Mamdani’s win
Even the pro-capitalism New York Times’s1 opinion writer, David Wallace-Wells, wrote the following about Mamdani’s win:
I am 43 years old and have lived almost my entire life in New York City. Never across those decades has the city elevated someone to such power so quickly — not even close. In February Mamdani was barely registering 1 percent in polls and putting out videos about “halalflation.” On Tuesday he won more votes in the city than Michael Bloomberg did in any of his three campaigns for mayor — more votes, in fact, than any New York City mayoral candidate since 1969….
In recent years, we’ve gotten used to looking out at the changing landscape of politics and seeing a right-wing alliance of working Americans and wealthy people, united by disdain for a professional managerial class seen as liberal scolds. Mamdani’s win illustrates a different alignment. He brought the working, middle and upper-middle classes together in what I called back in July an “emergent coalition of the precariat” — united in part by a growing affordability crisis and in part by simple rage about income inequality, corruption and the entitlement and impunity of the very rich. What looks like populism can appeal to a pretty broad swath of white-collar college grads, too.
So it’s not just me saying that most people want an end to income inequality.
Mamdani won just a tiny bit more than 50% of the vote (the rest split between the other two candidates.) Why didn’t he win 80% or 90% of the votes?
One reason is that he (like virtually all politicians in the United States) refused to express the KEY TRUTH about Israel, which is that Israeli government violence against Palestinians has never been for the purpose of making Israeli Jews safe but instead to enable the billionaire ruling class of Israel to get away with severely economically oppressing working class Jews in Israel including Holocaust survivors, as I explain and prove with mainstream sources in my article here. Nor did he tell the KEY TRUTH about Hamas, that for decades (and even after October 7, 2023) the Israeli government has funded Hamas and worked to keep it in power in order to make the Palestinian bogeyman enemy maximally frightening so that the Israeli billionaire ruling class can get away with oppressing the Jewish working class by pretending to be protecting it from Palestinians, as I prove with mainstream source in my article here.
As a result of not expressing these KEY TRUTHS, he did not refute the false (ruling-class-promoted) framework about Israel that says one can be either on the side of Hamas that wants to kill all the Jews, or on the side of Israel that is using justifiable violence to make Israeli Jews safe. Because this framework went un-refuted, lots of New York City voters, out of sympathy for Israeli Jews, felt compelled to vote against Mamdani because he was “pro-Palestine.”
Question #3 for Divesting from Israel Won
Failure to refute the false framework about Israel is, likewise, the reason why the excellent Question #3 in Somerville, Massachusetts—which called for the town to divest from Israel—only won with “more than 55% of the vote in unofficial election results” instead of with 80% or 90%.
Most of the people who vote for a Question, or a candidate like Mamdani opposed to Israel, do so only because they are (correctly!) horrified by Israel’s genocidal violence against Palestinians, even while at the same time believing (wrongly) that some Israeli violence against Palestinians is necessary in order to make Israeli Jews safe. These voters are merely opposed to Israel using DISPROPORTIONATE violence, even though they believe it is for the noble cause of making Jews safe.
This is why something like Question #3 gets only a bit more than 55% of the vote instead of the 90% it would get if the population understood the (censored) KEY TRUTH about Israel—that its violence against Palestinians has never been for making Israeli Jews safe but rather for enabling Israeli billionaires to get away with severely economically oppressing them.
We need to UN-censor these KEY TRUTHS. I discuss how here.
Why did the Democratic Party score so many victories?
The Democratic Party scored many victories yesterday because lots of people who had voted in previous elections for Trump in the belief that “Yes, Trump’s an asshole billionaire, but he’s OUR asshole billionaire” discovered (from his cuts to Medicaid and contempt for people needing SNAP food assistance, and continued warmongering, which MAGA rank and file always opposed and thought Trump did too, etc. etc.) that Trump is really NOT “our asshole billionaire” at all.
And since the Democratic Party is the only other ‘game in town’ these voters voted for it, even while in many cases holding their noses because of that party’s support for woke nonsense such as the right of men to be on a women’s sports team and use the women’s locker and shower room, and the party’s official support of (even mandating it when it was in power) things like double mastectomies for 15 year old girls whenever they said they needed to be in a boy’s body.
No doubt down the road after the Democratic Party is back in the Oval Office, people will begin thinking it’s time to vote for the Republican Party again. Until we remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor (yes, it is possible: this way for example), the ruling class will keep using these elections to keep us on the treadmill of defeat. The rich were never elected and cannot be un-elected. More and more people are coming to see that this is so. Let’s build the egalitarian revolutionary movement with these good people.
OK, I admit it; I subscribe to the NYT. I do it, however, just for the cooking recipes. :)
As for trans issues, the Dems really got played by the Repubs, who using outlandish claims, goaded the Dems into making a big deal about in defense of common sense and basic rights. But 98% of the country is barely aware of trans people and could care less. Engaging them in an atmosphere of ignorance was a big mistake. The only people who should be involved in trans concerns are trans people, their family, and doctors and therapists trained in this area. Is there any other physical or mental condition that’s regulated by the government?
As Mayor, will the issue of Israel’s nazification be something Mamdani will be dealing with? Why should he have gone there when so many voters of all types are ignorant of the last 75+ years? It would’ve been easier to make him out as a Muslim terrorist. I’m hoping he helps educate on this issue once he’s in office.