cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/4911
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday delivered a frantic warning about progressive New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani as new polls showed him with a big lead over top rival Andrew Cuomo.
During a news conference at the US Capitol, Johnson attacked Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries for giving a lukewarm endorsement of Mamdani last week and accused the entire Democratic Party of embracing "Marxism."
"By endorsing Mamdani, Hakeem Jeffries has endorsed and co-owned his positions, his past statements, his Marxist playbook, and everything else that guy espouses," Johnson said. "So too does every single House Democrat who will be inviting their leader, Jeffries, to their campaigns."
Johnson also said that Mamdani's candidacy was part of a "socialist uprising," and that "we have the responsibility to call out and sound the alarms" about his rise to power.
🚨Speaker Johnson says Republicans have "a responsibility to call out" the "socialist uprising," pointing to NYC mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani. pic.twitter.com/X3StkxT4mU
— Off The Press (@OffThePress1) October 30, 2025The "socialist uprising" that Johnson suggested people across the country should fear includes policy proposals like an expansion of a fare-free public bus pilot program, a network of city-owned grocery stores, and a rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments—which has already been enacted at least three times in New York City.
During a Wednesday interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, Cuomo accused Mamdani of being "totally out of sync with how New Yorkers feel," and then pointed to the fact that Mamdani has "dual citizenship" between the US and Uganda.
"His parents own a mansion in Uganda, he spent a lot of time there," Cuomo said. "He just doesn't understand the New York culture, the New York values, what 9/11 meant, what entrepreneurial growth means, what opportunity means, why people came here."
Two polls released on Thursday, however, indicated that fear-mongering about Mamdani appears to be falling on deaf ears.
As reported by Spectrum News, an Emerson College poll showed Mamdani hitting the 50% threshold among likely voters, with Cuomo trailing by 25 percentage points. A poll from Marist, meanwhile, showed Mamdani winning 48% of likely voters, with Cuomo receiving 32%.
Although the Marist poll was better for Cuomo than the Emerson poll, it also showed that Mamdani would likely win the election even if Republican Curtis Sliwa dropped out of the race at the last minute, as Mamdani in a theoretical head-to-head matchup with Cuomo still maintained a lead of seven percentage points.
Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, told Spectrum News that Mamdani's voter coalition appears to be strong heading into next week's election, as he has improved his standing among Black voters while maintaining significant advantages among young voters.
In fact, noted Kimball, Mamdani even has a plurality of voters over the age of 50, whose support Cuomo needs to pull off an upset victory.
CNN polling expert Harry Enten argued on Thursday that the latest polls show Mamdani is the overwhelming favorite to win the election.
"Unless there's a historically unprecedented poll miss, some Cuomo fans are living in a fantasy world when it comes to the NYC mayoral race," he wrote on X. "Mamdani has, if anything, widened his big lead since September. Also, early voting stats are consistent with polls showing a Mamdani win."
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I love this concept. Getting completely politically disengaged people to stop seeing communism as this Red Scare boogeyman and instead understand why they should want communism. Especially when it's not even us socialists breaking that preconception, but the same exact people who call everything they don't like "communism".
My dad buys into liberal economics 100% and loves Reagan. He was a US History, Civics, and Economics teacher, and he tried to actually be informed.
We were talking a couple days ago and he was doing some AOC slander (from a rightwing perspective). I joined in on the slander (from a left persepctive) and told him about how she said "I am not a radical, my ideas aren't something out of the communist manifesto" and my dad said "Well she probably never read it. It is actually a great work and Marx had amazing ideas."
Of course he will turn around and argue for abolishing minimum wage, he is anti-Trump but still votes (R) in every other way, because I guess the democrats are just ontologically evil.
Average American voter moment
well he's got the spirit
Yeah, my mum's kinda the liberal version of that. You could literally quote Stalin and get her to agree, on certain issues, but she'll never willingly read the piece he wrote where he said that thing she liked when her daughter's friend said it. She's "the most communist liberal I know". If you call it communism, she hates it. If you call it sound common sense centrist economic policy, or just "pro working class", she loves it.
Yeah, I guess the problem is that people like my dad understand Marxism somewhat, and think its valid, but that the magic of the free market is even better.
Yeah, my mom's more... "look, capitalism is the worst system, except for every other one we've tried." She can agree with socialism until you call it that. She thinks Marxist economics is correct until you reveal which school of thought you're coming from. It's like she just has a mental block surrounding the words, not the concepts. Like... she went to East Germany as a teenager (I am forever So Fucking Jealous) and says even though she didn't care about politics as a teenager and still really doesn't (she lived through the Cold War but knows less about it than I do), what she saw of the Eastern Bloc then was a nice place, but she still doesn't like socialism. It's so weird. She'll talk about East Germany with the same tone of voice I use discussing it. And then say "capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others we've tried".
That's how I got into communism really, when I was a young lad I would hear right wingers say "the evil dems are going to make us all Socialist!" I wanted to know what that actually meant, and it sounded pretty dope to me. They have shouted this lie for so long, younger people don't know anything about actually existing socialism or much about the USSR, they just hear "boogeyman that fascists are scared of".
Honestly, I got into communism a similar way, when I was really little I'd see how ridiculous capitalism all seemed from a small child's perspective, and every time I'd say so, or say that grownups needed to be better at sharing, my dad would call me a commie and explain that we fought a war to prevent the very system I was suggesting instead. So when I got a more detailed and neutral view of the Cold War presented to me, I was already of the mindset that the West was wrong to start the whole damn war, and nothing true anyone told me about it changed that perspective, and I learned well before any academic context explained "communism" to me, that my dad hates it, we fought a war to prevent it, but it sure as hell sounds like a better system than the one I'm forced to watch that same dad struggle with every day.
I was constantly told that everything I like is communism. Is it any wonder that by the time I was old enough to have a political opinion, I liked communism?
Same. Kept getting called a communist/socialist by everyone when I was suggesting very basic progressive things. Started researching what it actually meant and even did a school project to make a fake country modeled after Cuba. At first it was kind of a joke, but by the end it was like wtf am I a communist?
Also same. I went through several iterations of left ideologies before I finally started reading history or theory, made all sorts of embarrassing theoretical mistakes before I got to this point, but I totally got pushed down this path by being told basic shit like free healthcare was communism.
I used r/random almost a decade ago (as an Impressionable youth) and got on a subreddit where they called each “Conrad” and “cumrade”, which I thought was a funny bit, and then I stayed for the historical materialism.
Yeah, I had a kid phase where I thought lame communism memes were peak humour. I've grown up now though... I only laugh at good communism memes. And Lenin's snarky remarks about the exact same kinds of liberals we're still dealing with a hundred years later.