In Zohran Mamdani’s Win, Socialism Beat the Status Quo

Social Democracy is not the same as Socialism. But, I wasn’t following the race, maybe he does want the public to own the means of production.
- I get the hesitation since in US politics they often get conflated and I can’t say I’ve followed him very closely but someone else shared this. I know he’s also advocating for city owned grocery stores.
  
  Quite a lot of red states have state owned liquor stores,[0] so city owned grocery stores doesn't sound that radical. Apparently, Atlanta is doing it.[1] I hadn't heard of this idea before, but web search shows it is a thing. I'd consider it socialism if he also wants to close down the privately run grocery stores. He doesn't seem to be doing that
  [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_state
  [1] https://thefern.org/2025/03/are-government-owned-grocery-stores-the-answer-to-americas-food-desert-problem/
  
  so he is a socialist?
- I'm OK with it because maybe when they realize he's just a guy making decisions to help his community, it will remove a smidge of the ZOMG SOCIALISM reaction to folks like not only him, but also Bernie, and maybe others who might like to call themselves social democrats instead of democrats.
  If Bernie and AOC start the social democrat party tomorrow with Mamdani and others, I'm registering before the ink is dry.
- Also Democratic Socialism (Mamdani's beliefs) are not the same as Social Democracy. They are slightly different.
  
  That kind of depends. Bernie claims to be a Democratic Socialist, but Europeans have said that his stated beliefs align more with Social Democracy. This may be another case of us Americans having a different definition than the rest of the world (like with liberal).
- also the red underlined section of this post: https://lemmy.ml/post/32229216

It's just a primary guys. Let's hope he wins the seat.
- If Cuomo runs 3rd party and the Dem establishment supports him, I'm going to fling that back at anyone who tells me to not vote 3rd party in a presidential election, lol.
  
  I'm going to flip out if the dems support Cuomo and I'm honestly half expecting them to
  
  "Vote blue no matter who"
  Mamdani wins historic primary victory
  ".....shit"
  
  You're going to fling that a high-profile and well-recognized (even amongst non-politically engaged voters) organization gave recognition and resources to a third party in a local (not even gubernatorial but) mayoral election as a counter defense for voting for a third party in a presidential election?
  
  If Cuomo runs 3rd party
  He's running as an independent, yes.
  and the Dem establishment supports him
  Unless they suddenly fall back in love with Adams or go full Sliwa, they will. They fight the left exactly as much as they accommodate the far right.
- It would take a catastrophe for him not to.
  His opponents in the general are as follows:
  The corrupt former governor sex pest he just beat, running as an independent in order to get a do-over
  Current mayor in spite of being a hair's breath from prison until he went full MAGA, always being a fascist cop (but I repeat myself) and genuinely unhinged, Eric Adams
  Perennial loser and hyper-racist vigilante lunatic Curtis Sliwa.
  Not only are they all awful candidates in themselves, their core demographics also overlap to such a degree that it'll be an upset if more than one of them reaches double digits!
  
  If NYC uses ranked choice voting in the general as well and Cuomo learns from his disaster of a campaign then he might try coalition-building with Eric Adams or others to pull off a win by getting neoliberals and MAGA to gang up on Zohran. It's a headscratcher for me because I never expect neoliberals to learn from their mistakes, and yet they might actually feel forced to because they never fail to pull out all the stops against progressives, let alone an actual socialist.
- Hey, nobody messes with the Zohran!
  
  hope it annoys Adam Sandler.
- That's what's fun about the whole establishment coming out swinging against him - he just won the primary. He's not even elected yet, and they are losing their shit.
  (also, didn't notice until after posting that you'd posted 2 days ago - sorry for the necro post!)
  
  Two days old post is still relevant on Lemmy. It's when someone responds to a 3+ month comment that I'm like, "how did you find me?!"
  I think Cuomo is going to stay in the race, it will be interesting to see who wealthy establishment Dems support.

"Socialism" lol
It is a win though, it shows people are willing to vote for change ~~through alternative parties~~ and thats fucking huge
- He's a Democrat, not 3rd party.
  
  Shit I will amend that. Forgot he won the democratic primary. He is still heavily associated with DSA though and this is well known.
  
  Because he had to run in the democratic primary in order to have a shot. He’s a member of the DSA tho—I feel like it’s disingenuous to call him just “a Democrat” (same with AOC)
  
  Cuomo is the third party candidate
  It never makes sense to vote third party, according to what the blue maga have told me.
- Funny how the gop are calling him socialist when it’s they who have free healthcare and live off public money.
- "socialism" in the sense of the french revolution, where they executed lots of people with the guillotine, must never happen again.
  The problem with killing people is that it's a lot like eating potato chips: Once you start, it's impossible to stop.
  Look at the Reign of Terror that immediately followed the French Revolution. They basically continued to kill people after all of the nobles were gone. These actions discouraged a lot of people and were one big factor that scared potential revolutionaries in other countries away from trying a revolution in their home country as well.
  Take the rich's resources, but don't kill them.
  "Tax the rich", not "eat the rich".
  That is socialism for the 21st century.
  
  The french revolution, atleast the one you are referring to, was a bourgeois revolution and decidedly not socialist. It was the rising merchant class overthrowing the feudal class structures that held back their ability to obtain capital. It was not the proletariat overthrowing the capitalist class structures which hold us back. If you try and take property from the rich they will kill you for it. This has been endlessly proven throughout history, every workers revolution has a violent counter revolution from the bourgeois. Will you roll over and take it? Or will you defend yourself and the revolution?
  
  I have seen too many rich assholes actually go to jail, then just get out a few years later and continue the same grift.
  Fuck this softy nonsense.

Apparently, Faux News calls him "Zohran the Destroyer". This is exactly the sort of name that I want with progressive leadership. 🤩
- They gave him a badass name by accident 😂🤣!
  If fElon wielding a chain saw is a OK then Zohran the Destroyer needs a weapon, for symbolism.
  I nominate the axe from the movie Mandy
  https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3578844/can-now-purchase-official-replica-nicolas-cages-badass-axe-mandy/
- He destroys fascism
  
  and oligarchy too.
- Don't mess with the Zohran!

They will rig the general. Look to the firms in control of the individual machines and the tabulation servers…
- Looks like Cuomo is planning to run as an independent to split the vote.
  
  That's great that AIPAC had a backup plan
  
  Considering Eric Adams already is running as an independent, Cuomo is more likely to siphon votes away from him. Although I think it will be ranked choice anyway, so "splitting" the vote won't really matter.
- use the same methods as the gop, which dnc never bother pursueing when it was reporting in all counties last nov 5 election.

The number of opinion pieces having meltdowns over Mamdani is simply off the charts. The fascists and neolibs are losing their minds about this. It’s incredible.
Mamdani isn’t even remotely radical as far as leftists go. What’s he’s proposing is just the bare minimum of common sense as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
- They're acting like Luigi broke out and started making the world a better place one capitalist at a time again.
  allegedly
  
  One can dream
- Right? I don’t get this at all. The guy gets elected, offers a couple things via social policy change, and everyone loses their shit. Even the title of the article this is about calls it “socialism” when it’s a far cry from it.

Everyone's talking like he's won the mayorship already.
- He hasn’t technically but don’t stop the vibes. Fuck it, Mamdani FTW removed!!!!! Woot woot! LFG for round two! For the people!
- Agreed. Lets wait and see
  What has made me hopeful and excited though, is that the Democratic voters are going against the DNC.
- He hasn't literally but he's now the heavy favorite
- Cuomo better not pull a Lieberman and split the vote.

C'mon! Status Cuomo was right there!

Keep talking in ways that highlight progressive values, and you'll get more of this.

He's quite charismatic.

No idea about Mamdani but does the election not mostly show that people hate Andrew Cuomo? He seemed awful.
- No, this campaign was everything you could ask for
  His core platform - free and faster buses, free childcare, rent freezes, and no one making less than $1M will be paying for any of it
  It's simple, it's hard to fear monger against, and it's things the people want. The best they had was "but he's Muslim"
  
  Thanks, interesting, but I wish him luck delivering on any of that.
- and he was primiarly beeing pushed by republicans as a frontrunner, go figure.
- He has always been offal.
  FTFY

The status quo is garbage and has been degrading rapidly for most of my life. Here's hoping the rest of this country gets its shit together in time.

For the people!

Reality proves big tent liberalism wrong at every turn, but still people advocate for it. Can't beat stupid, I guess.

It seems that every article from Jacobin is skewed ever so slightly, not enough to make most think there’s something wrong, but it seems to skew anti-progressive by tone and wording, while being assertive in part to some center (or right-leaning by European standards), and aggressive in language towards selective parts of the far-right while mellowing down the tone against conservatives in general.
It’s like eating candy and discovering that the sugar coating is actually aluminium.
- Within the context of US politics, the center left/Democratic Party is the largest political obstacle for socialists. So antagonism towards the center left seems to be rational within that
- aluminium
  Nice touch. 🤣
  
  Well, it's how it's spelled in pretty much all of the English-speaking world. Barring the USA and Canada.
  Edit: my favourite ”whelp” is apparently not what I thought.
- They do tend to passively address the American Overton window in their articles. I think it's pretty easy to navigate as an American because they do it mostly in the same style of our mainstream media.
  The overall dynamics of American political language I think can be pretty jarring to both Europeans and any American trying to first learn about socialism.

He seems like a decent person, and his platform is okay for the most part. He's definitely better than the sex pest that is Cuomo, and so I guess it's a win in that regard.
However, y biggest issue with him is that he has openly accepted the endorsement from the DSA. That is not a good sign. The DSA is the most vile and parasitic bunch on the American left. They openly simp for dictators and tyrannical regimes, they endorse violence, and they outright support terrorist groups. They're genuinely the worst of the worst. The fact that he hasn't rejected their endorsement, or at the very least ignored it, but instead accepted it with open arms is a major red flag.
Edit: I like how the DSA supporting cowards have nothing of value to say, just discretely downvote and scurry away. Fuck the DSA.
- Which terrorist organizations does the DSA support?
  
  Hamas.
  The terrorist attacks happened on Oct 7th. The world was in shock as it happened because that was the deadliest terrorist attack in the world has seen since the Camp Speicher massacre back in 2014 and 9/11.
  Most people and governments around the world at the time condemned the terrorist attacks, they condemned Hamas for committing them, and they expressed sympathy for the victims. This was doubly so when Hamas took responsibility, proudly displayed videos of the attacks and the victims, and it became apparent that they took hundreds of hostages.
  What did the NYC DSA do? They fucking organized a pro-Hamas rally on Oct 8th in SUPPORT of the terrorist attacks that literally happened the day before. They outright endorsed and celebrated the attacks on the streets. This isn't an exaggeration, that's literally what they did. You can literally google the rally and see this for yourself.
  The rally was so disgusting, so immoral, and so evil that it caused an uproar around the world, including inside the DSA and the left in the US. So many people, including big politicians like AOC, Shri Thanedar, and Bowman, either quit or disassociated with the DSA:
  https://www.newsweek.com/congressman-quits-democratic-socialists-party-over-pro-palestinian-rally-1834026
  https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/10/aoc-pro-palestine-nyc-rally-00120684
  https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/quit-dsa-gaza-israel/
  The backlash was so strong, that the NYC DSA was forced to write a press release statement addressing their actions two days later on Oct 10th... and they came up with this:
  https://socialists.nyc/press-releases/statement-peace-now-end-occupation-apartheid/
  They didn't condemn the terrorist attacks, they refused to name and condemn Hamas or the PIJ, they even refused to call the attacks as such, they instead called them "escalations of violence". It's like holding a pro-ISIS rally a day after the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, and then victim blaming the French people for the attacks. How tone deaf is that?
  Keep in mind the context here, we're not talking about the current day. This is before Israel started it's bombing campaign on Gaza. At the time, a very egregious and straightforward atrocity happened. The human thing to do is to condemn it because terrorism is evil. This is why people condemn both the Oct 7th terrorist attacks and what Israel has been doing since, it's because that's the principled thing to do.
  To this day, they still have never rescinded their support for Hamas or the terrorist attacks.
  The DSA actually did something similar when Russia invaded Ukraine. Most people were in shock and they condemned Russia's invasion and atrocities, but the parasitic DSA decided to "condemn" the invasion by blaming the US, Ukraine, and NATO for Putin invading.
  https://www.dsausa.org/statements/on-russias-invasion-of-ukraine/
  How are these not open endorsements of violence? How they are they not explicit support for terrorism? How are these positions not tone deaf and immoral? These parasites have no morals and they have no principles. Extremists like this need to be condemned and disavowed, not openly accepted. Mamdani's acceptance of the DSA endorsement is a big red flag.
- Who has less red flags?
  
  Well, when you put it that way, recent events suggest the best course of action is to sit it out in protest.
  /s for the triggered assholes. Only not really.
  
  Good point, the DSA is full of red flags literally and figuratively
- However, y biggest issue with him is that he has openly accepted the endorsement from the DSA.
  Your only issue is that he's to the left of netanyahu.
  
  That's the dumbest thing I've read on this site all day
- Okay I guess I will say something in addition to the downvote: none of that crazy shit you're saying about DSA is true, they (we) are a bunch of idealistic do-gooders trying to make the world a better place.
  
  What value did you actually add though? You provided no explanations, no counter examples, no specific disagreements, no points, no arguments, no sources, nothing. You literally just asserted that I'm wrong and that the DSA is good with no additional input at all. This is just a downvote in text form.
  I literally have a detailed comment with sources that prove what I'm talking about in this very comment thread.