain off the table completely. They're normally able to hide it, but in moments like this they reveal themselves like vampires caught in the act. It's a sight nobody can forget once they see it.
I don't think we will win much of anything through elections, but periodic demonstrations that bourgeois democrats will kill any genuinely popular and beneficial reform movement is not a complete waste. It prevents them from getting away with the act that they give a shit. Every time it happens, it isolates them. Even figures like AOC and Sanders grow more isolated. At this moment, it's hard to portray them as misleading the movement, because that would imply they are leading it. They are chained to the sinking ship. The only people who care about their opinions are people who reply to ActBlue robo-texts.
I genuinely don't understand what you're arguing against tbh
Just going off on a tangent, don't mind me.
You'll notice that basically everything he listed doesn't involve the leftist candidate actually accomplishing anything except scaring liberals, and it's really the liberals being ghouls that accomplishes the consciousness-raising.
Do you really believe that it doesn't raise consciousness when socialists get huge microphones to speak to millions of people about how they're not psychopaths actually, but believe in cool good shit like free transit or government-owned grocery stores?
You'll notice that he has already begun to capitulate and to change what he advocates for, and as he gets more consumed by the Democratic Party, the rot will accelerate.
AOC started off calling Israel an Apartheid state, now see what her most recent policy insight was.
The question was about whether this raises consciousness or not though
And I answered it, which is that he started off saying cool things and over time he will use the credibility from saying those cool things to advocate for heinous things and lead his followers down a bad path. They are sheepdogs, they bring people who stray from the mainstream back into the fold.
He did propose a policy for interfering with the funding and operation of "charities" that are supporting Israel from New York.
the democrats do not want him to be mayor of NYC.
He is himself a democrat and part of his recent turn came from recruiting DNC ghouls to his campaign. The dems are perfectly aware that they can usually capture radicals and won't hesitate to when it's obviously their best option.
democrats are not united behind that and many are still putting him/his policies on blast. "capture" is definitely something that can happen, but right now you're jumping the gun without any policy evidence for that.
AOC being a shitthead is evidenced by her record, Mamdani does not yet have a record.
Your argument doesn't make sense, because it logically implies that we can't be critical of the ideology and approach of someone who has not yet been elected, as though nothing counts until they vote or take an executive action, as though what they are going to do has no connection with what we can observe during the campaign. What we can observe during this most recent turn of his campaign is bringing DNC ghouls onto his campaign and reversing his stance on an issue where he professed something close enough to the correct position and has now accepted the fundamentally Zionist and Islamophobic premises of his rightist critics.
Name for me a single politician who has acted in office further left than they advertised themselves as. If you can find some mayor of a mid-sized town in Maine for whom that is true, compare that data point to the near-universal trend of Democrats speaking like they are at least 10 degrees to the left of everything they actually do in office, and sometimes much further.
it's not "nothing counts until they vote", if Mamdani started backpedalling on everything before the general that would add up. the current question is a point of rhetoric, not even a solid policy, people need to be realistic in assessing that
Where's the line, in his current situation? What if he just backpedals on one policy? "It's just one concession, and he had to in order to win. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good?" What about all that he conceivably could do but avoids, e.g. New York City is the finance capitol of the world and he seems to think they don't present that much of a specific problem.
what do you think these things are
I just gave an example?
you put e.g. in front of -thinking- finance capital is a problem, this is a nonsense parameter.
if there are concrete actions a mayor could take against finance capital Mamdani has failed to promise/rolled back, bring those up. I'll give you one: rent freeze. If Mamdani voluntarily gives up rent action (as opposed to endless state/federal intervention and court cases as will likely be the case) I'll be first in line to torch the dude's campaign
I'm sorry, are we contesting if finance capital is one of the biggest problems in the world?
Obviously there are ties between real estate and finance capital, but the one is not the other. I know that he's proposed actions against landlords, grocers, and functionally also gig transit, which are good, but also demonstrate that he has the awareness of a need to address specific sectors and not rely on genericized solutions like UBI, which in turn makes it strange to me that he hasn't really put forward anything regarding finance capital since, again, NYC is the world capitol of it and it's one of the more malignant things on the planet.
My gripe at the moment isn't that he hasn't put forward whatever my pet solution is, but that he literally doesn't have any specific policy here afaik. A public bank could be neat, and also New York City is just a hive of both white collar crime and white collar activity that is at best sort of in a gray zone but should be considered criminal: https://www.nycbar.org/in-the-news/fee-sharing-unethical-says-new-york-city-bar-cdr-news/