Absolutely agree. As AOC has shown, it’s not hard to be a democratic socialist in New York City. That doesn’t mean It extrapolates elsewhere.
Still, there’s something to be said for running younger and more energetic candidates. I think most Americans are tired of seeing octogenarians in office.
Hey Ryan, appreciate you reading the piece, even if you disagreed with it.
It’s not about denying Mamdani’s win. He ran a smart, energetic campaign and clearly connected with a segment of voters. But the point of the article is to dig deeper than headlines. A victory built on strong branding and ideological energy doesn’t automatically equal a mandate for far-left policy — especially when many working-class communities and black voters didn’t back it.
That’s not “cope.” That’s analysis.
We can acknowledge political skill and still question whether the platform will translate into good governance for the people most impacted by city policy. That’s the conversation I think we need to be having.
Interesting points here. What you’ve pointed out about the far left is what I’ve been thinking about all along. They have these visions, but they don’t have a plan on how to act on those visions and that’s what dismays a lot of voters.
Right. Generally candidates who look good, speak good, campaign well but their ideas are not feasible and generally turn off lower income people and my communities.
Good analysis. I see people chasing shiny objects and declaring revolutions but I see nothing revolutionary upon examination. Mayors are rarely popular for long, and a young guy with no administrative experience is gonna have a tough time being a mayor. It's not like being a congressman, you actually have to continually deliver in unsexy ways.
Blind spots? Yeah, the far-left has plenty. But you don’t feel like the blind spot of our party heavyweights who endorsed a serial sexual harasser warrants a mention? Cuomo’s not just an unpopular guy; he’s a bad guy. And if Dem leadership can’t break free of the fallacious “it takes a bully to beat a bully” mindset, disgusted voters are going to keep “surprising” them.
Absolutely, and you’re right to raise that. Cuomo’s record, especially the serious allegations against him, should never be brushed aside, and it’s fair to question the judgment of party leaders who rallied behind him. My critique isn’t a defense of Cuomo, but a call for us to be more thoughtful about who and what we elevate in his place. We shouldn’t have to choose between deeply flawed establishment figures and performative idealism with shaky policy. Voters deserve better on all sides, and that means holding both the old guard and the rising stars to a higher standard.
Mayor is not the kind of job where you “knock it out of the park” or where that is even a goal. If it’s based on fulfilling his glossiest campaign promises, the ball won’t even roll a few feet. Being mayor is an administrative, not a policy, job. It involves filling potholes, removing fallen trees blocking streets, dealing with zoning issues etc. I’ve followed municipal politics since I was a child in Chicago (Mayor Daley yeah yeah yeah — god, how much I despised him!) to Cleveland (the disastrous term of one-time progressive idol Dennis Kucinich) to currently the recall campaign of a mayor in my suburb who let his wife run roughshod over staff and make awful anti-Semitic remarks in our city with the largest Orthodox community between NYC and Chicago. The petitions have been validated and it will be on the September ballot. He continues to paint himself as a victim. But in every online discussion, someone is sure to say “But what about the pothole on my street?”
One can definitely knock being mayor out of the park specifically by addressing those administrative duties well and in a way that improves QOL for residents. It is also a policy job. I’m curious why you are saying it’s not. How a city does or does not help fund transit in order to remove fares is absolutely policy. How a city goes about prioritizing pot hole filling is policy. Garbage removal is policy. Zoning is literally public policy. All that administration stuff gets prioritized by way of policy. Especially in a place like NYC. Very few candidates go on to fulfill every policy proposal from the campaign trail because we live in a representative democracy and the mayor is not god. But having a platform like his that discusses ideas that aren’t the same old bullshit is important and interesting.
It doesn’t make sense to be hand-wringing this much over policy proposals that have no teeth yet. People are out here acting like these things are both impossible and catastrophic. When the reality is you don’t get to a paradigm shift without throwing some new wet noodles at the wall the see what might stick. And as a member of a generation doing worse than my parents’ generation, I’d like to see many new wet noodles getting thrown to see how we might go about organizing ourselves in a way that maybe sucks less.
Garbage removal and pot holes aren't policy — they are administrative issues. Making transit free is something that requires so many levels of government, and so many changes in funding and taxation, it's literally undoable: impossible. No paradigm is going to shift there. My concern is that I see a lot of starry-eyed young progressives flame out when they don't get their shiny promises and they drop out of participation; they don't have staying power because they don't understand all the moving parts and pieces that have to be in place to make even something much LESS shiny happen (say, reduced fares below a certain income level). I think it's also interesting that Mamdani did best with affluent voters, and Cuomo did best with less affluent voters. I'm not sure what that means.
That part about more affluent voters is interesting indeed. Alright, here’s a hypothetical: you are a DNC strategist and you see that he goes above the average in a certain demographic. You find the descriptors of that demographic and you come up with “affluent,” “college degrees”, “likes cats,” “ eats puppies.” Your employer views him as an existential threat. Which adjectives do you use? This is why they say that there are lies, there are damn lies and there are statistics. You can’t really understand a statistic until you examine the circumstances and parameters of all of the data collection.
Starry-eyed progressives who flame out after a single loss? I know socialists who have been with the movement for decades, struggling for every inch of ground they take. We can only hope that the younger ones learn that tenacity. More destructive would be giving too much too soon to people who haven’t struggled for it. If a person has never had to choose between an ideal and need, they will not understand the choices and compromises faced by 90% of us.
That 2022 article on free transit is overwhelmingly temporary pandemic-driven fare forgiveness or special cases (things like free transit on NYE, which has been done here), And what happens in Missoula Montana isn't transferable to NYC. That doesn't indicate "well-thought-out policy." It hasn't been done anywhere in the U.S. on a significant level.
Sure, I know a handful of old socialists — they make up 3% of most Democratic groups. That's because that group has already had to choose between ideals and needs, and the starry-eyed young progressives haven't yet. And yes, Mamdani is indeed promising too much too soon for those who haven't struggled for it, you are right. Perhaps why less affluent voters didn't break for him: they've heard the promises, seen the lack of follow-through and are less easily swept away.
The question is possibility. Turns out, in a pinch, when it affects businesses, it is miraculously possible. But you’re right: NYC, Chicago and LA in particular are in classes of their own. If someone was going to make public transport free in those cities, I would want to see very detailed, very deductive plans as to how. Of course, politicians being politicians, we have a campaign promise instead. In my opinion, it’s an odd, weird,outsized promise. Sorta hope my opinion is wrong, but odds seem against it.
I think that theory about less affluent voters could be the case, but there’s a line up of cases we can’t explore without having a handle on the entire study and its methods. But working people notice when movements make them expendable assets and take their trust and lives lightly, using them as a means instead of an end, like the two major parties have ad nauseam. At the end of the day, they’re still tired, frustrated, and taking crap out of their boss.
And that part about administrating a well- thought-out policy, I absolutely agree, 100%, when it comes to government. The only reason I even know that such a thing as administration coming from good policy exists is because I’ve seen it in the technology business. But in that business, you can design what it looks like from the beginning, and you can’t always account for outlying customer service problems. So, even a new plan can go off the rails. In government, we’re working on a centuries old, complicated project while only considering four years at a time, and expecting it to be great or at least fair and serviceable. We are in an era when both of those things are degrading.
And he isn’t elected yet. My hope is that people ask him about very specific plans for accomplishing his promises, especially the conspicuously outsized ones. The main narrative is concentrating too much on slagging him and defending what he is, taking cheap shots,not on how he plans to accomplish his plans. In detail. In fact, I think we should require that of all politicians.
Knock it out of the park is just a hyperbolic metaphor. okay, here: I’m saying that maybe he’ll be better at it than expected, even way better, maybe even improve the quality of life in his city. Or, maybe he’ll just spin his wheels, and the big two parties will make sure he doesn’t get much done. Or, maybe he is terrible and his ideas turn NYC into a brand new circle of hell. The last two are what I expect out of government, so he can’t lower that expectation much farther. But, if he does do well, it would tickle me to see it.
My guess? He'll be average, which will bum out many of his eager-beaver followers, This happened with our very young mayor in Cleveland. It happened with the very young Pete Buttigieg in South Bend: he was a VERY average mayor who made a lot of mistakes.
A lot of people scared to even try something new. Tearing new ideas down before someone is even elected or given the opportunity to do something different. I do understand people being jaded about campaigns with lofty goals, but what is the other option? A serial sex pest or billionaire backed establishment robot?
Really thoughtful. I worry what happens to the “movement” when free transit and free childcare don’t magically appear. And the media, swept away by the idea of a “movement,” is understating just how repellent Cuomo is to many people, including me.
Interestingly, this reminds me of our Cleveland mayoral election in 2021 though the candidates weren’t as extreme, nor was the race. We had a glossy, inexperienced 33-year-old whose promises were less extravagant than Mamdani’s but still had the most appeal to the same young, white, affluent folks in the new “luxury” apartment buildings that supported Bernie Sanders. (As usual, the Black east side, demoralized by decades of voter suppression and gerrymandering, sat out.) His opponent? Odious, although not on the level of Cuomo: an old-school, corporate-loving Irish pol who lied to my face. The mayor, now up for reelection unopposed except by a perennial candidate, a GOP joke, hasn’t been a disaster nor has he been transformational. Which is pretty typical of mayors. Ok, except for the one in my Cleveland suburb who is about to be recalled just months before the election he failed to qualify for!
This is great analysis. It definitely got me thinking differently. The general election is gonna be interesting to watch.
Thank you, Tatiana!
Absolutely agree. As AOC has shown, it’s not hard to be a democratic socialist in New York City. That doesn’t mean It extrapolates elsewhere.
Still, there’s something to be said for running younger and more energetic candidates. I think most Americans are tired of seeing octogenarians in office.
I’ll take Jasmine Crockett over AOC any day.
lol, man this post is pure cope.
Hey Ryan, appreciate you reading the piece, even if you disagreed with it.
It’s not about denying Mamdani’s win. He ran a smart, energetic campaign and clearly connected with a segment of voters. But the point of the article is to dig deeper than headlines. A victory built on strong branding and ideological energy doesn’t automatically equal a mandate for far-left policy — especially when many working-class communities and black voters didn’t back it.
That’s not “cope.” That’s analysis.
We can acknowledge political skill and still question whether the platform will translate into good governance for the people most impacted by city policy. That’s the conversation I think we need to be having.
Thanks again for engaging.
Pure “cope”?
Let’s hope for the best! Centrist conservative SE Cupp summed up my feelings: not a fan of Mamdani, but $&@* Cuomo for being a scum bag.
Campaigning is one thing, governing is another - let’s hope Mamdani figures out the latter, soon.
💯Agree with everything you stated.
An honest appraisal; thank you for having the courage to give it.
Realistic assessment of far-left’s approach to serious organizing.
Interesting points here. What you’ve pointed out about the far left is what I’ve been thinking about all along. They have these visions, but they don’t have a plan on how to act on those visions and that’s what dismays a lot of voters.
Right. Generally candidates who look good, speak good, campaign well but their ideas are not feasible and generally turn off lower income people and my communities.
Good analysis. I see people chasing shiny objects and declaring revolutions but I see nothing revolutionary upon examination. Mayors are rarely popular for long, and a young guy with no administrative experience is gonna have a tough time being a mayor. It's not like being a congressman, you actually have to continually deliver in unsexy ways.
Blind spots? Yeah, the far-left has plenty. But you don’t feel like the blind spot of our party heavyweights who endorsed a serial sexual harasser warrants a mention? Cuomo’s not just an unpopular guy; he’s a bad guy. And if Dem leadership can’t break free of the fallacious “it takes a bully to beat a bully” mindset, disgusted voters are going to keep “surprising” them.
Absolutely, and you’re right to raise that. Cuomo’s record, especially the serious allegations against him, should never be brushed aside, and it’s fair to question the judgment of party leaders who rallied behind him. My critique isn’t a defense of Cuomo, but a call for us to be more thoughtful about who and what we elevate in his place. We shouldn’t have to choose between deeply flawed establishment figures and performative idealism with shaky policy. Voters deserve better on all sides, and that means holding both the old guard and the rising stars to a higher standard.
Or he could knock it out of the park. That would be an awkward topic at the DNC’s next get-together, wouldn’t it? We’ll see.
Mayor is not the kind of job where you “knock it out of the park” or where that is even a goal. If it’s based on fulfilling his glossiest campaign promises, the ball won’t even roll a few feet. Being mayor is an administrative, not a policy, job. It involves filling potholes, removing fallen trees blocking streets, dealing with zoning issues etc. I’ve followed municipal politics since I was a child in Chicago (Mayor Daley yeah yeah yeah — god, how much I despised him!) to Cleveland (the disastrous term of one-time progressive idol Dennis Kucinich) to currently the recall campaign of a mayor in my suburb who let his wife run roughshod over staff and make awful anti-Semitic remarks in our city with the largest Orthodox community between NYC and Chicago. The petitions have been validated and it will be on the September ballot. He continues to paint himself as a victim. But in every online discussion, someone is sure to say “But what about the pothole on my street?”
One can definitely knock being mayor out of the park specifically by addressing those administrative duties well and in a way that improves QOL for residents. It is also a policy job. I’m curious why you are saying it’s not. How a city does or does not help fund transit in order to remove fares is absolutely policy. How a city goes about prioritizing pot hole filling is policy. Garbage removal is policy. Zoning is literally public policy. All that administration stuff gets prioritized by way of policy. Especially in a place like NYC. Very few candidates go on to fulfill every policy proposal from the campaign trail because we live in a representative democracy and the mayor is not god. But having a platform like his that discusses ideas that aren’t the same old bullshit is important and interesting.
It doesn’t make sense to be hand-wringing this much over policy proposals that have no teeth yet. People are out here acting like these things are both impossible and catastrophic. When the reality is you don’t get to a paradigm shift without throwing some new wet noodles at the wall the see what might stick. And as a member of a generation doing worse than my parents’ generation, I’d like to see many new wet noodles getting thrown to see how we might go about organizing ourselves in a way that maybe sucks less.
Garbage removal and pot holes aren't policy — they are administrative issues. Making transit free is something that requires so many levels of government, and so many changes in funding and taxation, it's literally undoable: impossible. No paradigm is going to shift there. My concern is that I see a lot of starry-eyed young progressives flame out when they don't get their shiny promises and they drop out of participation; they don't have staying power because they don't understand all the moving parts and pieces that have to be in place to make even something much LESS shiny happen (say, reduced fares below a certain income level). I think it's also interesting that Mamdani did best with affluent voters, and Cuomo did best with less affluent voters. I'm not sure what that means.
That part about more affluent voters is interesting indeed. Alright, here’s a hypothetical: you are a DNC strategist and you see that he goes above the average in a certain demographic. You find the descriptors of that demographic and you come up with “affluent,” “college degrees”, “likes cats,” “ eats puppies.” Your employer views him as an existential threat. Which adjectives do you use? This is why they say that there are lies, there are damn lies and there are statistics. You can’t really understand a statistic until you examine the circumstances and parameters of all of the data collection.
Good administration is guided by well-thought-out policy. Without that it degenerates. Here is an example of how free transit has fared in places including large cities across the country: https://www.planetizen.com/features/117977-state-americas-free-transit-programs . Turns out it’s not impossible.
Starry-eyed progressives who flame out after a single loss? I know socialists who have been with the movement for decades, struggling for every inch of ground they take. We can only hope that the younger ones learn that tenacity. More destructive would be giving too much too soon to people who haven’t struggled for it. If a person has never had to choose between an ideal and need, they will not understand the choices and compromises faced by 90% of us.
That 2022 article on free transit is overwhelmingly temporary pandemic-driven fare forgiveness or special cases (things like free transit on NYE, which has been done here), And what happens in Missoula Montana isn't transferable to NYC. That doesn't indicate "well-thought-out policy." It hasn't been done anywhere in the U.S. on a significant level.
Sure, I know a handful of old socialists — they make up 3% of most Democratic groups. That's because that group has already had to choose between ideals and needs, and the starry-eyed young progressives haven't yet. And yes, Mamdani is indeed promising too much too soon for those who haven't struggled for it, you are right. Perhaps why less affluent voters didn't break for him: they've heard the promises, seen the lack of follow-through and are less easily swept away.
The question is possibility. Turns out, in a pinch, when it affects businesses, it is miraculously possible. But you’re right: NYC, Chicago and LA in particular are in classes of their own. If someone was going to make public transport free in those cities, I would want to see very detailed, very deductive plans as to how. Of course, politicians being politicians, we have a campaign promise instead. In my opinion, it’s an odd, weird,outsized promise. Sorta hope my opinion is wrong, but odds seem against it.
I think that theory about less affluent voters could be the case, but there’s a line up of cases we can’t explore without having a handle on the entire study and its methods. But working people notice when movements make them expendable assets and take their trust and lives lightly, using them as a means instead of an end, like the two major parties have ad nauseam. At the end of the day, they’re still tired, frustrated, and taking crap out of their boss.
And that part about administrating a well- thought-out policy, I absolutely agree, 100%, when it comes to government. The only reason I even know that such a thing as administration coming from good policy exists is because I’ve seen it in the technology business. But in that business, you can design what it looks like from the beginning, and you can’t always account for outlying customer service problems. So, even a new plan can go off the rails. In government, we’re working on a centuries old, complicated project while only considering four years at a time, and expecting it to be great or at least fair and serviceable. We are in an era when both of those things are degrading.
And he isn’t elected yet. My hope is that people ask him about very specific plans for accomplishing his promises, especially the conspicuously outsized ones. The main narrative is concentrating too much on slagging him and defending what he is, taking cheap shots,not on how he plans to accomplish his plans. In detail. In fact, I think we should require that of all politicians.
Knock it out of the park is just a hyperbolic metaphor. okay, here: I’m saying that maybe he’ll be better at it than expected, even way better, maybe even improve the quality of life in his city. Or, maybe he’ll just spin his wheels, and the big two parties will make sure he doesn’t get much done. Or, maybe he is terrible and his ideas turn NYC into a brand new circle of hell. The last two are what I expect out of government, so he can’t lower that expectation much farther. But, if he does do well, it would tickle me to see it.
My guess? He'll be average, which will bum out many of his eager-beaver followers, This happened with our very young mayor in Cleveland. It happened with the very young Pete Buttigieg in South Bend: he was a VERY average mayor who made a lot of mistakes.
A lot of people scared to even try something new. Tearing new ideas down before someone is even elected or given the opportunity to do something different. I do understand people being jaded about campaigns with lofty goals, but what is the other option? A serial sex pest or billionaire backed establishment robot?
Really thoughtful. I worry what happens to the “movement” when free transit and free childcare don’t magically appear. And the media, swept away by the idea of a “movement,” is understating just how repellent Cuomo is to many people, including me.
Interestingly, this reminds me of our Cleveland mayoral election in 2021 though the candidates weren’t as extreme, nor was the race. We had a glossy, inexperienced 33-year-old whose promises were less extravagant than Mamdani’s but still had the most appeal to the same young, white, affluent folks in the new “luxury” apartment buildings that supported Bernie Sanders. (As usual, the Black east side, demoralized by decades of voter suppression and gerrymandering, sat out.) His opponent? Odious, although not on the level of Cuomo: an old-school, corporate-loving Irish pol who lied to my face. The mayor, now up for reelection unopposed except by a perennial candidate, a GOP joke, hasn’t been a disaster nor has he been transformational. Which is pretty typical of mayors. Ok, except for the one in my Cleveland suburb who is about to be recalled just months before the election he failed to qualify for!