Despite what Sinatra would have us believe, if you can make it in New York it doesn’t mean you’ll make it in the mid west or any of the purple states. (Democrats haven’t had a vote share lower than 65% since the 00s I think)
Yes, a record number came out to support him but almost as many came out to support anyone but him :(
My hope is that for all the naysaying, Mamdani turns out to be a technocrat in the Sewer Socialist model and shows the country socialism ain’t so scary. The whole “laboratories of democracy” in action.
New York City tends to poll more Democrat/Left than the state as a whole. The last time NY State elected a republican Presidential candidate was Reagan.
Point still holds… the last time a republican New York MAYOR was elected, was only 4 elections ago… prior to Mandami’s win the 10 elections prior to it for mayor went 5 for republican, 5 democrat. Doesn’t really make sense to compare a mayoral candidate to a presidential result, in a city that apparently has a strong track record of supporting republican mayors even when they went all in on the democratic president.
Maybe progressive stronghold would’ve been less controversial.
But the basic concept, even in a very progressive place, the clear, almost dream progressive candidate barely cracked 50% and a record number came out to oppose him.
I cannot fathom how this looks like a winning recipe for the Democrats in say, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin etc.
anything stronghold doesn’t make a lick of sense, when specifically new york mayor, is the very definition of swing, in that recent years it’s gone 50/50. Progressive stronghold makes even less sense, Are you trying to say, any of their recent mayors were progressive, because I can’t even come close to agreeing with that statement.
Whether it’s a winning or losing recipe in other places is hard to say. Depends on what issues we are talking about. I would say in the bible belt, taking a hard line support of trans rights, would be dangerous. On the other hand, other topics certainly do make sense in other places. I used to debate with conservative friends here in the state of South Carolina… IE a place that is undoubtedly red. Most of them if you talk on the actual issues of prices, of taxing the wealthy etc… they’ll agree point by point on left issues over and over again. They’ll argue that the democrats don’t stand for that, that they don’t intend to do it or won’t do it when they are in office. Hell half the time they’ll say things like “they know it’s a good idea so trump will get to it if it’s possible”.
So in short… I’d have to say, I’d personally imagine a Zoran or similar doing… well equally well to a centrist democrat here. Probably not able to win… but acting more republican doesn’t change the numbers. The R gets all the voters that believe republicans are better. No amount of acting like a republican will pick up any of them.
Again I will say, the grey areas is the ones that might have the deciding factor on abortion, guns or gay/trans rights. In the bible belt, those are single issue topics that some that could agree with a left leaning economic policy, but may completely disqualify anyone who takes a stance on those issues. Honestly I don’t know what’s better or worse for those concepts. Because it’s disgusting of an idea to throw LGBT under the bus to get elected, but also such a strong issue in these parts it’s hard to imagine anyone winning with even a neutral stance on it.
Really? NYC? On almost every metric it leans heavily Left. It has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, declared itself an asylum city, had Attorney Generals essentially running on a campaign of “I will indict trump”, has some of the strongest LGBTQ+2S protections in the country, has some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country, has ambitious climate goals…
Even their “Republican” mayors run on platforms that would never fly in the republican party. When Bloomberg ran, he campaigned on free busses, raising taxes on the rich, community grocery stores etc.
But, when we’re talking Zohran, we are talking, generally, economic progressive issues, i.e., raising taxes on the wealthy, free busses, community grocery stores (like republican Mike Bloomberg!) rent control etc. (Personally, I think these are generally workable, though I don’t think Zohran actually has the authority to do a lot of what he’s promised but that’s a whole different issue)
I dunno. The argument on the progressive Left has, for years, been that if the Democrats would only field a truly progressive candidate, people would come out of the woodwork to support them and the Dems would coast to victory. And in Zohran, we pretty much got a perfect avatar of the progressive Left. And in some senses, the progressive Left was correct, folks did come out of the woodwork to support him with landmark turnout! But, almost half of the people in one of the most progressive cities in the nation came out to say No.
Maybe not in blood red states but in the states that the Democrats could conceivably win (the midwest, Georgia etc) the margins are thin. And if our kind of ideal progressive candidate can only squeak through in one of the most progressive places in the country, it is very hard to imagine we could pick up anywhere where we need to.