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Democrats Shocked By Success Of Left-Wing Candidate Offering Left-Wing Policies To Left-Wing Voters
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this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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While I'm glad he won and the message this sends to Democrat leadership, I think making this claim: "It seems the pendulum is swinging back towards left-wing politics" is very premature.
He won a Democrat primary in a deep blue city in a blue state, the same that elected AOC.
I don't think this really signals much other than, yes NYC likes leftist candidates, as we already know from AOC. This may or may not signal any kind of larger pattern about American political feeling as a whole.
If the same doesn't happen in cities and states across the country, it will just be disregarded as a fluke.
NYC is overwhelmingly democratic, but not left. They have a big share of rather conservative Democrats, which makes the victory of AOC and Mamdani even more impressive.
Also adding the main opponent, Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York State for a decade, had multiple credible sexual assault allegations only three years ago amongst other corruption scandals.
It’s weird he even wants to be mayor and has major credibility issues. I think if you want to call a progressive wave, an established Democrat who’s not completely fucking sketch needs to lose.
I can't help but compare this to Henry Cuellar. Coathanger Cuellar is an anti-choice anti-worker pro-nra stooge. He had a progressive opponent a few years back, Jessica Cisneros.
The party preferred a school shooting supporting anti-choice anti-worker turd, so a lot of the people who later endorsed Cuomo, most notably Clyburn, stepped in and ran interference for Coathanger Cuellar. Cuellar won his primary by something like 500 votes.
Now Clyburn's endorsement can't even swing a mayoral primary. And it wasn't a squeaker this time. Mamdani won decisively.
The party's establishment were running in this race. They lost. To ideas whose time has come.
If it weren't for Mamdani, Cuomo would have won by a landslide. People are way too willing to vote for a name they know, even if the person is corrupt
It’s a huge poke in the eye of democrats who say anything left of Hitler loses elections.
I think part of the victory is actually showing the ability for the DNC leadership to project force is greatly diminished. They pulled out all the stops. AIPAC, DNC, The entire media apparatus, all the ad buying, the poison pill of hypocrisy, and finally, the sex pest Bill Clinton.
The victory here is very, very much that you win elections with people power, not $. The rumblings of this were actually that judicial election in Wisconsin which got Elon pushed out of the WH. And frankly, its signature was detectable in 2024 where no matter the spending, Democrats couldn't motivate voters to show up.
Almost all of my friends are big zohran fans. Even the one that's to the right of me on some issues is cautiously optimistic.
But to hear my friends' parents talk about it? Doom. Dooooom.
You’re correct but I haven’t seen anyone outside of the lefty propaganda sites say that this actually moving the needle. The legacy news sites are along the line of “What does this mean?” and “Can someone like that actually be mayor of NYC?”
The way I see it, this could be a momentum swing but we need to capitalize and build around it. I understand why people were saying 3rd party candidates are a distraction during the election but now is the time to be pushing the Dems further left or coalescing around a new party. Get their ideas out there now so that even some brainwashed republicans might see the light before the mid term elections next year.
Look at the past few mayors and immediately your point is disproven.