Mamdani’s victory is important for many reasons, including its reflection of the viability of socialist politics and policy prescriptions. One overlooked facet of his campaign that it should make inescapably clear is the relentless willingness of Democrats to smear candidates of color and those from the very same minority communities that the party disingenuously claims to defend. Democrats are no less racist than Republicans, just less willing to be overt about their biases. I’ve written at some length about this pattern in the past, particularly responding to reporting by Ryan Grim at The Intercept. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/democrats-vs-democracy
I never was. That was among the smears that I confronted by so-called “journalists” unwilling to check their facts or actually investigate their subject matter. To be fair, it was probably the least offensive among the various lies published about me, but it remains a good example of precisely my point. Thank you for sharing!
The commenter to whom you replied shared a link from a self-described journalist who has long trolled EFF and chose to support my character assassination in order to gain clicks on his writing. That “journalism” was no less corrupt or self-serving than the conservative political consensus that I ran to challenge. I wish I could offer you some hopeful counterpoint, but as far as I can tell, this country has only leaned deeper into its racism, xenophobia, and political demagoguery in the years since I ran.
The organizations I worked for before running to Congress included EFF, ACS, and Muslim Advocates, in addition to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, which I led for six years before it became Defending Rights and Dissent. Conflating those organizations’ worthy goals with my campaign platform when running for Congress was a reflection of laziness unfortunately characteristic of most journalists. I took more aggressive positions than EFF in challenging the surveillance state, and generally have come to see nonprofit organizations as feel-good-but-ineffectual attempts at promoting the public interest within a society whose economy, political process, and public discourse all remain committed to the depravity of corporate capitalism and industrial resource extraction.
For those concerned with the trumped up anti-semitic charges, you might take a look at the fact that Rep. Jerry Nadler, unlike those other NY reps, has endorsed Mamdani in this mayoral race in New York City. Nadler is the congressional representative, of "New York's 12th Congressional District includes Manhattan's Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Morningside Heights, Chelsea, Yorkville, Carnegie Hill, Kips Bay, Roosevelt Island, Tudor City, Gramercy Park, Central Park, Turtle Bay, Hell’s Kitchen, Murray Hill, Lenox Hill, Theater District, Clinton, Garment District, Sutton Place, Midtown, Union Square, Times Square, Lincoln Center, and Stuyvesant Town." https://nadler.house.gov/our-district/
Liberals screamed Vote Blue No Matter Who in 2016, 2020, and 2024 but now suddenly they can't bring themselves to endorse the Democratic nominee for Mayor who won by 10+ points compared to the sex pests they all wanted.
We all need to pay attention...lots of states and municipalities are outlawing ranked choice voting. They know it's the path to new candidates, and they'll do anything to shut that down.
Totally agree with the sentiment of your comment. Unfortunately, Mamdani cannot be our president. He was born in Uganda. Huge bummer. I'd vote for him in a heartbeat.
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are holding the Fight Oligarchy tour specifically to reach out to and identify other regular people like Mamdani, whom they can form into a deep bench of democratic socialist political candidates. There will be others just like him who can become President.
I have to express my darkest fear - Mamdani won, not because the electorate tired of waiting for different results from the same thing over and over; but rather that it was hot as BALLS, and the olds assumed that Cuomo would win anyway and there was no need to leave their AC.
I don't know what to expect, but we are going to once again see what it looks like when the Democrats actually want to do something. You saw it when they stopped Bernie, twice. You see it anytime anyone threatens to get between the donors and profit.
Because the point of the Democratic Party isn't to govern, or even win elections. It's to stop anyone who would threaten profits from ever being elected.
Once you see this, everything they do becomes very easy to understand.
They no longer seem insane.
They are just greedy little piggies who aren't that smart.
I had a similar fleeting thought. Here's the thing though: the Democratic Party of today is not the party that sidelined Bernie. The party has the lowest approval ratings of all time, and many voters (even the older ones) are appalled at their impotence in the face of Trump. If Mamdani spends the next few months bringing it -- especially with the younger set -- other demos will follow. Let Cuomo, Adams and Sliwa fight over what remains.
YES!!!!! Agree with every word you wrote, Ken. I am thrilled with this victory for intelligence and integrity. When you compared Zohran to Barack, though, a chill went up my spine. Could we be fooled again? Is the Cuomo/Clinton cabal so venal that it might let Mamdani win and then coerce him (through bribes, which worked with Obama, or, failing in that endeavor, physical threats) to do their biding once he's in office? He seems incorruptible, but Obama did too.
Also, I'm curious, if all these people run against him, wouldn't that improve his chances of winning? I mean, they're all Democrats. I don't see Zohran supporters changing their minds. Maybe the cabal will take Barack out of mothballs and have him run as an independent. Hate to say it, but I'd love to see the guy who broke my heart get beat by the political leader he might have been.
there are major differences between Mamdani and Obama. The parallel is that they both turned out huge numbers of young voters at rates previously seen as impossible.
Yes, there was the candidate Obama and the president Obama. We haven't seen the mayor but like you I am hopeful that he will deliver on his promises. What impresses me is his refusal to fall into the traps, as you put it. He seems so much older than his years.
Here's the thing...if you target younger people, you don't need boatloads of money to reach them!
The old guard knows one marketing strategy: legacy media. It's hella expensive (even though it's dying) and only relevant to old people. I'm not pretending like social media and more content-driven tactics are free, but they're more about people and creativity not exclusively about CPMs.
I’m seeing twitter leftists whose political switch was flipped on by Bernie skewering Zohran for being insufficiently radical. So I’m feeling a need to quickly scream into the void here: ZOHRAN HAS WAY MORE BACKBONE THAN BERNIE HAS EVER HAD. Furthermore, he can’t be written off by centrists as just some angry, ungrateful poor. He’s known comfort and stability and considers that baseline to have been rightfully earned by working people and long overdue. This isn’t a revolution.. it’s a highly valuable development in advancing popular consciousness. Now it’s on us to fortify the ideological scaffold temporarily in place with the rich roots and historically material tradition of US working class resistance to monopoly capital.
Sorry, punctuation or grammar might have made clearer; twitter leftists skewering Zohran as ‘sheepdog,’ ‘DNC psyop,’ etc, as if their own political awakening wasn’t Bernie in ‘16 or ‘20.
“Mamdani is that rare politician who is honest about who he is. You might not agree with him on everything, but he’s not censoring himself in order to get votes.” Trump supporters think the same about their guy. Is there a lesson there, across the political spectrum?
I'm looking forward to Kat Abughazaleh also upsetting the applecart by taking the Illinois 9th district seat in Congress, succeeding a Zionist and prevailing over a Zionist, Daniel Biss.
Mamdani’s victory is important for many reasons, including its reflection of the viability of socialist politics and policy prescriptions. One overlooked facet of his campaign that it should make inescapably clear is the relentless willingness of Democrats to smear candidates of color and those from the very same minority communities that the party disingenuously claims to defend. Democrats are no less racist than Republicans, just less willing to be overt about their biases. I’ve written at some length about this pattern in the past, particularly responding to reporting by Ryan Grim at The Intercept. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/democrats-vs-democracy
You still an astro-turfer for the EFF, Buttar?
https://www.nefariousrussians.com/p/shahid-buttar-the-cheesy-silicon
I never was. That was among the smears that I confronted by so-called “journalists” unwilling to check their facts or actually investigate their subject matter. To be fair, it was probably the least offensive among the various lies published about me, but it remains a good example of precisely my point. Thank you for sharing!
Wait, since when is the EFF supposed to be bad and evil?
The commenter to whom you replied shared a link from a self-described journalist who has long trolled EFF and chose to support my character assassination in order to gain clicks on his writing. That “journalism” was no less corrupt or self-serving than the conservative political consensus that I ran to challenge. I wish I could offer you some hopeful counterpoint, but as far as I can tell, this country has only leaned deeper into its racism, xenophobia, and political demagoguery in the years since I ran.
I rather doubt it has to be about "clicks on writing" (maybe that's the case in your world).
When it doesn't have a problem with _private_ spying as opposed to public/government spying.
So you never worked for the EFF?
The organizations I worked for before running to Congress included EFF, ACS, and Muslim Advocates, in addition to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, which I led for six years before it became Defending Rights and Dissent. Conflating those organizations’ worthy goals with my campaign platform when running for Congress was a reflection of laziness unfortunately characteristic of most journalists. I took more aggressive positions than EFF in challenging the surveillance state, and generally have come to see nonprofit organizations as feel-good-but-ineffectual attempts at promoting the public interest within a society whose economy, political process, and public discourse all remain committed to the depravity of corporate capitalism and industrial resource extraction.
Well, I suppose we'll just have to see.
God knows people can change (or seem to).
Democratic Establishment prior to Mamdani’s victory: “We need a bigger tent, and we need to appeal to young voters.”
Democratic Establishment after Mamdani’s victory: “Not a tent this big, and young voters don’t know what they’re talking about.”
yup lol
Hahhaaaa! Well said Susan :)
Thank you for appreciating my morbid sense of humor!
For those concerned with the trumped up anti-semitic charges, you might take a look at the fact that Rep. Jerry Nadler, unlike those other NY reps, has endorsed Mamdani in this mayoral race in New York City. Nadler is the congressional representative, of "New York's 12th Congressional District includes Manhattan's Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Morningside Heights, Chelsea, Yorkville, Carnegie Hill, Kips Bay, Roosevelt Island, Tudor City, Gramercy Park, Central Park, Turtle Bay, Hell’s Kitchen, Murray Hill, Lenox Hill, Theater District, Clinton, Garment District, Sutton Place, Midtown, Union Square, Times Square, Lincoln Center, and Stuyvesant Town." https://nadler.house.gov/our-district/
Good point, but I would caution against the logical fallacy of "my Jewish friend says it's cool for me to say this".
Mamdani is right, but not because he has a Jewish friend.
That wasn't my point. I thought it was clear that it was about the Democrats, and who is, and who is not, piling on.
Liberals screamed Vote Blue No Matter Who in 2016, 2020, and 2024 but now suddenly they can't bring themselves to endorse the Democratic nominee for Mayor who won by 10+ points compared to the sex pests they all wanted.
This gives me HOPE. And the Dem refusal to endorse is going to be an endorsement in itself. Nice job!
that's a really good point i hadn't considered - like how bernie's not actually being a democrat actually lent him credibility with independents haha
It's also very exciting that this heavily covered election was ranked choice. We need that to spread everywhere.
good point!!
We all need to pay attention...lots of states and municipalities are outlawing ranked choice voting. They know it's the path to new candidates, and they'll do anything to shut that down.
DO not 'misuse this man America.'
You did not vote for Ralph Nader. You did not vote for Bernie Sanders.
IF you 'cancel Mamdani' you deserve what is coming for you.
THIS man COULD be your next President?? But you won't vote for him because he is brown!
Totally agree with the sentiment of your comment. Unfortunately, Mamdani cannot be our president. He was born in Uganda. Huge bummer. I'd vote for him in a heartbeat.
Must have missed this somewhere. But he has shown others the way.
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are holding the Fight Oligarchy tour specifically to reach out to and identify other regular people like Mamdani, whom they can form into a deep bench of democratic socialist political candidates. There will be others just like him who can become President.
Would NOT GO near OC. She is a proved liar and politician!
People really need to start using my asshole Congressman's full name: Congressman Dan SACHS Goldman, heir to the Levi's Jeans fortune.
How hard do you think that trustfund brat is going to work to fix income inequality? You think he's going to raise his own taxes? LOLZ
I have to express my darkest fear - Mamdani won, not because the electorate tired of waiting for different results from the same thing over and over; but rather that it was hot as BALLS, and the olds assumed that Cuomo would win anyway and there was no need to leave their AC.
I don't know what to expect, but we are going to once again see what it looks like when the Democrats actually want to do something. You saw it when they stopped Bernie, twice. You see it anytime anyone threatens to get between the donors and profit.
Because the point of the Democratic Party isn't to govern, or even win elections. It's to stop anyone who would threaten profits from ever being elected.
Once you see this, everything they do becomes very easy to understand.
They no longer seem insane.
They are just greedy little piggies who aren't that smart.
I had a similar fleeting thought. Here's the thing though: the Democratic Party of today is not the party that sidelined Bernie. The party has the lowest approval ratings of all time, and many voters (even the older ones) are appalled at their impotence in the face of Trump. If Mamdani spends the next few months bringing it -- especially with the younger set -- other demos will follow. Let Cuomo, Adams and Sliwa fight over what remains.
YES!!!!! Agree with every word you wrote, Ken. I am thrilled with this victory for intelligence and integrity. When you compared Zohran to Barack, though, a chill went up my spine. Could we be fooled again? Is the Cuomo/Clinton cabal so venal that it might let Mamdani win and then coerce him (through bribes, which worked with Obama, or, failing in that endeavor, physical threats) to do their biding once he's in office? He seems incorruptible, but Obama did too.
Also, I'm curious, if all these people run against him, wouldn't that improve his chances of winning? I mean, they're all Democrats. I don't see Zohran supporters changing their minds. Maybe the cabal will take Barack out of mothballs and have him run as an independent. Hate to say it, but I'd love to see the guy who broke my heart get beat by the political leader he might have been.
there are major differences between Mamdani and Obama. The parallel is that they both turned out huge numbers of young voters at rates previously seen as impossible.
Yes, there was the candidate Obama and the president Obama. We haven't seen the mayor but like you I am hopeful that he will deliver on his promises. What impresses me is his refusal to fall into the traps, as you put it. He seems so much older than his years.
Ken you rock! Love the other informing comments. Thank you again.
Here's the thing...if you target younger people, you don't need boatloads of money to reach them!
The old guard knows one marketing strategy: legacy media. It's hella expensive (even though it's dying) and only relevant to old people. I'm not pretending like social media and more content-driven tactics are free, but they're more about people and creativity not exclusively about CPMs.
"Party leaders from Chuck Schumer to Hakeem Jeffries have also declined to endorse him"
Schumer is an interesting case given how closely he worked with Mamdani on the issue with New York taxi drivers and the taxi medallion debt relief.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/taxi-driver-strike/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/10/new-york-city-taxi-driver-cabbie-hunger-strike-debt-medallions/
https://haitiantimes.com/2022/02/25/hundreds-of-taxi-medallions-repossessed-despite-rescue-deal-that-ended-hunger-strike/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/04/new-york-city-taxi-drivers-end-hunger-strike-debt-relief
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/reader-center/taxi-medallion-investigation.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/nyregion/nyc-taxis-medallions-suicides.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/nyregion/taxi-medallions.html
yeah and he's not up for reelection until 2029, not really sure what he's so worried about
He's worried the imaginary couple in his head will be upset
I’m seeing twitter leftists whose political switch was flipped on by Bernie skewering Zohran for being insufficiently radical. So I’m feeling a need to quickly scream into the void here: ZOHRAN HAS WAY MORE BACKBONE THAN BERNIE HAS EVER HAD. Furthermore, he can’t be written off by centrists as just some angry, ungrateful poor. He’s known comfort and stability and considers that baseline to have been rightfully earned by working people and long overdue. This isn’t a revolution.. it’s a highly valuable development in advancing popular consciousness. Now it’s on us to fortify the ideological scaffold temporarily in place with the rich roots and historically material tradition of US working class resistance to monopoly capital.
wait, what did sanders say?
Sorry, punctuation or grammar might have made clearer; twitter leftists skewering Zohran as ‘sheepdog,’ ‘DNC psyop,’ etc, as if their own political awakening wasn’t Bernie in ‘16 or ‘20.
“Mamdani is that rare politician who is honest about who he is. You might not agree with him on everything, but he’s not censoring himself in order to get votes.” Trump supporters think the same about their guy. Is there a lesson there, across the political spectrum?
I'm looking forward to Kat Abughazaleh also upsetting the applecart by taking the Illinois 9th district seat in Congress, succeeding a Zionist and prevailing over a Zionist, Daniel Biss.