Really, really hoping Mamdani doesn’t turn out to be Obama 2.0.
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.
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.
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. 😁
I badly want to be wrong, but there’s something about these supposed progressives that changes when they get into office and suddenly are confronted with the possibility that they can 100% exploit their office to give their family generational wealth.
So while I’m cautiously optimistic, most of me is very ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’.
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So while I’m cautiously optimistic, most of me is very ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’.
Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will.
This guy all ready comes from a well off family so it’s not like that I don’t think.
He says he’s a socialist.
Obama explicitly and repeatedly stated he was a capitalist
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That’s the problem. Thank you for articulating it.
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.
I don’t think so.
People not voting comes down to living through the last eight years and both parties doing nothing meaningful about the fact that you’re working 100 hours a week at three jobs and all you can afford is a roach-infested studio.
Why would you miss a badly needed day’s pay?
As for the folks who switched to vote Trump. That was the only option for change that they had, and they knew from experience how shitty Biden/Harris were. Of course they switched.
They should have known that Trump was worse from term one…
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The dems trying to take him out is evidence that he’s real
No, it isn’t. They did the same with Obama, because at the time it was supposedly Hillary’s turn.
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.
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.
How deep you want to go down the rabbit hole?
McCarthy spins in his grave
Can we hook him up to a dynamo? Free, clean energy.
It’s much more difficult to go from being a socialist to a centist.
Mussolini was a socialist, and I don’t mean in a fake “national socialist” way (although yes, later he became that), I mean he was an important figure of the “Italian socialist party”, editor in chief of the official party newspaper
Well he didn’t turn into a tinkering-around-the-edges liberal. 😄
I’m not arguing that people’s views can’t change. Rather I’m making this narrow point of the difficulty shifting towrds the centre from a liberal versus socialist position. I think one’s much lower friction than the other. Both are possible.
He can’t become president so no worries on an exact repeat. Personally, good to see such a great representative of democratic socialism on display at this moment.
Agreed on that second point.
I just need more than words before I’ll buy in. I gotta see it to believe it.
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.
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.
To my knowledge, he does not have the ability to drone strike anyone. So we’re safe on that count
Unless he decides to take police militarization to another level.
Given how DeBlasio was treated, I’d be more worried about the police taking it to the next level without him
A legit fear, really.
The NYPD are one of the largest and well-funded gangs on the planet.
An African-born Muslim Socialist?
You might wanna drop religion label; honestly, adding the religion label isn’t exactly comforting. Religious people, regardless of which religion, are not exactly very “left”, religious people often misogynistic, oppress LGBT+ people, not to mention, its an abrahamic religion, these stupid religions have been causing havoc on the world.
I guess I forgot the “/s”.
I was joking about how the Right called Obama all those things, when he isn’t any of them and now they got the real deal.
What is Lemmy badmouthing Obama now? JFC this place is 14 and very edgy.
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.
Can’t ignore issues isn’t the same as ‘he was a failure’ tone that I just read.
How many people lost their homes when Obama was president ? Did Obama not boast about turning the USA into a leading of oil production ? Did Obama not drone American kids ? Did Obama not keep the wars going and start news ones?
You are the one that’s 14 and didn’t follow nothing he really achieved.
I was going to start typing but then I noticed ml. There’s no point.
Then why did you reply anything ?
So that you know that it’s not because I’m stumped, it’s so that you know that it’s not worth bothering explaining to ml users.
Funny enough your message is unwittingly a perfect display of what I’m talking about. Ok peace.
He has to virtue signal about how much better of a human being he is by being an asshole to everyone and saying that’s gonna win an election.
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Me too, but if his recent overtures are any sign of things to come he’s absolutely going to be Obama 2.0
Goddamn I can’t imagine anything worse than Obama 2.0!
Oh! Oh I’ll be having nightmares for months!
ffs
yeah, what could be worse than the guy who authorized 563 drone strikes that killed nearly 4000 people, including American kids. Hmm.
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.
What could be worse? Man, i can’t think of a single thing! Obama was the awfulest human to defecate in the white house of All Time!
(for my autistic friends; i don’t really think that. I’m using hyperbole to underscore my position that Obama was not the worst person of all time.)
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.
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.
Off the top of my head, he’s very pro-NYPD (which I guess is the easiest way to get the cops to vote for him) and also he straight up said he’d have Zionists in his administration and not worry about what their support for Zionism means in practical terms, so. Yeah.
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?
This is TERRIBLE Strategy! Spending Taxdollars on Rich people is GOOD! Spending Taxdollars on Poor people is HORRIBLE AND LIFE ENDING!
-DNC Strategists!
It’s going to start trickling down any day now.
Why does it taste like pee?
Don’t ask.
It could taste worse.
Traditionally, it tastes like horse shit.
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Cuomo is not the democratic candidate for mayor lol
Don’t you see?
Paying for buses for ILLEGAL ALIEN IMMIGRANTS doesn’t make money trickle down! When you “invest” money into poor people, they’ll just waste it! Money they don’t spend on the bus ride, they’ll spend on one more grocery at Walmart, which is INCONSEQUENTIAL FOR THE ECONOMY!
When you INVEST into products and services, that person will HIMSELF INVEST into buying what he needs. That makes money TRICKLE! Do you KNOW where our CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY WOULD BE WITHOUT ELON?!
(/s)
Uh oh. If people realize that 700M in subsidies is the same amount of money as 700M in free buses, it’s all over. You’re supposed to act like one of them is cheap and the other is expensive. There’s not supposed to be math involved /s
To be fair, 700M in subsidies was supposed to have a return on investment. Though, it didn’t.
700M in free busses would not bring a return on investment except for just generally improving the quality of society. Which I still think is better, but we do have to consider that from their point of view.
Edit: please stop replying to this comment with counterarguments, I agree with all of you and was just trying to say how it might be seen. This is getting obnoxious. I wrote it wrong and now people think I’m a capitalist cuck lmao
$700M in free buses means better access to jobs and services, which has tangible economic benefits and results in tax money coming back to the government.
I… Err… I mean bus bad car good!
It’s also just good for people. Not everything needs an roi and the economy should work for people not the other way around.
Public transit, healthcare (including dental and mental), shelter, food, water, communication (mail, cellular, internet), social community events/activities, and yes even defense is where taxes should go. There’s enough to go around to cover all of it if greedy mother fuckers would get their grimy ass hands out of the cookie jar. I hope I see the day before my days are done.
I think free busses would have a return in investment (apart from quality of life).
A better connected city, transport wise, opens up new job opportunities or places to go for citizens, which can increase tax revenue.
More people using busses also means less cars (probably) and by extension, less pollution, which can save costs.
I’m not sure how much of a return those, and probably other stuff would give, but I think it’s more than nothing.
Maybe someone knows better.
You have a good point. If money is no longer a barrier to transport, the entire city would be open to everyone. That would increase incentive to have outings.
I agree with all of you and was just trying to say how it might be seen.
This right here is the problem. We allow the GOP and the Murdochs to dictate the meaning of these things and gaslight the people into believing the fiction that some billionaire industrialist stooping to grace a city with their business is worth more than thousands of regular folks just getting to work, doing their jobs, living their lives, and making our society work. It needs to be plastered everywhere that not only do we not need billionaires or even multimillionaires but that they are quintessentially harmful to our country and our society.
P.S. if you aren’t prepared to deal with every Tom, Dick, and Jane replying to your comment to argue every little thing then you should give up commenting cause people are gonna argue no matter what. It’s how ideas get around.
please stop replying to this comment with counterarguments,
“I want to be anti-transit but not get pushback.”
I don’t think we need to have an either or mentality. We need to break out of the idea that things need a perfect, direct ROI. That just reinforces financial overlords to do layoffs and to favor capital and the rich.
$700M in free busses could open up a world of happier people, access to better jobs and better Healthcare through better access.
There is more to ROI than direct financial returns, and we have to get out of the language of the venture capitalist. You say that it is “just generally improving the quality of a society”. That IS a return on investment. And it’s more important in my mind than a financial gain. We need to start treating happiness like it’s something worth pursuing. We say money can’t buy happiness, but then base all our decision making on money like it’s the key to everything.
I think I worded it wrong. I completely agree with you.
There is more to life than ROI. People need to realize that. We can do so much better for everyone.
You’re just trying to be intellectually honest here, by recognizing that in theory subsidies are supposed to bring jobs and economic benefits to a region, whereas public transit is seen as a cost center. And I think you’ve been sufficiently rebuked on that point.
Anyway, upvoted because I appreciate the attempt to engage conservative fiscal policy on its own terms. It’s easy to frame it as “rich people good, poor people bad,” but occasionally we need to debate the internal logic of it so we can properly pull back the curtain and see it for what it really is, which is in fact “rich people good, poor people bad.” You started that debate, and as a result the consensus here feels more like a good-faith rebuttal and less like a sarcastic shot from the hip (which my original post definitely was).
If you want to be fair, you’ve got it completely backwards. Tesla wasn’t going to be bringing in much in the way of actually paying proper taxes or treating the residents well but we have actual real-life examples of free bus experiments boosting the local economy.
It’s not even about being nice for the residents, though that is obviously a major positive, it’s just the only smart thing to do. It’s literally stupid as hell to not at least try it from a financial perspective and the only thing that stops people is because it would be a kindness.
Only replying because of the edit.
If free busses get more people to more store to spend more money, that won’t provide an ROI?
Short sighted ROI - only businesses create ROI? Residents do not? Would decreased accidents, decreased cars on the road, increased resident satisfaction not also create ROI although not as easy to measure as a business balance sheet?
Yes of course they would, please read the edit
return on investment.
define investment, who was going to pay the state’s ROI? elon? lol. the jobs these companies outsource to other countries?
seriously spend two seconds critically thinking about your nonsense before you speak it.
Free buses would have a much larger return on investment.
- movement of the population is streamlined. meaning more people will go more places and spend their fares in a larger variety of locations without having to worry about cost.
- you save a shit ton of money because you no longer need all that infrastructure for charging people money for fares and the ongoing maintenance related to such.
- population increases due to QOL improvements. meaning more revenue for the state via property/income taxes.
- its durable. population based revenue is much more reliable than investment nonsense.
the only difference between the corpo subsidy and free transit is:
- the corpo can walk away for any reason leaving the state holding the bag.
- the corpo concept has a shorter chain of cause/effect: give money to corpo -> corpo fails | corpo gives roi -> $
- vs free buses -> increases desirability of the area & reduces on going costs of infra -> population increases -> more tax revenue.
in short: free buses absolutely would bring a return on investment it’d just be harder to measure the precise return because its part of a non-linear system.
You post on Lemmy, and expect to not get replied to?
Do you think this is a bubble echo chamber?
Wake up
But that’s not what they said…?
Holy crap have they STILL not had that election yet?
The election cycle for mayor of New York is taking something like three times longer than that of a General Election in most countries, and because most talk shows are filmed in NYC the rest of the world has been getting a wildly disproportionate amount of coverage on it. I should not know this much information about the election of a city I’ve visited twice ever.
I don’t know what you’re expecting. The election day hasn’t changed. It’s the first Tuesday in November, always has been and, barring anything extremely unconstitutional from certain spray tanned individuals, it always will be.
The day hasn’t changed but they aren’t wrong that US election campaigns start reeeeally early compared to a lot of other places.
But America bad, remember? Can you believe America, taking a long time to elect officials?
Clearly we need a European style democracy where the people vote for parties A B and C and then A and C win and form a government with X Y and Z so that there’s a Frankenstein government that literally nobody voted for. It’s more democratic, you see.
I would like to take issue with your last two points. People in Europe vote knowing a coalition government is the outcome, meaning many people did in fact vote for Frankenstein’s Monster. Also, with the coalition, more people are represented in the government, meaning a wider range of opinions and subjectively more democratic.
I guess getting one party that got 30% support having all the power is more democratic…
NYC having 1/5 the population of Canada in a much more concentrated area put it into perspective for me
relative to our provincial/federal election cycles, it makes sense to me
The US is stuck in a perpetual election cycle. As soon as somebody is elected we have to start thinking about the next election.
Both political parties love the socialist boogyman routine lol. They cannot resist spinning this in the media.
BURRRRRN
The Dems are so far right now that a leftist candidate is a breath of fresh air
The chair of the DNC, who has complete and total control of the party…
Has literally been saying for 3 months now that Mamdani is the future of the party, and we need to run more campaigns like his not just the outreach, but actually and specifically running on things that will actually help.people.
If all you hear about “the Dems” comes from billionaire owned media.
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You’re gonna think when the party’s at it’s best, it’s at it’s worst.
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The oligarchs are going to make you a useful idiot in the hopes you depress turnout enough a neoliberal wins.
Please put some more thought into politics. It’s important and we can’t allow both parties to throw basic logic out the window. The average American should have been able to easily see all this, but they obviously can’t.
We can’t afford to be ignorant right now
Not one leader of the Dems wanted to endorse Mamdani in June
Well yeah, in a few months the far left will probably turn against him like they turn against all politicians. Or he’ll actually do what the far left wants and it’ll be a disaster.
The far left is like asbestos, it can be useful for specific purposes but you want to avoid direct contact with it or you’ll get cancer.
I think Hakeem Jeffries being a piece a shit is part of the problem where prominent democrats keep trying to punish people even an iota to the left of their donors while treating republicans like reasonable people even as the republican media is pushing people to go door to door killing democrats
Thank you for posting that. First, I think a celebratory, sharing attitude of “Look what I found” is much better for continuing engagement than using your knowledge as a cudgel to insult the less aware.
Secondly, I’m not sure how you pulled a lot of hope from this Ken fella, he spent most of the interview arguing against the interviewer and dancing around her questions. We like Zorhan because he doesn’t do that, he answers questions straight on, making eye contact and smiling because he is sure of his moral high ground and amused by the gamesmanship.
Decent read
Good thing I’m not an American then. If I would be an American “I’d be a vote blue no matter who” but also make sure I vote in any primaries I’m able to so I could vote “less corruption” and “left leaning”.
As a European I see politics in the US being a choice between “Classic EU Conservative party” and “Far right populism + authoritarian” but then you manage somehow to get Mamdani, AOC, Gavin Newsom and Bernice which actually look decent. I like that, Trump shit is affecting Europe and shifting the overton window left instead of right would help I think.
Yeah even after seeing how the Republicans were pulled to the far right by a dedicated minority within the party, leftists in the US just scratch their heads about how to move the Democrats to the left. I dunno complain on social media and don’t vote? That’s sure to make a difference!
Meanwhile the right continues to vote Republican every election and the dedicated far right votes in the primaries to control the party.
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The Atlantic did a wonderful job writing up the union of the progressive and populist movements during the early 19th century. Would be nice to see that alignment occur again.
Busses, train and subway - make all those free and it will probably be less expensive than keep building more and broader roads and parking + you get less pollution and fewer accidents. 🙌🏻
should be cross posted with “fuck billionaires”. Musk could end homelessness in the US and UK, and still have more than half his current worth left. But corrupt politicians are still lining up to give him money.
Friendly reminder that there are far more unused homes in the US than homeless people
There is no amount of money that can permanently end all homelessness…
End homelessness = buy everyone a home.
But the point was more about the fact that he could buy every single homeless person in two countries a house, and still have more than half his current wealth. In your desire to be contrarian, you miss the actual point.
Send like a cool thing to attempt.
Like even if someone still wants to sleep outside, a safe place to store your shit so it stays dry seems pretty dope. A place you can show up to when the temperature drops and your shivering and just sleep at with no strings attached…
Shelter is one of our basic needs, kind of like food and water… Seems like our basics shouldn’t be driven by profit.
So I had to look this up, because that Tesla factory does employee thousands of people, and it manufactures their superchargers, has an AI datacenter in it, and a bunch of desk jobs, so I wasn’t sure what was failed about it.
Originally, it was supposed to be a solar panel manufacturing facility, but that didn’t really pan out. There was a quota to employ a certain amount of high tech manufacturing jobs, which was later changed to just manufacturing jobs, and then just jobs.
So while the factory is there and functional, it’s definitely not what was intended when it was built with certain requirements set on Tesla (or whoever would have won the contract), and what it does now, doesn’t bring in anywhere near the expected economic boost that the original intended plan would have.
So in that sense I’d say it’s definitely a failed project yes. But the factory is there and functional.
Edit: Also looks like their lease is coming up in a few years, and theres opposition to signing a new deal with Tesla.
One might say NYC gave Elon Musk, a white supremacist, a billion dollars to own a factory instead of employing those people in public transit and energy production for the city.
Tesla doesn’t own the factory, NY owns the factory.
How much rent does tesla pay for it?
Nothing, that was the subsidy and requirement for meeting the now heavily reduced quotas.
Their lease is coming up though, and there’s opposition to re-signing it, or at least changing what they pay for rent.
Wouldn’t a roughly equal number of jobs be created by spending it on transit?
You spend that amount of money on anything that would generate jobs and it will generate jobs.
If they eliminate fares, it’ll actually be less than 700 million because collecting fares costs money.
No wonder the leadership of the party that was so ecstatic about record oil production under biden is so reluctant to endorse.
Tbf that was an Obama thing
Happy I live on this small island. Free busses! But I can also just kinda walk everywhere anyway. Another good thing is I get to skip the dangers of sidewalks and crosswalks. I just walk on the beach, no cars.
Imagine if a decent person stayed in a race running as an independent. We would never hear the end of it. But they take Cuomo seriously.
Cuomo is the definition of an empty suit.
Not empty but rather full of shit.
Clutches pearls…Think of the poor South African Apartheid Nazi who is trying to destabilize all of the democracies in the world with our tax dollars /s
