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In Zohran Mamdani’s Win, Socialism Beat the Status Quo
(jacobin.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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It's just a primary guys. Let's hope he wins the seat.
It would take a catastrophe for him not to.
His opponents in the general are as follows:
The corrupt former governor sex pest he just beat, running as an independent in order to get a do-over
Current mayor in spite of being a hair's breath from prison until he went full MAGA, always being a fascist cop (but I repeat myself) and genuinely unhinged, Eric Adams
Perennial loser and hyper-racist vigilante lunatic Curtis Sliwa.
Not only are they all awful candidates in themselves, their core demographics also overlap to such a degree that it'll be an upset if more than one of them reaches double digits!
If NYC uses ranked choice voting in the general as well and Cuomo learns from his disaster of a campaign then he might try coalition-building with Eric Adams or others to pull off a win by getting neoliberals and MAGA to gang up on Zohran. It's a headscratcher for me because I never expect neoliberals to learn from their mistakes, and yet they might actually feel forced to because they never fail to pull out all the stops against progressives, let alone an actual socialist.
It does not, for some weird reason. City primaries only.
If Cuomo runs 3rd party and the Dem establishment supports him, I'm going to fling that back at anyone who tells me to not vote 3rd party in a presidential election, lol.
I'm going to flip out if the dems support Cuomo and I'm honestly half expecting them to
I'm fully expecting them to. The Dem leadership supporting an ACTUAL leftist is only SLIGHTLY more likely than them going full fascist and endorsing Curtis Sliwa..
Sweet summer child.
"Vote blue no matter who"
Mamdani wins historic primary victory
".....shit"
He's running as an independent, yes.
Unless they suddenly fall back in love with Adams or go full Sliwa, they will. They fight the left exactly as much as they accommodate the far right.
Last I heard, which I think was just hours old, is he's still considering running as an independent. He hasn't decided yet. I guess he's waiting to see how much corporations will pay him?
You're going to fling that a high-profile and well-recognized (even amongst non-politically engaged voters) organization gave recognition and resources to a third party in a local (not even gubernatorial but) mayoral election as a counter defense for voting for a third party in a presidential election?
If they do it against a progressive after making a huge deal about not doing it against a centrist? You may like that level of rank hypocrisy.
I mean, I'm not even arguing one way or the other. When people argue against voting for a third party in a presidential election, it's on the basis that the candidate has absolutely no shot at winning and, at best, will split the vote.
It has nothing to do with liking or not liking hypocrisy; the basis of their argument is entirely about whether a strategy is viable, not whether they felt good about the decision.
I assumed that the OP was actually trying to poke holes in the argument but arguing that the Democratic party has backed a third-party candidate in a local election doesn't negate any of the actual points regarding dissuading voting for a third-party candidate who is without the same resources and does not have the same kind of outreach (such as appearing in debates, etc.) in a presidential election. That's why, notably, OP had to specify a presidential election: people don't, generally, argue against voting for third parties at the local level because the visibility of those candidates winning is entirely different.
Do you get what I mean? It wholly doesn't engage with the actual reasoning or evidence for the argument so it…wouldn't mean anything, if you did try to use it as a rebuttal.
Yeah. It's conveniently different in this case because the nominee is a progressive.
It seems I'm not able to break down the core basics of the underlying mechanics well enough so we'll probably have to end the conversation but, just in case I'm still being avoidably unclear, I'll try to summarize as barebones as possible:
it's about resources.
More resources behind a candidate materially changes that candidates viability; unless you can explain how a progressive candidate in this scenario invalidates the resources and reach that's actually of concern when weighing whether a candidate can succeed, you – likewise – are opting to ignore the details of the reasoning and not actually address them.
P. S.
I'm not someone who prefers centrist or even left-of-center candidates; if I lived in NY, I'd definitely be voting for Mamdani and most certainly not Cuomo.It's weird to be like, "His progressivism makes the difference," as though I'm hoping the party backs Cuomo or Adams and would rapidly vote third party in this case.
It's honest. Voting 3rd party is literally voting for the worst candidate, in all cases unless there's a progressive as the party's nominee, in which case it doesn't matter.
I'm sick of the double standards and I don't buy the excuses for them.
See, this is why it feels like your responses are wholly detached from anything I'm actually saying.
I explicitly said that people who make these arguments don't advocate against third party votes in local elections (because the viability/feasibility dynamics of a smaller population are different) and I thought it was clear to extrapolate from the underlying reasoning (but perhaps I was mistaken) that voting for a third party presidential nominee who's been backed by, say, the Democratic party because they opted to not back the winner of their primary during a presidential election (which I didn't mention as it feels highly unlikely, ever, but it's the same premise) would make sense because that candidate would then have the name recognition, reach, and resources necessary to reach a populace as large as the entire nation.
Objectively, you're directly contradicting what I've said the reasoning of the argument is, even when I've pointed out it argues the opposite.
See, it's ok to vote 3rd party here. It's not because the nominee is a progressive, it's because of this paragraph of excuses.
…you mean the material differences between two different scenarios?
I've already said that the backing of a powerful organization in different election series would render the same advantages and chance of winning – regardless of the candidates political positions (and that I wanted Mamdani to win! I'm not even arguing to not vote for him; I think every New Yorker should) – so this is literally you just insisting that, no, really the reasoning would be different if Mamdani ran as a third party and the Democratic party endorsed him. Then I'd say the reasoning was different and you should vote for the guy who won the primary.
Which, like, if you're going to assume I'm secretly lying, why even bother to have responded in the first place?
The only one that actually matters is that Mamdani is a progressive and the sex pest you want is a centrist.
Yes, this is exactly what I'm saying. Your entire "it's ok to vote for a third party" thing is only because Mamdani is a progressive. "No matter who" crumbles instantly when the centrist candidate loses the primary.
Ohhhhh; O. K. Yeah; you are just totally ignoring what I'm saying.
Thanks for, at least, confirming.
I've said multiple times I wanted Mamdani to win; I've also said multiple times that I'm, very much, not advocating for anyone to vote third party (again, the candidate I would want won). You're just ignoring what I'm saying and substituting your own reality.
O. K. then; carry on. I wasted way too much time actually thinking this was a real conversation.
Except the part where you keep saying that this is different because it's small and local.
Speaking about the likelihood of whether a candidate can win is not the same thing as desiring for that candidate to win.
I explicitly said in my very first reply to you that I wasn't making a recommendation about which candidate to vote for because my point was about the reasoning of the argument and whether OP's argument actually addressed the viability of a candidate, the central piece of contention when it comes to whether a third-party candidate is capable of winning.
That doesn't mean I want Cuomo to win, regardless of how his chances look or his actual viability. I'm not a centrist; I don't want centrists for office; I'm thrilled the socialist won the primary; this is entirely besides the point of my original comment.
It sure looks like you've been arguing this whole time that voting third party is a-ok in this instance but not any of the previous ones.
Hey, nobody messes with the Zohran!