Zohran Mamdani has won the race for New York City mayor, according to Decision Desk HQ, ushering in a new era of progressive politics in the city and reigniting the debate over the Democratic Party’s future.
Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, is poised to become the first millennial and first Muslim to lead New York City, after a campaign that pulled off one of the most stunning political upsets in recent memory. He defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who mounted a long-shot independent bid after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic primary, and Republican Curtis Sliwa in his bid to succeed Mayor Eric Adams.
Mamdani focused heavily on affordability, pledging to freeze rent, establish city-owned grocery stores and make buses free for riders. He quickly became a progressive icon as well as a polarizing figure within the party over his positions, so much so that it divided prominent New York Democratic leadership over whether to endorse him.
You say it’s unrealistic, and yet every successful socialist revolution has had the backing of at least some of the military. This is the stupidest thing about liberals, they always imagine that the way the world is now is the way it will always be. But material conditions are constantly changing and what seems impossible now may seem inevitable tomorrow. But you’ll never know if you keep dismissing the people who are actually trying to change the world as LARPers.
And btw, while I’m too old to be considered for military service, at least one revolutionary party, the PSL, has specifically created strategies to insert members into the military to foment revolutionary fervor. So yeah, people are doing exactly the thing that you deride as “unrealistic.”
I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m saying that in the USA right now, in our current state and social trends and general attitudes, any attempt to spread ideology in our military that isn’t reinforcement of current military doctrine, will be met with severe consequences. Even talking about it here puts you at very real risk. I am not joking.
But it’s okay because we don’t HAVE to change the military, we don’t have to try to change the course of the largest, most powerful, strictly regulated and massively complex fighting force the world has ever seen, from supply auditors to aircraft carrier plumbing experts to fighter pilots to the massive chain of officers up to admirals and generals who have dedicated their lives to their sworn duties… they’re not our enemy, we don’t have to fight them.
We just have to change our communities. We just have to change our representation, we just have to change the feelings of our neighbors and encourage our kids to be more social and involved. We JUST SAW how effective this can be in one of the world’s largest and most powerful cities.
Political capital is all about community. Trump walked all over our nation because he has a community under him that he has effectively demonstrated the power of. Meanwhile, the left and progressive movements broadly have been divided, scattered, splintered and unfocused so we don’t have the capital to challenge that community despite being objectively smarter and more compassionate people. Seeing as how we don’t have the unity and political capital to even challenge a bunch of mentally deficient toddlers with guns, we’re light years away from subverting the military.
I agree with everything you’ve said, except that we don’t have to wait for community to be built to work on the military problem. We can do both simultaneously.
The PSL (and others, but the PSL is the most notable ML-oriented organization in the US right now) are aware of the current realities, btw. Their position is that there is a groundswell of class consciousness that is growing, but still very small. Their strategy is to nurture that growth while simultaneously creating a cadre of trained political operatives to provide leadership for the moment when that class consciousness is large enough that the idea of subverting the military isn’t so laughable. It’s a realistic strategy that is based on 200 years of revolutionary history, and successes and failures.