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Coffee Break: Is Mamdani’s Win Over Cuomo The End of Democratic Party Neoliberalism?

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The cynical, sclerotic centrist establishment of the American Democratic Party took a huge L in Tuesday’s Mayoral Primary in New York City. This race functioned as a pre-season game for the 2028 presidential primary and it’s importance to the national party politics is reflected in the tens of millions of dollars spent to prop up former Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Don’t believe me? Ask Matt Stoller and Ross Barkan:

The NYT summed it up:

Zohran Mamdani’s stunning performance in the Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday amounted to a watershed moment for Muslim New Yorkers, who could see one of their own lead City Hall for the first time should he succeed in the general election in November.

New York City is home to roughly one million Muslims; they made up 12 percent of the electorate in the 2021 mayoral election. Mr. Mamdani wove his faith into his campaign from its earliest days, hitting the trail while fasting for Ramadan and taking his message of affordability to mosques and Muslim community centers throughout the city.

His triumph over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who led in most polls throughout the race, was driven by the diverse coalition of voters he built that included young people, people of color, and first-time and infrequent voters. Muslim voters played a large role in growing that base.

The cooperation among Democrats from different backgrounds was especially heartening for some, who saw his background as an example of a new generation of leadership.

Spencer Ackerman described the desperate attacks aimed at Zohani:

…against all odds, against DoorDash, against Michael Bloomberg, against Bill Ackman, against Palantir’s Alex Karp, against Andrew Cuomo, against the Murdoch media behemoth, against Bill Clinton, against Jim Clyburn, against the entire Democratic Party, Zohran Mamdani will win the Democratic nomination for mayor. The ranked-vote total will confirm it; Cuomo stunningly conceded the nomination.

For three weeks, every time I turned on the local news, every time I turned on a basketball or a baseball game, every time I loaded a YouTube video, every time I went to my mailbox, I saw those forces call Zohran Mamdani a dangerous, antisemitic jihadi.

David Sirota disected the already begun battle to control the narrative and decide the meaning of Mamdani’s win for The Lever:

in the media class that exists to interpret these moments for the political mainstream, a different story is already being written. And it reveals something deeper: not just confusion, but ideology — one that insists democracy is a performance, not a transfer of power or a mandate for a different set of policies.

For months, pundits dismissed Mamdani as championing too radical, too fringe, too unserious an agenda. But now that he’s clinched the nomination, the narrative is shifting: Mamdani, they say, succeeded not because of his policy program, but because of his energy, his style, his vibes. On Pod Save America — a proxy for the entire Democratic political class and its liberal followers — Tommy Vietor praised a video of Mamdani walking across Manhattan for giving him “Obama 2007 feels,” calling it “nimble and fun.”

Then came the pivot.

“I do think it’s worth separating out the style of politics from the policy,” co-host Jon Favreau said. “Because we could have a whole debate about what policy positions can win… but if there’s a center-left candidate who campaigns like Mamdani, that person could be president.”

That’s the tell.

This is not a new trick. When liberal elites feel threatened by a winning candidate whose politics could actually challenge capital, they seek to depoliticize the victory and attribute it to vibes, marketing savvy, and brand. It’s a containment strategy: Treat the insurgent’s style as admirable while ignoring — or quietly discrediting — their policy platform. That way, the establishment gets to appropriate the energy without having to endorse the demands.
…
The mass rage rising up inside the Democratic Party is not a demand for better optics or technocratic tweaks to the system. It’s a demand for more autonomy, freedom, and economic security. Mamdani doesn’t just look or sound inspiring — he offers people material tools: ownership, stability, dignity. To reduce that to tone is to drain the politics of its power. It’s to gaslight the American people into believing that real democracy isn’t control over one’s own life, it isn’t true freedom — but submission to its guise of elite management.

Centrist rat Matt Yglesias tweeted as he jumped from the sunken SS Cuomo (in fairness to Matt Y, he technically kinda sorta endorsed the disgraced former Mayor Eric Adams rather than Cuomo):

Just as I used Emmanuel Todd’s analysis of the nihilism at the heart of Netanyahu’s Israel to explain Google’s decision to risk their multi-trillion dollar search business to go all-in on LLM AI on Monday, it’s irresistible to apply to the failure and rot at the heart of the Democratic party establishment.

This Politico article details the 18 New York politicians who both called for his resignation as governor in 2021 AND endorsed him for NYC mayor in 2025 — without offering any explanation for changing their minds.

This is not limited to the New York party leadership.

And how could anyone be ready to replace misleadership like this?

Even the most deeply embedded members of the consultant class recognize that the party leadership is bankrupt:

“Right now we’re leaderless, we’re messageless, we’re agendaless, we don’t have any alternative ideas to the president and the Republicans right now. So, you know, I’m concerned, to say the least,” Solis Doyle, who ran Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid, told journalist Mark Halperin on his podcast “Next Up with Mark Halperin.”

The outsider wing of the party is licking their lips:

Ackerman is declaring this the end of the 9/11 era of politics:

…tonight, Zohran Mamdani is on the verge of sitting in the seat of Rudy Giuliani.

It is important, it is revealing, and it is crucial to observe who played 9/11 Politics against Zohran. Who made a deliberate point of trying to make Jews like me hate and fear Zohran. It was DoorDash, Bloomberg, Ackman, Karp, and the rest. It was capital. 9/11 Politics were their means to divide the people of this city so they can continue conquering it. To keep the most vibrant city on earth out of reach of the working people—and particularly the immigrants and their children—who create its vibrancy. To keep New York what Bloomberg once called “a luxury product.”

Let it sink in: In an era of obscene wealth consolidation, in a prolonged period of soul-crushing unaffordability, capital needs the politics of 9/11 to divide the people of New York from living the lives we deserve.

While I was out in the baking heat today volunteering for Zohran, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal flashed a notification on my phone. It read: New York’s housing crisis has gotten so bad that a socialist might become mayor. And just like that, even a Murdoch paper could understand historical materialism.

Capital has ground New York down so deeply that the people who live here will not take it anymore.

Mamdani wanted this fight, he waged it, and he won it. He did what the people’s playbook said it would take to win it: He organized thoroughly, mobilized relentlessly, and promised the working class deliverable policies needed to keep their lives within their grasp—lower rent; free childcare; fast and free buses; cheaper groceries through public stores—despite the entire political and economic establishments laughing at those policies and those needs. He did not shy away from these needs. He championed them.

Not only is the Dem establishment rotten to the core it is deeply divided between contending groups of idiots as illustrated in this Atlantic piece about a conflict between the Kamala Harris campaign (the 2017 Cleveland Browns of Politics) and Future Forward a $900 million stupor PAC that if possible, was even more misguided and addled than the campaign.

Future Forward developed a very effective sales pitch:

Future Forward believed there was a superior way to run campaigns and allocate money. By March 2024, it was telling donors that it could produce “the absolute best ads that are proven to be effective across platforms” with a voter response rate “55% better than the average ad.” Over the course of 2024, Future Forward conducted hundreds of focus groups and collected more data on American voters than any other political effort in history, including more than 14 million voter surveys in the final 10 months before Election Day. The group created and tested more than 1,000 advertisements to support Harris’s presidential bid from dozens of ad firms, using a randomized-controlled-trial method that compared the vote preference of people who had seen an ad against those who had not. The best-testing spots blanketed the airwaves in swing states starting in August and were used to purchase more than 3 billion digital-video ad impressions.

As a matter of fundraising, the pitch was a massive success, attracting more than 69 percent of all Democratic presidential super-PAC dollars—more than three times the share of the top super PAC in 2020, according to an analysis by the independent journalist Kyle Tharp. Much of that money came from America’s wealthiest Democratic supporters, such as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. (Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of Emerson Collective, which is the majority owner of The Atlantic, gave to a part of the Future Forward effort that does not disclose its donors, according to The New York Times.) For context, $900 million is more money than the Democratic National Committee raised last cycle and nearly twice as much as Trump’s own campaign collected. The Biden and Harris operation ultimately raised $1.2 billion.

But their approach to campaigning was a classic example of missing the forest for the trees as revealed by this staggering pair of blunders.

Screw up #1:

Future Forward, which had long favored advertising close to Election Day, held back, even as MAGA Inc. began going on the air the next year. The first Future Forward super-PAC spot did not run until after Trump’s indictments, felony convictions, and assasination attempt; the Republican convention; and the switch to Harris. The election’s exit polls showed that 80 percent of voters had made up their minds before the end of August, when the full force of the group’s spending hit the airwaves.

And #2 which indicts their entire approach:

Anat Shenker-Osorio, a Democratic data strategist who works with Way to Win and has criticized Future Forward’s methods, argues that ad testing in online panels creates an artificial environment where people are forced to watch the tested spots. “That does not mirror conditions in real life,” she told us. “This testing cannot tell us what would cause people to pay attention and what would cause your base to want to repeat the message. What would cause your base to wear the equivalent of the red hats?”

I would love to know if Future Forward was involved in raising and spending some of the almost $30 million the Dem establishment just wasted on Andrew Cuomo.

All the stupid money on Earth can’t save the nihilistic neoliberals from the likes of Mamdani and his multimedia producer Donald Borenstein.

Transcript of Mamdani ad:

Newscaster:“This evening New York mayor Eric Adams has been indicted by a Federal grand jury…”

Mamdani:“Every politician says New York is the greatest city on the globe. but what good is that if no one can afford to live here? City Hall is engulfed in corruption. The cost of living is the real crisis.

“New Yorkers are being crushed by rent and child care the slowest buses in the nation are robbing us of our time and our sanity.

“Working people are being pushed out of the city they built.

“A mayor could change this and that’s why I’m running. I’ll make buses fast and free.”

Older Woman: “So I can just get where I’m going.”

Mamdani: “I’ll make Child Care available to all New Yorkers at no cost.”

Younger Woman: “I want to raise my kid in New York.”

Mamdani: “I’ll freeze the rent for every single rent stabilized tenant.

African-American Woman: “These Eric Adams rent hikes are killing us.”

Mamdani:: “Life in this city doesn’t need to be this hard, but politicians like Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo want it to be this way. They care about their donors. They care about themselves. They don’t care about you, the working class who keep this city running.

“This campaign is for every New Yorker who believes in the dignity of their neighbors. The government’s job is to actually make our lives better. We can afford to bring down the rent, have world class public transit and make it easier to raise a family. We can do all of that and so much more because this is New York. We can afford to dream.”

A corrupt establishment hack like Rahm Emanuel could raise and spend infinite money running for president in 2028, but since he can’t even bring himself to promise to materially improve the lives of voters, I give him a 0% chance against a genuine progressive with a plan to do just that, especially if they have someone like David Borenstein helping craft their message.

Watch out for a “David Borenstein” primary among progressive Democrats with Presidential ambitions.

But before I get too carried away with thoughts of 2028, Ackerman reminds us the NYC Mayor’s race is far from over and it will get very dirty indeed:

Usually the Democratic nomination in New York City is the mayoral election. That won’t be the case this year. The Democratic Party machinery will be as intransigent as possible. Capital will flood into this race as never before. The fear-mongering of these past three weeks is likely nothing compared to the way they are going to call a Bronx Science grad who raps about his grandmother a terrorist who will kill Jews.

They will do all of this because they see what the people of New York did tonight as a test case. And they are correct. If a socialist can wrest power from the servants of oligarchy in the financial capital of the world—well, my friends around this country, around this world, what can you do to take the power back from them where you live?

And the American Right is either in panic mode:

Or cracking their knuckles for a fight they think they’ll win, from Sasha Stone:

The Democrats’ biggest problem is that all they have to sell for ten years is their war on Trump. In Zohran, the young have found someone they believe in. He will sell them exactly what they didn’t even know they wanted, but now they want it really bad. He’s the Music Man.

He inspires them, sells them the dream, and pushes out one beautiful lie after another. What they want is someone who is not white, who sees America the way they do—as an oppressor/oppressed nation with equity as the only solution. And what’s the endgame of equity? Socialism, Marxism, Communism. Some things never die.

What Mamdani does really well, at least from what I’ve seen, is that he is talking about something other than Trump. He’s talking about a path forward for the Left. It might sound like promises he can’t possibly keep, but it’s better than what the Democrats are selling, which is nothing.

For years, the Democrats tried to prevent this energy from overtaking their party. They sidelined Bernie, and they’re not exactly thrilled with AOC. They pretended they were moderates and used Joe Biden to present that facade. Now, though, they have no choice but to move out of the way.

The Democrats have nothing to offer now — no leaders, plan, or vision. That’s why it’s so easy for someone like Mamdani to come along and sweep so many up in his fantasy. The only question is, can he deliver on his promises?

Either way, the Republicans should not fear the rise of a guy like Mamdani. He’s a pampered college kid and the son of filmmaker Mira Nair. It’s the Democrats who should be worried. There is no turning back now.

Or talking in frankly terrifying terms that are quite plausible in a post-Constitutional, post Jan. 6 era:

Things are getting very interesting, but hopefully not this interesting….yet

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77 comments

  2. Terry Flynn

    Looking at the percentages, if Best-Worst Voting instead of ranked choice had been used, it’s possible that Brad Lander might have won. Let’s assume the 43.5% for Mamdani and the 36.4% for Cuomo had each been used to name the other as “worst” (given highly partisan nature of politics). Mamdani would have immediately be on 7.1% net approval, Cuomo on -7.1% (by simple subtraction).

    If the 18.9% of other listed candidate results (according to the Guardian) all put Mamdani as worst he’d go down to -11.8%. Lander (3rd place candidate) wins with +11.3% (since nobody put him as worst to bring down his net score). I only have (probably partisan) sources about Lander and Wikipedia to go on. Draw your own conclusions as to whether he’s “someone progressives should really root for”. It would take most of the 4th ranked and below candidates putting Lander as “worst” to push him below Mamdani’s net score.

    Another interesting case of a primary in USA where identical ranking of candidates might give different winner depending on whether ranked choice or best-worst is used. Usual disclaimer: I had nothing to do with best-worst (most-least) voting. It is an interesting application of a more general method I wrote the textbook on and I absolutely sit on the fence regarding whether it “should” be used, over (say) ranked choice. Your personal philosophy will dictate whether you think this voting system is good or awful.

    Reply ↓
    1. Unironic Pangloss

      IMO, the best-worst method fits the zeitgeist of the western world right now….

      A large chunk are voting for: the best option to defeat their most-hated choice. (POTUS 2024, 2020, 2016, 1992, UK/Starmer).

      rank voting does not infer intensity of favorability.

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        1. Terry Flynn

          Thanks. My router burped to my original reply to Unironic Pangloss and I thought it never went through so pressed submit again. I didn’t get the “you have resubmitted a comment” warning from skynet (who do a lot of legwork in screening stuff before it gets to NC moderation team, as Yves kindly explained to me once).

          I may have gained a strike against me by skynet if original did go through and if so, my bad. But basically UP in last sentence hit nail on the head re the maths. Now the ETHICS/PHILOSOPHICAL arguments easily go another way (Arrow’s Theorem in action) so you made a kind comment but it’s up to USians whether they want to pilot such stuff and observe how voters might (as they always do) try to subvert it via tactical voting.

          I merely look on with curiosity and certainly don’t count what would be a victory under BWS as vindication. You Americans might like to debate these things ;-)

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          1. XXYY

            Seems like it would be “easy” to do real world tests of alternative voting systems by including the needed information on actual ballots used in a race.

            And the registrar could publish the theoretical results after the election is done:

            “If X voting system had been used, this would have been the result of the election.”

            ”If Y voting system had been used this would have been the result of the election.”

            This would give a vivid and an impeachable collection of information to people are asking what if questions about how we should be running our elections.

            I realize there would still be manifold real world problems in doing this.

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  3. Pat

    I’m going to have to think about Mr. Stoker’s opinion. Probably sheer horror is fueling my optimistic it won’t happen response although I do think they will let Mamdavi take office and then hamstring him and the city six ways to Sunday first.
    That said if our Capitalist and Zionist masters have any memory at all, maybe not. This is just one more really terrifying sign that they are losing control. Besides having to take Bernie out in Brooklyn and AOC surviving. the NY metropolitan area along with the larger cities upstate were the only reason that Cuomo survived two primary challenges. Trump made major in roads in NY. And most of upstate has wanted to take out NYC for decades. Capital doesn’t really play well there. They lose NYC for any time and they will lose the state.
    Upstate and the non PMC/Penthouse classes of the city are not interchangeable, but they do have a heck of a lot in common.

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  4. Michael Fiorillo

    Native and lifelong New Yorker, and I’m happy he won, but if elected he won’t be allowed to govern unless there is persistent mobilization in support of him and his program. As we’ve seen demonstrated over and over again, the Democratic leadership prefers Trumpismo to an internal challenge to its power, and if able, they will knife Mamdani in the back.

    That said, I’m relishing my schadenfreude at the thought of the freak out meetings taking place at the Partnership For New York City at this very moment.

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    1. mrsyk

      Yeah, Mamdani will need to deliver in some part on his campaign “promises”, that is if he wins. Neither winning nor delivering will be easy.

      I am skeptical that last night’s result signals a groundswell upending of the current state of affairs team blue. Will their leadership just pack up and decamp? I imagine they will “improve their messaging”, read become more expansive liars. That the establishment ran a deeply flawed candidate certainly assisted Mamdani in a ranked choice closed primary. The general will be less kind.
      Why the establishment could only come up with Cuomo is curious, but I’m having a hard time believing progressive has anything to do with it.
      Cuomo is on the record stating he will be on the November ballot “no matter what”. If he can get his name on the ballot as an independent, he has a good chance of winning. Team red will see to it.

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    2. Janeway

      Lifelong Finger Lakes resident – Albany is where all this will quietly die if he is elected. The rent thing would need Albany’s OK and probably most of the other promises will need Albany or MTA money, both of which Katie the Gov controls either directly or through the political channels of a NY gov.

      Now, Katie did give Buffalo close to Billion for a Bills Stadium – but free childcare doesn’t have the same cache as the NFL (and only NFL team that plays in NY – the other 2 are headquartered in NYC only so they can refer to their NJ teams as NY – although the players have to pay both NY & NJ taxes, LOL).

      Interesting times!

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      2. XXYY

        What’s the plan for “fast buses”? This is an interesting and perhaps a very technocratic problem. Are they talking about dedicated bus lanes? This seems like something that could be done without Albany or anyone else being involved, and does not seem like it would gore too many oxen or break too many rice bowls, depending on which metaphor you prefer. No one benefits from slow buses, neither the population, nor employers, nor local businesses that depend on customers taking the bus.

        Mamdami needs a fast and concrete win to get his office off the ground and the wind at his back. FDR knew this very well and instituted, as I recall, 100 things in 100 days or something like that. If people know and point to specific material benefits that a candidate has done, arguing about race or class or anything else won’t get much traction. Conversely, anything he talks about but doesn’t do we’ll be used as evidence of his impotence and incompetence.

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    3. lyman alpha blob

      I tend to agree about being allowed to govern – de Blasio looked promising and he did do some decent things as mayor, but he also wound up kissing up to the money like they all do.

      That being said, Mamdani needs to get elected in the general first and since the article brought up Droopy Dawg Joe Lieberman, who infamously ran as an independent and won with full establishment backing after losing a Democrat senate primary to the promising Ned Lamont, I will just point out that Cuomo still at this point retains the option of running as an independent himself.

      If the establishment believes that running Cuomo as an independent will keep Mamdani out of office, then Cuomo will run as an independent.

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      1. mrsyk

        This. There’s more to consider. I believe Adams will be on the ballot as an independent. That’s not going to work as they are basically the same, creating a self defeating mechanism (and a run-on sentence).
        More. Will the Republican nominee be able to take advantage of a strong dilution effect on everything to the left if neither Adams nor Cuomo will drop out.

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      3. Michael Fiorillo

        Assuming Adams stays on the ballot, Cuomo’s running in November will help Mamdani, since it will split the anti-Mamdani vote three ways.

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      4. Yves Smith

        Sorry, as a New Yorker, I can attest de Blasio was an empty suit. All posturing, zero seriousness about anything. His morning gym routine in Brooklyn (when he lived at Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side) was more important to him than governing.

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        1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

          when he let the NYPD arrest his children and did nothing about it he revealed his utter uselessness

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  5. chris

    This was also a fun campaign to watch for Democrats behaving badly. The badly photoshopped beard was both hilariously awful and outrageous. Cuomo did everything but accuse Mamdani of being related to Bin Ladin.

    As for what comes next, I don’t know. I don’t know where the money for those proposed material benefits will come from, unless the very wealthy and a lot of similar people get some pretty large bills sent to them in ways they can’t dodge. I don’t think that will happen. NYC has become an amusement park for the wealthy. Their consumption and desire to be in The City drives a lot of stuff in NYC. I don’t know how Mamdani or anyone breaks free of that.

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  6. Adam1

    I know I’ve pointed out this fact in multiple comments over the years… almost every county Trump won in NYS in 2016, Bernie Sanders won in the Democratic Primary in 2016. Nearly all of those same counties are traditionally reliably RED counties. The voters are open to if not wanting real, not oligarch, options to vote for! Not just oligarch pre-selected options.

    Doe’s Mamdani’s win signal a change? I’d love to think so, but you can’t assume success with a non-meaningful election, I mean primary (it wasn’t the actual “election” which could go republican for whatever reason).

    While Mamdani might be a great candidate, NO ONE PERSON makes a movement!

    Yes, “King” Trump gets away with gross abuses of power, but a Mamdani president without broader support sitting in Congress and state capitals is at best a one off or worse a living corpse waiting for an assassin and a funeral.

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    1. juno mas

      Yes, it takes a movement to make a political impact, but a movement without a real leader (Mandani) becomes ineffective. See: Bernie.

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  7. Hepativore

    I am guessing that the DNC will treat him like they did with AOC. They will heavily lean on him until he cracks and becomes another rank-and-file neoliberal Democrat much like how AOC started carrying water for Pelosi and got converted into yet another cowardly DNC careerist. If he refuses to give in, they will find some way of ousting him, legally or not.

    While I am not a Jimmy Dore fan, I do agree with him when he said that “You cannot change the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party changes you.”

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    1. Acacia

      Agree. One politician is not going to reform the DNC. The inner party will work to bring him to heel, and they can easily stab him in the back, and throw him under the bus just like they did to Sanders twice.

      Reply ↓
        1. Hepativore

          It is amazing how Democrats can suddenly be united and they take swift action when it comes to stopping the left or thwarting anybody who threatens the neoliberal status quo in their own party, yet they never show any of this degree of organization or motivation when it comes to opposing Trump or the Republicans.

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  8. alrhundi

    It’s so weird to me that municipal elections in the states also have Democrat and Republican candidates.

    Even in Canada I’m hearing about people being hyped for him. I hope things go well for him in the election, which from what I understand still has to happen in November. He stands for a lot of things that I and other young people want to see from politicians, but I’m curious how he accomplishes some of these goals at a municipal level. Maybe I’m just ignorant to larger, and American, municipal politics but it seems like free daycare and municipal run grocery stores policy could be a nightmare to develop policy for at a municipal level when so much is determined by budgets. I’d love to see it proven possible

    He has some music videos up on his YouTube channel from back in the day too that are awesome: https://youtu.be/iQVsVNPkPmE

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  9. Rip Van Winkle

    Bring back The Late Mayor Daley, currently resting just south of 111th & Austin. Vote early and vote often!

    Reply ↓
  10. ChrisRUEcon

    > Is Mamdani’s Win Over Cuomo The End of Democratic Party Neoliberalism?

    Not so fast, mon frère … :)

    Let’s not forget. We’ve been here before … ish. Before last night, Bernie’s Nevada win in 2020 sending the Dem establishment and their consent-manufacturing media lackeys into a meltdown:

    As Bernie Sanders wins in Nevada, pundits freak out (via cjr.org)

    COVID and the backstabbing (via imgflip.com) Wizard Of Kalorama™ put paid to Bernie’s run. There is still a chance that the same could be done to Mamdani. Can’t wait for the NYT piece on how #ShitLib Liberal voters of conscience should cross the aisle and vote for Adams or some yet to join the race (conservative) Independent (are we past that legal possibility, though?). Ackerman is right. It’s going to get nasty … eeerrrrr.

    But GodSpeed, You Magnificent Bastard, Mamdani! At least we get to watch these amoral cretins metaphorically defecate themselves in front of all humanity.

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    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      what’s the law of the internet that the answer to any headline framed as a question is always “no”? That’s the case here for sure.

      Reply ↓
      1. Jeff W

        It’s Betteridge’s law of headlines (described in Wikipedia here), named for British tech journalist Ian Betteridge, who wrote about it in 2009. lambert used to refer to it, often in cases of its violation.

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    2. DJG. Reality Czar

      ChrisRUEcon: Perceptive, as ever. Complimenti.

      The last few e-blasts from Racket and Matt Taibbi have been odoriferously sour. He’s a little young to have turned into an old fart, but having the IRS turn up at one’s door on Christmas Eve will make a person grincheux, eh.

      The meltdown is going to go on among anyone from Hillary Clinton rightward, which is most of the Democratic Party, most liberals, and the current Republican Party. Loomer, above, “Muslim communist.” Note to Loomer: Please send me 100 grams of the extra-powerful hashish you are smoking.

      Taibbi: “Et voila! New York City’s mayoral race has been won by Zohran Mamdani, no Bernie Sanders-style imitator but the real thing — son of a famed socialist scholar and Marvel superhero to every Jacobin-reading, keffiyeh-wearing student activist huddled in Judean People’s Front-type confabs, between bell hooks readings and visits to Mom and Dad on the Upper West Side.”

      From this morning’s Taibbi e-blast. I won’t link, because it is flatulence all the way down. And here we are.

      With a swipe against bell hooks, one of the finest observers and essayists of the last few years. (You truly don’t expect me to read any more of the gear-grindingly screechy articles by Rebecca Solnit, do you, Taibbi?) Meanwhile, where is Taibbi when Rahm-spawn Tammy Duckworth shills for still another war?

      Muslim communists — inshallah, mon frère.

      Reply ↓
      1. Michael Fiorillo

        Yes, Taibbi is becoming a sad spectacle, and a Case Study in late middle-age Right devolution.

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      2. lyman alpha blob

        That was definitely one of his worst. I noticed it prompted him to put up another short post titled “What Am I For?” due to a query from a perturbed reader. I don’t see much to disagree with in that post, and I think he’s pretty much a Bernie supporting New Deal type. But if that is still the case, please write about it. Taibbi is great when he’s an investigative journalist. I don’t need to pay for ill thought out hot takes on the NYC mayoral race.

        Taibbi has been alluding to projects he’s working on, but I’m not seeing any of them. The financial reporting he once did so well is now being farmed out to another writer who is good, but not ‘vampire squid’ good. We get introduced to new writers on his site, only for them to never be heard from again. The site has become more complicated and more difficult to navigate, with less good reporting produced all the while.

        Taibbi mentions he’s always been a capitalist and believes people should be rewarded for good work. I just paid my subscription again. But if I don’t get more good journalism, it might be the last time I pony up, because capitalism. $50 seemed like a bargain when he first started out, but it’s been less of Taibbi’s great reporting and too many rambling hot take videos lately.

        Meanwhile, I’m more than willing to give Mamdami a chance, because it really can’t be much worse than this neoliberal capitalism we’ve had shoved down our throats for the last several decades.

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      3. KLG

        Flatulence all the way down…yes, indeed. I had not had enough coffee to get through it on the first try and promptly forgot about it. But I did wonder about that automatic subscription renewal.

        Reply ↓
        1. Jonathan Holland Becnel

          Taibbi responded to me in the comments when I told him his writings and especially Griftopia led me to Marxism.

          He seemed genuinely surprised.

          Here’s to hoping Zohran does something with his organization he is building.

          Inshallah.

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  11. Carolinian

    Great essay. Reading the Daily Mail account of Jeff Bezos’ upcoming wedding in Links one is struck by the obscene “in your face”-ness of it all. These people don’t just light cigars with hundred dollar bills. They spend millions on a level of conspicuous consumption that even has tony Venice up in arms. In a few decades we’ve gone from Radical Chic–Tom Wolfe poking fun at the Leonard Bernsteins pretending to be poor in jeans–to Nancy Reagan’s “it’s ok to be rich again.”

    Yesterday I visited nearby Charlotte, NC including a large and celebrated mall that once catered to the middle class and now looks more like Rodeo Drive or Fifth Avenue with a Rolex store and a Tiffany’s and luxury cars promoted along the walkway. Charlotte has become the home to several banks including the national headquarters of Bank of America. It looks like the bankers run that place now just as they do Congress, going by where they buy their trinkets.

    As Yves once said we are Versailles but without the guillotines–yet. How much longer can it go on?

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    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      thank you! If Greg Stoker is right the guillotines will be brought out before the general election — they’ll just be aimed at everyone except the oligarchy.

      Reply ↓
  12. Ignacio

    Amongst the different administrations municipalities are the closest to electorates. This mustn’t be extrapolated to federal politics in which such a stunning electoral result looks much more difficult. Nearly impossible.

    Reply ↓
    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      American politics has been increasingly nationalized throughout this century. This 100% was a national race based on the number of non NYC residents following it closely, the attention from the entire nation-wide pundit class, the amount of MSM attention, the amount of alt-media attention and mostly the sheer obscene amount of money being spent. This is not a one off.

      The Dem establishment has gotten increasingly brittle in the past 20 years hence their absolute need to win absolutely every major primary. This was a big one, and the establishment lost.

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    2. Thomas Schmidt

      If we had representation in the house in the same proportions as Canada, where there are 343 MPs for about 40MM people, we would have at least 2800 “Representatives.” It’s going to be shocking when Canada has a larger Parliament than the House.

      Reply ↓
  13. upstater

    Don’t get hopes up and forget the 2021 primary in Buffalo where DSA India Walton trounced 4 term democrat hack Byron Brown. In the general election Brown ran an illegal write-in campaign handing out rubber stamps and ink pads at balloting locations for a “write in” campaign. Brown won. Brown resigned in 2024 and became president and CEO of Western Regional Off-Track Betting. Nothing to see here, move along.

    Reply ↓
    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      very familiar with that race and had to delete 4 paragraphs about it for space reasons. Main difference is Buffalo is not NYC and frankly might as well be Little Rock , Arkansas for all the national media and alt-media care. All eyes are on New York City.

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        1. Nat Wilson Turner

          Not my decision just MSM practice. Never can forget the 2020 presidential candidacy of Washington state governor Inslee. He was completely ignored while smaller town mayor Buttigieg got first tier treatment because he had hired Cuomos PR ace Lis Smith.

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        2. Jonathan Holland Becnel

          That’s why we need talented popular candidates in all counties.

          Divide and Conquer the MSM and overwhelm their defenses from the flanks.

          Reply ↓
          1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

            problem is the death of local media makes a lot of places information black holes, including most American major cities.

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    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      good links, thanks! The FT hadn’t posted yet when I had to hit “schedule”

      Reply ↓
  15. Mikel

    The answer to the headline question: No.

    This is all still wrapped up in neoliberal visions.
    They elite are putting on quite the “clutch my pearls” show.

    Reply ↓
    1. Shelldon S

      But what do you *want* the answer to the headline to be ?

      (Remembering the “rules” of neo liberalism here …)

      Reply ↓
  16. Stefan

    Democrats need to face it. A left moving agenda is the only one that makes sense considering how far to the right things have gotten.

    Reply ↓
    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      unfortunately they’re just coming to that realization after we’ve moved on to a post-constitutional moment.

      Reply ↓
  17. Anthony Noel

    Meh, I’ll wait and see if he’s actually going to DO anything he campaigned on, or if he’s just another AOC.

    Reply ↓
    1. Ellery O'Farrell

      Then you should vote for Mamdani in the general election, NOT wait and see. Because if he isn’t elected, your hypothetical becomes untestable. And the result that you presumably don’t want — doing something he campaigned on — becomes guaranteed.

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  18. communistmole

    There was a lot of pearl-clutching on the i24 channel, where the result was described as a rejection of the fight against anti-Semitism, which “bodes ill” for the Jews, although it was acknowledged that many Jews also voted for Mamdani.

    This, according to the general opinion of the two Israeli commentators, is due to the growing alienation of liberal Diaspora Jews from Israel.

    The also had a commentator from the NY Post who said that today’s youth are more concerned with “lifestyle choices” such as affordable housing, and all the money for Euthanasia Cuomo (according to him three times as much as for his opponent) was invested in the wrong way.

    Instead of relying on the failed fight against anti-Semitism, he believes Jews should seek a coalition with real estate and pro-Police forces.

    The two Israeli commentators than argued that just as MAGA has taken over the Republican Party, the progressives à la Mamdani will take over the Democrats in the next few years.

    The fight against anti-Semitism was once the fight against the anti-capitalism of the reactionaries; now it has become a synonym for the goals of these forces…

    Reply ↓
  19. Lion Summerbell

    Born and raised downtown here. A nice moment if for nothing else than seeing Cuomo force a rictus smile just to get his teeth kicked in. But lest we forget: the NYPD got caught in public talking about rubbing out De Blasio’s wife and kids. No firings, naturally. Guys gotta get their pensions. We’re a lot closer to Tammany than the Wagner Era; Mamdani better be tougher than he looks. Big ups nonetheless.

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  20. Balan Aroxdale

    Simple plan:

    1) Drive NYC to secede from the union
    2) Occupy and annex it
    3) Strip it of its electoral votes
    4) Install @BillAckman as Viceroy and Governor-General https://t.co/UDVvFWaFBY

    Too complicated. The easiest plan was already done in the late 1960s.

    1) Have the banks call in their loans / stop buying NYC bonds
    2) Appoint bank led committees to run the city
    3) Crush its economy and spirit for a decade

    To be fair to the New Yorkers, they remained defiant for years, amidst recessions and blackouts, to some extent embracing the dystopia as a kind of culture.

    To escape a repeat, a mayor might be obliged to take measures that would indeed bring a potential annex down on him.

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  21. divadab

    “former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who led in most polls throughout the race”

    I guess the polls, like the Democratic Party, are fake and corrupt. Man I hate the scum who run the Dem party.

    Reply ↓
  22. n

    This guy is just another DSA clown endorsed by Bernie and AOC.

    Lets not pretend he’s anything but the Democratic party’s latest fraud..

    Reply ↓
    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      you may well prove correct but nonetheless, the outcome of the intraparty battle was significant.

      See my post on the Texas GOP Senate primary from last week. I hope it’s obvious that I support neither John Cornyn nor Ken Paxton, yet I find their intra-party struggles both interesting and important.

      I’m not posting to root root root for the home team, I’m posting to help people stay informed as to which party factions are are the rise and which are on the fall.

      Reply ↓
  23. Glen

    As has been true for a long time now, the voters want change. But it remains to be seen if that simple democratic impulse can overcome the powerful oligarchic billionaires who fear any change even as we can all see by now that no change means America continues to decline, and the American empire implodes.

    Reply ↓
    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      The Ancients wrote off representative forms of government because they were believed to always lead to oligarchy which always lead to Caesarism. I believe the Ancients were corrrect.

      Reply ↓
  24. FreeMarketApologist

    My anecdata (as a near 40-year NYC upper east sider who has overheard rather a lot while eating out in the last few days) is that while Sliwa has the Repub nomination, most Repubs will hold their nose, cross lines, and vote for Cuomo, as a known and not fully unfriendly quantity, which will get rid of Adams (who they absolutely do not like), and now to defeat Mamdani. Sliwa was the 2021 Repub. nominee, and lost to Adams, and the Repub’s don’t want a replay of that election. Cuomo, who has had to play nice with Sliwa over the years, will no doubt find some way to throw him under the bus.

    (Adams is supposed to make a noon-time announcement about his campaign, which I assume is that he is running. As of this moment, 12:30, he’s just shown up, and they’re still wallowing through preliminary prayers, introductions, and general puffery. I’ve got other things to do than sit around waiting for the announcement. On the off chance he doesn’t run, I expect he would support Cuomo, having already called Mamdani a snake oil salesman.)

    Reply ↓
    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      I don’t see Adams as much of a factor. The GOP going for Cuomo though, that’s real. That’s how Lieberman beat Lamont.

      Reply ↓

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