cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/217883
Photo: Zachary Schulman
On November 15, 2024, Zohran Mamdani released a video of himself interviewing people on the street in Queens and the Bronx who had voted for Donald Trump in the presidential election the previous week. It was one of the first of the viral posts that propelled him into the spotlight and ultimately helped him all but capture the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York. Then polling close to zero percent, Mamdani seemed more like a local news anchor than a candidate, gamely thrusting a microphone into the faces of voters and letting them take the stage. The answers to why they voted for Trump — “Food prices are going up,” “Rent is expensive” — informed Mamdani’s campaign as it homed in on the issue of affordability. But the other answer that came up again and again — one that Mamdani chose to highlight — was Gaza. “They like Trump because they don’t want their Palestinian brothers to be killed,” one man says.
This was a terrible miscalculation on the part of these voters, as is almost any attempt to make common cause with Trump. But voters’ disgust with the Democratic Party for its unstinting support of the Netanyahu regime, just like their anxiety about the high cost of living in New York, was real, and both sentiments carried over into the mayoral primary in June, a setting for the liberal left to confront itself. And once again voters punished the Democratic Party for its inability to address those issues, coming out in droves for the most un-Democratic candidate in the field — a socialist, in fact.
It was not supposed to happen this way, not in a city with nearly 1 million Jews, the historic center of the Jewish diaspora outside Israel. Mamdani’s opponents predicted that his positions on Israel — his reluctance to affirm its right to define itself as a Jewish state, his refusal to condemn the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” his assertion that Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested as an indicted war criminal if he visits New York, all nearly unheard of for a Democratic-primary candidate — would sink him. What’s curious is that while panicked Democrats are now conceding that Mamdani crushed his principal rival, the Establishment favorite Andrew Cuomo, by underscoring pocketbook issues, running a galvanic campaign both on social media and IRL, and not being an alleged serial sexual harasser and all-around goon, they have yet to reckon with the fact that voters, particularly young voters, were drawn to Mamdani and supported him fervently because of his steadfast opposition to the war in Gaza. Publicly at least, the Democrats have yet to acknowledge the enormous, perhaps irreparable toll their support for the war has taken on their party.
Mamdani outperformed expectations in nearly every demographic, upending the conventional wisdom that leftist appeal is limited to young, highly educated, largely white voters. But his campaign was nevertheless powered by an overwhelming show of force from those same voters who reside in what the strategist Michael Lange in the New York Times playfully called “the Commie Corridor,” a stretch of gentrified Brooklyn and Queens that includes Ridgewood (80 percent for Mamdani), Bushwick (79 percent), and East Williamsburg (75 percent). And these voters, as anyone in New York with an Instagram account can attest, are vocal about their opposition to the appalling atrocities Israel has committed in Gaza, as are the Muslim voters whom Mamdani also unlocked.
Foreign policy was not technically a top issue in the race, which makes sense because the mayor of New York does not set U.S. foreign policy (in general, the trend of turning every food–co-op–board election into a referendum on Gaza probably isn’t the ideal way to conduct local affairs). But no matter how hard Mamdani tried to focus on his proposals for free bus rides and free child care, Gaza was still everywhere in the primary, principally because his Democratic opponents, as well as the financial elites who stand behind them and sympathetic media outlets, thought they could use his positions on Israel to turn Jewish voters against him. When Mamdani stood by the use of the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” Cuomo said those words “fuel hate” and “fuel murder” and “there are no two sides here.” But voters in the city with the most Jews outside Tel Aviv simply did not buy the notion that Mamdani is an antisemite who would discriminate against or fail to protect them. In fact, it’s clear that many Democrats, including many Jewish Democrats, voted for him because of his positions on Israel — or at the very least saw little objectionable about them. As the writer Bess Kalb put it in a recent essay explaining Jewish support for Mamdani, “I am not writing this on October 8th. It is June 25th, 2025. And if we do not change our perspective with time and events and evidence, we are living with our heads in the sand.”
Nearly 70 percent of Democrats now have an unfavorable view of Israel, according to Pew. Yet Democratic officials carry on as if full-throated support for Israel were party doctrine. An article in Politico about the lessons Democrats are drawing from Cuomo’s defeat did not contain a single mention of Gaza or Israel; titled “Mamdani’s Surprise Win Reawakens Democrats’ Internal Factions,” the article’s omission suggests there are no pro-Palestine factions to speak of. Instead, Democrats have been more than happy to jump on the much safer affordability train as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declared, with his usual dead-eyed delivery, “I think what’s clear is that the relentless focus on affordability had great appeal all across the city of New York.”
Democrats have an odd habit of tuning out their own supporters even when those supporters are practically screaming at them to listen. In the past presidential election, New Yorkers were hollering at them about inflation, yes, but also immigration and crime. Democrats did eventually acknowledge they had been weak on those issues, which explains their timid response to Trump’s subsequent assault on undocumented and documented immigrants alike. The Democrats remain indifferent, however, to any pleas about Gaza, in ways that appear to be alienating to voters — especially young ones — on the left side of the spectrum who simply do not understand why the party that supposedly represents them is constantly bowing and scraping before a murderous regime.
Never was this more apparent than after Trump’s strike on Iran, which many Democrats, including Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, refused to condemn, despite the fact that Trump did not get the required congressional approval. In an instant, the pro-democracy, anti-authoritarian coalition revealed itself to be an illusion because liberal Iran hawks and their Never Trump allies viewed the demise of Israel’s sworn enemy as more important than placing a check on a demagogue they have long warned has too much power. The consistent, principled thing to do would have been to oppose the strike outright, but Democrats like Antony Blinken and Steny Hoyer instead offered toothless criticisms of Trump’s brazen warmongering while cheering on the strikes anyway — to please whom, you may ask? Nearly 80 percent of Democrats oppose them.
As Mamdani barrels toward the general election as the heavy favorite to become mayor, Israel’s supporters in New York and beyond are marshaling an effort to remind voters of his heresies. New York’s political power brokers — Schumer, Jeffries, Kathy Hochul, and others — have declined to endorse him. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand slammed him for using words she felt were “permissive for violence against Jews.” Islamophobia has been rampant in the media and the halls of Congress with Republican representative Nancy Mace suggesting Mamdani was somehow responsible for 9/11. But more loudly than ever, Democratic voters in the country’s most formidable Democratic stronghold have declared their opposition to the seemingly unbreakable bond between the Democratic political class and the current Israeli regime. When given an actual choice on the issue of Israel and Palestine, Democratic voters broke hard for the alternative to the status quo, raising the possibility of primary debates over this issue throughout the country, in places with far fewer emotional and political ties to Israel.
Whether Democrats will listen is another matter. Some people have compared Mamdani to Barack Obama, who rose to power channeling voters’ disgust with the Democratic Party’s support for a different awful war. In its embrace of Obama, the party showed it had the capacity to adapt, to listen to reason, to recognize mistakes. He gave people a reason to believe in liberalism again, redeeming its sins. But the once clear-eyed and daring Obama, like so many others in his party, has lost his voice. He has been silent about Mamdani and the mayor’s race. He’s been virtually silent on Gaza, too.
More on Zohran Mamdani
Zohran Mamdani on Why He Won‘It’s Nice to Be Right!’Zohran Mamdani’s Win Prompted a Full-Fledged Elite Meltdown
From Intelligencer - Daily News, Politics, Business, and Tech via this RSS feed
Lessons to be learned: a) people do not like genocide b) people are sick and tired of being ground down just trying to live.
DNC learned: we need more money from billionaires.
Not sure why the original post is missing so many links—here’s a complete version (only change I made was substituting Xcancel links for the Xitter ones):
Full text (Part 1)
On November 15, 2024, Zohran Mamdani released a video of himself interviewing people on the street in Queens and the Bronx who had voted for Donald Trump in the presidential election the previous week. It was one of the first of the viral posts that propelled him into the spotlight and ultimately helped him all but capture the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York. Then polling close to zero percent, Mamdani seemed more like a local news anchor than a candidate, gamely thrusting a microphone into the faces of voters and letting them take the stage. The answers to why they voted for Trump — “Food prices are going up,” “Rent is expensive” — informed Mamdani’s campaign as it homed in on the issue of affordability. But the other answer that came up again and again — one that Mamdani chose to highlight — was Gaza. “They like Trump because they don’t want their Palestinian brothers to be killed,” one man says.
This was a terrible miscalculation on the part of these voters, as is almost any attempt to make common cause with Trump. But voters’ disgust with the Democratic Party for its unstinting support of the Netanyahu regime, just like their anxiety about the high cost of living in New York, was real, and both sentiments carried over into the mayoral primary in June, a setting for the liberal left to confront itself. And once again voters punished the Democratic Party for its inability to address those issues, coming out in droves for the most un-Democratic candidate in the field — a socialist, in fact.
It was not supposed to happen this way, not in a city with nearly 1 million Jews, the historic center of the Jewish diaspora outside Israel. Mamdani’s opponents predicted that his positions on Israel — his reluctance to affirm its right to define itself as a Jewish state, his refusal to condemn the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” his assertion that Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested as an indicted war criminal if he visits New York, all nearly unheard of for a Democratic-primary candidate — would sink him. What’s curious is that while panicked Democrats are now conceding that Mamdani crushed his principal rival, the Establishment favorite Andrew Cuomo, by underscoring pocketbook issues, running a galvanic campaign both on social media and IRL, and not being an alleged serial sexual harasser and all-around goon, they have yet to reckon with the fact that voters, particularly young voters, were drawn to Mamdani and supported him fervently because of his steadfast opposition to the war in Gaza. Publicly at least, the Democrats have yet to acknowledge the enormous, perhaps irreparable toll their support for the war has taken on their party.
Mamdani outperformed expectations in nearly every demographic, upending the conventional wisdom that leftist appeal is limited to young, highly educated, largely white voters. But his campaign was nevertheless powered by an overwhelming show of force from those same voters who reside in what the strategist Michael Lange in the New York Times playfully called “the Commie Corridor,” a stretch of gentrified Brooklyn and Queens that includes Ridgewood (80 percent for Mamdani), Bushwick (79 percent), and East Williamsburg (75 percent). And these voters, as anyone in New York with an Instagram account can attest, are vocal about their opposition to the appalling atrocities Israel has committed in Gaza, as are the Muslim voters whom Mamdani also unlocked.
Foreign policy was not technically a top issue in the race, which makes sense because the mayor of New York does not set U.S. foreign policy (in general, the trend of turning every food–co-op–board election into a referendum on Gaza probably isn’t the ideal way to conduct local affairs). But no matter how hard Mamdani tried to focus on his proposals for free bus rides and free child care, Gaza was still everywhere in the primary, principally because his Democratic opponents, as well as the financial elites who stand behind them and sympathetic media outlets, thought they could use his positions on Israel to turn Jewish voters against him. When Mamdani stood by the use of the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” Cuomo said those words “fuel hate” and “fuel murder” and “there are no two sides here.” But voters in the city with the most Jews outside Tel Aviv simply did not buy the notion that Mamdani is an antisemite who would discriminate against or fail to protect them. In fact, it’s clear that many Democrats, including many Jewish Democrats, voted for him because of his positions on Israel — or at the very least saw little objectionable about them. As the writer Bess Kalb put it in a recent essay explaining Jewish support for Mamdani, “I am not writing this on October 8th. It is June 25th, 2025. And if we do not change our perspective with time and events and evidence, we are living with our heads in the sand.”
Nearly 70 percent of Democrats now have an unfavorable view of Israel, according to Pew. Yet Democratic officials carry on as if full-throated support for Israel were party doctrine. An article in Politico about the lessons Democrats are drawing from Cuomo’s defeat did not contain a single mention of Gaza or Israel; titled “Mamdani’s Surprise Win Reawakens Democrats’ Internal Factions,” the article’s omission suggests there are no pro-Palestine factions to speak of. Instead, Democrats have been more than happy to jump on the much safer affordability train as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declared, with his usual dead-eyed delivery, “I think what’s clear is that the relentless focus on affordability had great appeal all across the city of New York.”
Democrats have an odd habit of tuning out their own supporters even when those supporters are practically screaming at them to listen. In the past presidential election, New Yorkers were hollering at them about inflation, yes, but also immigration and crime. Democrats did eventually acknowledge they had been weak on those issues, which explains their timid response to Trump’s subsequent assault on undocumented and documented immigrants alike. The Democrats remain indifferent, however, to any pleas about Gaza, in ways that appear to be alienating to voters — especially young ones — on the left side of the spectrum who simply do not understand why the party that supposedly represents them is constantly bowing and scraping before a murderous regime.
Never was this more apparent than after Trump’s strike on Iran, which many Democrats, including Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, refused to condemn, despite the fact that Trump did not get the required congressional approval. In an instant, the pro-democracy, anti-authoritarian coalition revealed itself to be an illusion because liberal Iran hawks and their Never Trump allies viewed the demise of Israel’s sworn enemy as more important than placing a check on a demagogue they have long warned has too much power. The consistent, principled thing to do would have been to oppose the strike outright, but Democrats like Antony Blinken and Steny Hoyer instead offered toothless criticisms of Trump’s brazen warmongering while cheering on the strikes anyway — to please whom, you may ask? Nearly 80 percent of Democrats oppose them.
As Mamdani barrels toward the general election as the heavy favorite to become mayor, Israel’s supporters in New York and beyond are marshaling an effort to remind voters of his heresies. New York’s political power brokers — Schumer, Jeffries, Kathy Hochul, and others — have declined to endorse him. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand slammed him for using words she felt were “permissive for violence against Jews.” Islamophobia has been rampant in the media and the halls of Congress with Republican representative Nancy Mace suggesting Mamdani was somehow responsible for 9/11. But more loudly than ever, Democratic voters in the country’s most formidable Democratic stronghold have declared their opposition to the seemingly unbreakable bond between the Democratic political class and the current Israeli regime. When given an actual choice on the issue of Israel and Palestine, Democratic voters broke hard for the alternative to the status quo, raising the possibility of primary debates over this issue throughout the country, in places with far fewer emotional and political ties to Israel.
Full text (Part 2)
Whether Democrats will listen is another matter. Some people have compared Mamdani to Barack Obama, who rose to power channeling voters’ disgust with the Democratic Party’s support for a different awful war. In its embrace of Obama, the party showed it had the capacity to adapt, to listen to reason, to recognize mistakes. He gave people a reason to believe in liberalism again, redeeming its sins. But the once clear-eyed and daring Obama, like so many others in his party, has lost his voice. He has been silent about Mamdani and the mayor’s race. He’s been virtually silent on Gaza, too.
Will the Democratic Party absorb the lesson?
Name a single time the Democrats absorbed a lesson from an election.
Barack Obama, clearly:
In its embrace of Obama, the party showed it had the capacity to adapt, to listen to reason, to recognize mistakes.
After that the Democrats never again supported stupid, pointless destruction in the name of political expediency.
Let me be clear, the only thing they learned is to talk like him.
And to not let themselves lose primaries the same way
They didn’t even learn that you could campaign against an unpopular war and then just keep it going once you’re in office. Harris lost because she couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a convincing-sounding lie.
And if your The Mayo a complete mimicking of his gestures and facial expressions.
These fucking ghouls spend more time with public relations goons staring into the mirror to make sure they pass the class.
You Don’t Mess with the Zohran :kelly:
It was not supposed to happen this way, not in a city with nearly 1 million Jews, the historic center of the Jewish diaspora outside Israel.
They can’t help themselves can they? Stop conflaiting Israel with Judiasm! They aren’t all Zionist gouls!
I think it was Chapo that talked about this and said the really obvious thing:
Over 70% of Democratic Party voters have more sympathy for Palestine than Israel. An overwhelming majority of Democratic Party voters believe Israel is committing genocide, and that at the very least the US should stop providing weapons.
When running in a Democratic Party primary, pointing out “My opponent agrees with over 70% of you on this issue! Boo him! He is an antisemite! And so are you!” is a really bad strategy to win!
When you attack Zohran, or any Democratic candidate for not being Pro-Israel enough, what you’re actually doing is isolating yourself and the candidate you support and saying “We do not agree with you on this important issue, Zohran does.”
If anything the way for them to drag Cuomo through was to never mention Israel. Downplay. Dodge questions. Don’t bring it up. Instead they fucking handed him this issue on a silver platter. Asking him at the mayoral debate “Do you believe in Israel’s right to exist as an ethnostate?” was such an amazing plan and he answered so perfectly “I believe Israel has a right to exist as a state with equal rights,” which makes Zohran look like a normal good person and the moderators and Cuomo look like freaks.
Also I don’t think Zohran’s opinions on Israel would’ve swayed this election one way or the other. I still probably would’ve voted for him if he said the generic pro-Israel democrat talking points because of the material things he was offering, and I imagine a lot people who are pro-Israel but aren’t completely rabid would’ve done the same the other direction.
Cuomo could’ve gone with “I support Israel but I’ll also make busses and childcare free and even the subway” and one-upped Zohran on offering material things but they don’t want to do that either. The modern Democratic Party’s ideology is “No take, only throw!”
“No you can’t have material improvements to your life, no we will not stop supporting genocide, fuck you, vote for me you dirty antisemite” is, shockingly, not a convincing campaign message.
Also I don’t think Zohran’s opinions on Israel would’ve swayed this election one way or the other. I still probably would’ve voted for him if he said the generic pro-Israel democrat talking points because of the material things he was offering, and I imagine a lot people who are pro-Israel but aren’t completely rabid would’ve done the same the other direction.
It’s absolutely wild to me how much foreign policy seemed to be focused on in a mayoral race. Sure, it’s a particularly important mayoral race, but it’s not like the mayor decides whether to send arms to Israel or not. The only point they could raise in the debate was whether the candidate would visit Israel - a completely symbolic gesture. Should I be interrogating my local dogcatcher about their thoughts on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?
The NYPD does have offices in Jerusalem (and like a dozen other foreign cities).
It’s absolutely so fucking gross.
Been going on for so long too. Mossad and NYPD thug brothers working together.
And of course the Zionist tentacles include all politicians. Who are immediately feted by the official Israeli public relations clowns who roll out the red carpet for trips and all kinds of perks. Guaranteed on every hotel bed I bet is a list of Talking Points they must remember and are fed constantly throughout their congressional terms.
Just witness Gillibrand’s complete hysterical meltdown in Neoliberal poster boy Brian Lehrer’s NPR show. Of which was probably set up by AIPAC to provide the caller to read off all the state Islamophobia and predictable other attacks on Zohran, teed up for her to swing hard at.
There are not enough Israel government supporters to win an election
There are; If you’re running as a Republican in an election Republicans can win.
If you’re running as a Democrat in a heavily blue area there absolutely aren’t.
I think what the article is highlighting though is that while the material things he was offering are the primary reason for his victory…what’s genuinely wild and kind of a game changer is that its not even really accurate to say he won in spite of the third rail issues of Israel and antisemitism claims he was weighed down with. Its looking like there’s very little evidence to suggest that it even hurt him or had any impact at all. That should scare the shit out of the DNC.
I think the DNC has yet to realize how burnt out the average American voter is and how millennials do not at all have the same brainworms as boomers did nor have the same material conditions behind them, i.e. most millennials don’t just want their own bag but also want to live in a stable enough community that properly manages itself (i.e. why the fuck do my taxes pay for public transit but I still have to pay!?).
The democrats have, over the last decade truly isolated themselves from the new majority voting bases, millenials and gen z, and have shown very little incentive to come out and vote. If we weren’t a duopoly system hiding as a democracy the DNC would have been swept aside by far more progressive political bodies offering even the most tacit of material changes. This is why Zohran kicked Coumo to the curb is due to offering the most basic of things (such as newborn baby packages, something most other developed and developing countries do, offering rent control, and wanting to make public transit free/affordable).
tldr: the democrats truly smoked from the gas of being a controlled opposition party that they have instilled themselves into the new generations as less than worthless which should have them terrified but most are so old within the establishment they will likely be dead before those consequences come to bite them in the ass.
Obama redeeming the sins of liberalism 🤡
