It is an actual tactic to associate radicals with moderates in order to make them look bad to their supporters. Look at the actual meat of the article:
Sources say Mamdani and Khan have since exchanged texts and spoken over the phone. Khan’s advisers have also been in contact with Mamdani’s campaign team.
The sources close to Khan add that Mamdani needs to move to the centre to widen his appeal, particularly as Cuomo and the incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, are running as independents in the general election on November 4.
These are actually two unrelated pieces of information. One is that Kahn has been in contact with Mamdani sometime since his primary win, and the other says someone close to Kahn (but not Kahn) advises Mamdani be more moderate. This is a classic yellow journalism tactic and Adam knows that, or he should, given his job.
Keep in mind that liberals can see our dunk posts on twitter. They can actively measure what riles us up by our posting response. This is why social media successfully replaced COINTELPRO. It's not about just spying in terms of movement and action. It's also about sentiment analysis. We're about to hit August and the NYC general is in November. So these kinds of things are going to continue popping up. They perform several functions. 1) To reassure moderates that the adults are handling it 2) To make Mamdani's team seem like there is public pressure on him to be moderate 3) To make Mamdani supporters, who support Palestine, unsure of his commitment.
It's one thing for us to criticize our own, in our own house. But when we're out in public, other people can see it and capitalist establishment will take advantage. I'm not asking anyone here to support Mamdani if you don't want to, I'm not asking you to get into electoralism. I'm just trying to illustrate that we can't take every bit of news that confirms our bias (that people always sell out) at face value. Even when they do eventually sell out. I think AOC is somewhat of a victim of these kinds of tactics, she wasn't ready for it, and now it's too late. Let's see if Zohran is ready for it.
