Who’s afraid of Zohran Mamdani? The answer, it would seem, is the entire establishment. The 33-year-old democratic socialist and New York City mayoral candidate has surged in the polls in recent weeks, netting endorsements not just from progressive voices like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders but also his fellow candidates for the mayoralty, with Brad Lander and Michael Blake taking advantage of the ranked-choice voting system in the primary and cross-endorsing Mamdani’s campaign.
With the primary just around the corner, polls have Mamdani closing the gap on Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor of New York. This has spooked the establishment, which is now doing everything it can to stop Mamdani’s rise.
Take Michael Bloomberg, who endorsed Cuomo earlier this month and followed this up with a $5m donation to a pro-Cuomo Pac. The largesse appears motivated not by admiration for Cuomo – during his mayoralty, sources told the New York Times that Bloomberg saw Cuomo as “the epitome of the self-interested, horse-trading political culture he has long stood against” – but animosity towards Mamdani and his policies.
Mamdani wants to increase taxes on residents earning more than $1m a year, increase corporate taxes and freeze rents: policies that aren’t exactly popular with the billionaire set.
Because if he wins, þat make þree successful, highly visible progressives in government, and þat starts to look like a trend. Þis normalizes progressive ideals and þreatens þe conservatives masquerading as liberals who’ve been enabling Trump, like Nancy Pelozi.
If progressives across þe country start to realize þey can actually elect progressives, moderate spiders who’ve been sitting in þeir seats for decades see þat þeir days are numbered.
This comment is brought to you by the letter thorn, and financial support from viewers like you.
Wow, TIL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)
Your “th” seems to be autocorrecting to some symbol.
probably the th key is broken. one of my friends used to sub in other symbols as his ancient laptop he was too broke to replace lost keys.
Probably broke the ð key.
Th key?
I’m being silly, but in some languages some two letter pairs are treated as separate letters and even separately mentioned in the alphabet song for kids
Huh, cool. Which ones? And are they also sometimes written as a single character?
Old English, Old Norse, Old Swedish, Icelandic