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Zohran Mamdani, in the New York City mayoral debate: "Free buses would cost $700M. Cuomo gave more—$959M—to Elon Musk for a failed Tesla factory." (files.catbox.moe)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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[–] 165 points 1 year ago (83 children)

Really, really hoping Mamdani doesn't turn out to be Obama 2.0.

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  • [–] 136 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (32 children)

    That would require Zohran to be ideologically liberal. I think it's pretty clear from a number of litmus tests that he's a socialist. It's much more difficult to go from being a socialist to a centist. Ideologically, being a socialist isn't merely a step to the left of liberal. It's a fundamentally different worldview which resembles American liberals in a few areas but only in appearance. E.g. both a liberal and a socialist might advocate for universal healthcare. The liberal feels that private healtchare is a defect of an otherwise functioning system. The socialist sees the system working as intended in that it enriches the oligarch class via private healtchare. Therefore the socialist sees public universal healthcare as removing a revenue stream from the oligarch class, diminishing its power in the process and reducing the scope of the capitalist system. The improvement to people's lives naturally follows as a consequence of that. From this perspective, it would be very difficult for a socialist to be convinced they should abandon universal healthcare because insurers would lose too much money like Obama did.

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  • [–] 42 points 1 year ago (22 children)

    He says he's a socialist.

    Democrats say a lot of things that sound really, really good too... until they're elected, and then we realize they're shit-stains.

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  • [–] 55 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    You're not wrong and that could totally be the case but again, he's gotta be a really good actor to keep the socialist line when being grilled on some issues. It's certainly possible that he is. But I think he's leftist schtick is very different than Obama's. Only one way to find out. Vote for him if you're in NYC. 😁

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago

    I believe it's the progressives who realize they're an extremely small minority within the DNC, so you must swallow a few bitter loads to get certain stuff you believe in through while making backroom deals you would never do.

    Ultimately it is up to the American People to shift the Overton window to the left. It is possible, but won't be easy as Democrats cave to Corporations and the media being billionaire owned doesn't help when you're a progressive.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    The dems trying to take him out is evidence that he's real

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    This strikes me as something written by someone who doesn't clearly remember 2008. After Obama got the nod, Democrats largely cleared the field for him. They didn't spend months talking about how they didn't know who he was, or saying that they couldn't endorse him.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    That's fair.

    I'm thinking before that point. They did everything could to tank his candidacy in the primaries but the voters overwhelmingly rejected Hillary.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I think part of that is true and part of that is that they just don't get enough votes to actually do things.

    Especially as just a Congressperson you can't change everything all at once. You don't have the same influence as a president. So you pick your battles.

    People here get disappointed they didn't get enough done fast enough and then vote red in the next election hoping for faster change.

    Well, we got faster change. Never seen change as fast as this.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    They should have known that Trump was worse from term one...

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    For the first few months of his presidency, following the tail end of the economic growth under Obama. Under Trump the economy dumped jobs and it only did well for the wealthy. Biden added like 100,000 jobs to the economy during his first 4 months.

    It's amazing how this happens every single time. Republicans control the narrative so well that people forget that the economy consistently does better under Democrats. Every. Single. Time. It happened with Clinton and Bush. It happened with Obama and Trump. And it happened with Biden and Trump. Republicans add billions to the national debt, destroy aid programs, shrink the job market, drive up housing prices and the cost of living, and cause all that lost money to siphon to the oligarchy while lowering their taxes and raising them for everyone else. Everybody blames the Democrats for it while Republicans are in charge, and then completely miss it getting better when the Republicans are out of office.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    McCarthy spins in his grave

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    It would also require a group of Republicans with the power to gag him every time he tries to do something.

    Years ago, I saw a list that someone compiled of all of Obama's campaign promises and the results of them, and basically all but one he tried to do and was voted down by Republicans who threatened to shut down the government if Democrats tried to push it through. The one thing he promised and didn't even attempt to do was shutting down Guantanamo Bay. For everything else, the Republicans who controlled both the house and the Senate for 7 and a half years of his presidency shut him out. There's a reason that Trump spent the first two years of his presidency repealing every executive order that Obama made. Besides being racist and upset that a black man held any power in this country, of course.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Now? Almost every president has committed war crimes, and Obama was pretty strict on immigration. There are definitely things I like about him and his time in office, but we can't ignore the terrible things that happened under his admin just because they didn't affect us directly.

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  • [–] 33 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    Given a lot of his known history, I have enough confidence to say he's a real one, unlike Obama.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Any suggestions for what to read up on?

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I feel like mayor is a better jump up for a candidate like Mamdani than President. Also, Mamdani is coming up with a lot more policies that can get implemented. In contrast, Obama ran on far less openly socialist policies outside of healthcare. When it got to healthcare, Obama was relatively hands off when the bill was being written.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    As a German it will always amuse me to read about policies that Otto von Bismark enacted here as socialist. Like general health care was given to weaken the power of worker unions.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Over here in the good ole US of A, "socialism" usually doesn't refer to collective ownership of the means of production, or some other fancy book-learnin' version.

    Socialism is when the government takes some CEO and/or redneck's hard earned tax dollar and tries to do something that helps poor people.

    If the government wants to spend money on poor people, it has to be to blow them up on the other side of the world.

    Back home there are way too many big hands to fill with handouts, between corporations and rich people. We can't get to the poor beggars until some time after the fusion power rollout. And please think of the economy!

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Care to share any specifics? I haven't been following him too closely, like many others I'm a bit burnt out on US political news.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago

    I searched for his comments on the NYPD, all I could find was an "apology" that reads more as "potential new mayor, after years of criticism of the NYPD, realises that an openly antagonistic NYPD wouldn't help his agenda for New York and says the bare minimum to placate them". Keep in mind too, this is under a presidency that would gladly assist the NYPD in disturbing whatever Mamdani does when elected. He also mentions victims of police brutality in the quote. Hardly "very PRO-NYPD", IMO.

    In regards to the genocide in Gaza, he seems to be extremely pro-Palestine. He did recently visit some Zionist leaders in NYC. Jews are around 12% of the population of NYC, and whilst they certainly aren't all Zionists, at lot of them undoubtedly are. Personally, I believe a good representative should represent every part of their constituency. You can't realistically completely ignore these groups while running for a position like the mayor of NYC. Meanwhile, he has constantly throughout his life criticised Israel and expressed staunch support for the Palestinian cause.

    Feel free to disagree with me on any of these points, but even then, don't you think you might be letting perfect be the enemy of good in this case? Do you have another candidate you'd prefer?

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago

    Mandani's opposition has been tireless in trying to get him into making stances on wedge issues, especially on things like foreign policy, to deflect from his popular intended policies as mayor.

    So recently like after months of being burned by his own party for supporting Palestinians, he made a statement that called Oct 7 a war crime. So now the job is to paint him as a secret zionist.

    Which again, is not an issue for a NYC mayor. His plans to tax the rich, however, is.

    If Mamdani backed down from free busses and rent freezes, then we'd have cause for concern.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Goddamn I can’t imagine anything worse than Obama 2.0!

    Oh! Oh I’ll be having nightmares for months!

    ffs

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    Some people believe if more than x people are killed, whether the deaths are x number or 2x or x^2 doesn't make any difference: once we reach x, it's maximum horrible. Actions that reduce from something greatly more than x to something slightly more than x are not worth pursuing, because the deaths are still more than x, which is max horrible, so those actions don't matter.

    Other people believe that any senseless death avoided is always worthwhile, and support actions that reduce the volume of senseless death. Even if a lot of killing still happens, it's positive to reduce it.

    I can't tell if you are in the first group, or if you really lack the context of active conflicts the US is involved in with hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths that you cannot imagine anything worse than 4,000 deaths.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    To my knowledge, he does not have the ability to drone strike anyone. So we're safe on that count

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    An African-born Muslim Socialist?

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