Mamdani Blowout Gives Dems a Victory Model They Can Oppose
Socialist Muslim unapologetic about Israel shows how Dems can win, which they will now work to combat
June 25: Mamdani crushes Cuomo, centrism, defeatism, bullshit pragmatism … Centrist Dems gear up to explain it away with bullshit … Iran is just months from obtaining a nuclear bomb again … Trump about to start garnishing millions of people’s wages because he’s a political genius …
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Desperate for a model of how to win again, Democrats got one last night with the victory of state Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim socialist immigrant who didn’t make Pres. Donald Trump the star of his campaign but ran on a rent freeze, free child care, free fucking buses, tons of new residential housing, and paying for it all with higher taxes on the rich assholes who think they fucking own this place because its politicians too often act like they do.
It was the nation’s biggest primary since the Democratic Party somehow lost to Trump last year. Nationally, Democrats took note that the model they have sought for charting a successful future had arrived, with a vow to rally behind it destroy Mamdani and everything he stands for.
Disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) led in all but one of the polls leading up to last night’s stunning upset, in which Cuomo won all but one of yesterday’s Democratic mayoral primaries. Cuomo conceded pretty much immediately, but didn’t immediately say whether he’ll run in the November general election.
Because this was a ranked-choice vote, Mamdani needs 50% to win, and we’ll get the next count on July 1, but the reason Cuomo conceded is that even he knows he’s cooked. Coming in third was Comptroller Brad Lander, who cross-endorsed with Mamdani, so Lander’s votes will likely go disproportionately to Mamdani.
It wasn’t even close. Mamdani had 43.5% of the vote as of last night, with Cuomo far behind at 36.4%. Democratic strategist Trip Yang told the New York Times, “This is the biggest upset in modern New York City history.”
The ballot in November will include current (in case you forgot) still-Mayor Eric Adams — whose corruption allowed Trump to onboard Adams as an unpaid contributor by carrot-and-sticking the federal investigation of Adams — and perennial Republican hopeful Curtis Sliwa, who pollsters say has a realistic shot in 1989.
Big money that would have rallied to support Cuomo in November will now be deployed against Mamdani.
Kathy Wilde runs the Partnership for New York City, which is a partnership of rich people for keeping New York City in the hands of rich people. She told Politico that “This is a capitalist city that has a historic relationship with Israel,” and warned that “there will be a serious surge to try and prevent [Mamdani] from becoming mayor.”
No doubt there will, but you just fucked up your best shot at it, partnership for rich people.
The argument against Mamdani is that his platform of free stuff for people won’t actually win over voters. Who just voted for him.
Mamdani was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), while Cuomo was endorsed by former Pres. Bill Clinton.
And before Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) can lecture us about how the Mamdani model could never work in blue-collar, auto-working Michigan, the United Auto Workers (UAW) endorsed Mamdani — because “we don’t need another hack politician like Cuomo” — and said this morning that Mamdani won “because he made it clear whose side he’s on: workers.”
Mamdani was also endorsed by 50,000 volunteers. Fifty … thousand. In a city of get the fuck outta here.
Now, was it hellishly hot in New York City yesterday? Newsfucker, it was. And could that have kept Cuomo’s older voters at home? Maybe!
So maybe Cuomo shouldn’t have overseen what Pete Sikora of New York Communities for Change called a “lost decade” in which Cuomo as governor did jack about climate change except make it worse with fracking. Which helped make it too hot for some of Cuomo’s voters yesterday!
Besides, turnout was high yesterday. Just like early turnout.
And before national Democrats can lecture us that New York City is super-socialist so of course Mamdani’s win there isn’t translatable elsewhere, allow TFN to introduce two of the city’s last four mayors:
Both Republicans, Newsfuckers! And former Mayor Michael Bloomberg was one of the moneybags backing Cuomo, pouring millions into the pro-Cuomo super PAC, along with billionaire Trump donor Bill Ackman. Thirty million dollars in outside money, the New York Times reported, “buried” Mamdani in attack ads.
They outspent Mamdani, they out-Christianed Mamdani, they out-antisemitismed Mamdani, they out-Trump-bashed Mamdani, and they lost.
New York City is so diverse it elects Republicans. But Mamdani didn’t win based (just) on massive turnout in tiny socialist enclaves in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Newsfucker, Mamdani won some areas of Staten Island, where free-range retired cops and firefighters roam free.
Here’s the map, from the New York Times, with Mamdani in orange-ish and Cuomo in some sort of nauseating weak teal:
That’s Staten Island, exiled at the lower left, with Mamdani’s socialist stank slathered over a good chunk of it.
Mamdani won with South Asian-American voters in Queens who had voted for Adams. He won those Latino voters in Queens the national Democrats are so worried about.
Y’know who else voted for Mamdani? At least some of New York City’s one million Jewish people. Lander’s Jewish and cross-endorsed him. Sanders is not only Jewish, he’s from Brooklyn.
The city, including Jewish New Yorkers, rejected the cynical conflation of antisemitism with supporting Palestinian rights and opposing the murderous policies of an Israeli government that in Trump’s own words doesn’t “know what they fuck they’re doing.”
Mamdani managed to win without backing down from even ostensibly fatal moves like saying “globalize the intifada,” refusing to accept the scare-monger definition of “intifada” even in the face of Cuomo’s campaign essentially calling him antisemitic — even as Cuomo ran an Islamophobic race against Mamdani.
His rivals ran on more-copping the most over-copped city in the nation, while Mamdani promised to boost mental-health spending.
And voters rejected the street-crime fear-mongering of Adams and Cuomo and corporate media because the voters fucking are the city and so of course they know the real pickpockets aren’t street pickpockets, they’re the rapacious Partnership for New York City assholes making the city unaffordable.
As the Wall Street Journal points out, the average rent for a New York City two-bedroom apartment is $5,560. That’s monthly, for you out-of-towners. And after a new law went into effect this month banning brokers from charging renter fees, the landlords now paying those fees hiked rents even higher:
Of course, the complaint is that a rent freeze will make it impossible for landlords to earn a living. But that’s the point: Landlords already don’t earn a living. And nothing with “lord” in it should be a profession. But we’ve allowed Wall Street and corporate America to commodify the basic human need of a place to put your shit.
Ironically, it’s Mamdani, the young guy with new ideas, who’s looking at the past, when landlording wasn’t a sprawling corporate operation fueling massive corporate profits.
Cuomo, notoriously servile to the state’s real-estate interests, centered his housing policies on boosting developmenters. Mamdani centered his rent freeze and the creation of public housing funded by tax hikes.
The savvy smart insider commentary will dismiss it all as, well, Mamdani had a massive canvassing operation. But that’s the point. His platform inspired those volunteers, and when they went out to spread the word, voters fucking bought it.
He didn’t win despite his platform and because of canvassing, he had that canvassing because of his platform. He democracied.
In a shocking twist, it turns out everyone likes free stuff like buses, affordable homes, and city-owned grocery stores free of hedge-fund-fattening profit margins. Especially when it’s all paid for by rich people. Who are taxed aggressively to recoup just some of what they extracted from an economy powered by ALL THE FUCKING PEOPLE.
Here’s Ocasio-Cortez to Mamdani: “Billionaires and lobbyists poured millions against you and our public finance system. And you won.”
Here’s Lander: “This was such a campaign between a hopeful vision of the future and a sort of dark, sour politics of the past … And people said, we want that vision of the future."
Lander also gave a shout-out to Cuomo’s campaign, saying, “Good fucking riddance.”
Democrats outside the city will, of course, dismiss Mamdani’s victory and insist that his policies won’t fly elsewhere. Maybe, but only if those same Democrats shoot those policies down.
For instance, Mamdani needs the sign-off of Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and the Democratic-controlled legislature to raise city taxes. Which they don’t wanna do, because their donors pay those taxes.
But now they know that saying no means taking a stand against Mamdani’s clear mandate. And Hochul’s up for re-election next year, with a lot fewer than 50,000 volunteers.
Iran Close to Obtaining Nuclear Bomb
A secret U.S. assessment has determined that Iran is about six months away from being three months away from developing a nuclear weapon.
Following Pres. Trump’s bombing, dubbed Midnight Hammer, of three Iranian nuclear sites, and Israel’s sustained air campaign, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reportedly concluded that it’ll take Iran less than six months to catch up to where they were, which was three months away from a nuclear weapon.
In other words, Midnight Hammer may have scored a big hit, but it’s Iran singing, “Can’t Touch This.”
The White House made up the motives of people whose names it doesn’t even know, claiming that the DIA report was written to attack Trump, leaked to attack Trump, and reported on to attack Trump. Which would make Israel an enemy of Trump, too, because Israel also doesn’t buy obliteration (which would explain why Israel carried out strikes after Midnight Hammer, such as Operation Mama Said Totally Obliterate You).
Plus, thanks to Trump’s face-blabbing before the airstrikes, Iran had as much warning as if they’d been on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal chat.
So they moved their uranium.
And remember TFN flagged the fact that those vaunted bunker-busters had never been vaunted for bunker-busting real bunkers? And the fact that it’s hard to drill down before exploding without leaving a ton of rubble blocking the followup bunker-buster?
Welp, go ahead and pull on your smarty-pants, Newsfuckers, because the DIA reports that the airstrikes left enough rubble to block entrances to two of Iran’s facilities — but the underlying bunkers are still underlying, intact. Okay, maybe not intact, but not collapsed.
And Iran might not even need those sites, because it’s believed they had secret backups. As one does after years of threats.
Trump had claimed, and is still claiming that he claims, that the U.S. strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. Which — important note! — U.S. intelligence says Iran is not making. Or wasn’t before Midnight Hammer.
Because Iran now has every motive in the world to pursue real nukes for real.
PS White House Office of Personnel Management General Counsel Andrew Kloster Tweeted that Midnight Hammer was “kind of pointless.” After Trump’s announcement, Kloster wrote, “I apologize and will never again doubt the power of the deep state.”
Kloster’s Tweets have now been deleted, as he probably will be.
House Democrats Rally to Defend Trump Instead of Constitution
The House of Representatives yesterday easily voted down articles of impeachment brought by Rep. Al Green (D-TX) against Pres. Donald Trump for bombing Iran without congressional authorization.
“Easily,” because 128 Democrats joined Republicans to kill Green’s measure. These 128 Democrats, including Democratic leadership.
Only 79 Democrats voted to impeach Trump for criminally directing the U.S. military to commit acts of war against a nation that had not attacked the U.S.
None of those voting against impeachment cited anything about the merits, let alone their oath to defend the Constitution. It was all politics, domestic or otherwise.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) said, “What a message to China and Russia — after we take military action, we try to impeach the president." Which is a good example of what the Latin kids call a non coitusing sequitur.
Other reasons for not upholding the Constitution, mostly from anonymous Democrats:
“Most people think it's unhelpful.”
“It puts people in a difficult situation.”
“There are a lot of other things we should be focused on right now.”
And people say stirring political rhetoric is dead!
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) also said the focus should be elsewhere, which would never justify, for instance, voting against supporting Israel. Voting for impeachment wouldn’t have forced a focus shift, because Republicans were always going to kill it. So…
As Rep. Emily Randall (D-WA) explained,"My constituents have been calling for articles of impeachment knowing we don't have the votes to pass them." That’s right. You do it anyway. Because you took an oath.
Two Quickies
The Senate may try for a vote on their version of Pres. Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act legislation as soon as this week. Trump added new work requirements yesterday, ordering Senate Republicans to work over the weekend on the bill, which they want to pass by July 4, before even more people find out how big and shitty it is. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told Axios that, sure, the polls show people hate it now, but people will like the bill once they know what’s in it, which if Republicans really believed they wouldn’t rush to vote on it as soon as possible.
Trump may have found the key for creating millions of political activists: Dock their wages! The Wall Street Journal reports that the Department of Education is about to start garnishing the wages of almost two million people behind on their student-loan repayments. The department restarted debt collection last month, after the pandemic pause. Six million people are 90 days behind on their payments. Two million are on track to default in July, with another million right behind them in August. Maybe round them up with federal troops?
TCB
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Go get ‘em, kids! Have you seen the New York City mayoral results…?!?
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
Midnight Hammered was the right name for an operation led by our tosspot defense secretary. You can’t destroy knowledge by bombing it, but bombing is more viscerally satisfying than squeezing knowledge out of the country by taking over universities.
Cue the haters and smears. Let’s see how that goes. I think people are done with believing bullshit fear mongering and bigoted smears. GTFOH, Archie Bunkers and the ratfuckers who you seem to enjoy believing. Our neighborhoods, our neighbors are not up for the ratfuck ANYMORE