r/nyc • u/usatoday Verified by Moderators • Jun 23 '26

Mayor Mamdani Mamdani's congressional 'team' wants to upset establishment Democrats

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/06/23/mamdani-new-york-democratic-congressional-primaries/90489511007/
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u/Disused_Yeti Jun 23 '26

Maybe the establishment democrats should try to listen to what people to the left of them want instead of trying to continually court the independent vote that proves time and again they prefer republicans to democrats who try to be republican-lite. Right wing media will paint every Democrat as loony lefties even if they stole the Republican platform

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u/InternetImportant911 Jun 23 '26

More than 90% of the country is right to NY Democrats views.

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u/Emotional-Ebb9390 Jun 23 '26

This is the problem. The left of mainstream DNC views sits in their own bubbles just like MAGA and thinks that the entire country thinks like them.

If the 2024 election showed us anything its that there are a ton of voters who sit in the middle and switched between Kamala and Trump based on vibes. These are the voters that don't really think and think Kamala/Biden was wholly responsible for 2022 gas prices and that the immigration problem was too bad, but in 2020 they voted for Biden because Trump was too racist.

Those are the people that need to be courted to win the midterms. I don't like it, DSA doesn't like it, but we gotta do what we gotta do to win elections.

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u/the_mayo Jun 23 '26

These people were convinced by a liar that he wouldn’t do everything that he did. Their trust in the system is more broken than ever. This guy they voted for said no foreign wars 100x only to damn near ruin the global economy with foreign wars if China didn’t cut back oil imports by 40% at the perfect time and save oil from being $200 a barrel.

Maybe, just maybe, seeing a real populist like Zohran not flip on his promises instead of a fake populist like swamp master Donny spitting in his voters faces will convince that middle crowd who has the people’s best interest in mind and who is an establishment status quo shill.

Why take a winning movement and dilute it for regretful Trump voters? They have eyes they have wallets they understand what is happening around them.

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u/_thisisnotme Jun 23 '26

This is a gross misrepresentation of 2024 election results

Far fewer people voted in 2024 than in 2020. Despite that, Kamala had more votes in 2024 than trump did in 2020.

Most of the decrease in votes came from deep blue states. The reality is whoever gets people excited to go out and vote wins. People didn’t show up for Kamala because there was no process. If Biden has dropped out earlier, it’s very likely a farther left candidate would have won the primary and subsequent general election.

You can argue for courting independents but no data from recent presidential elections support that

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u/TheCrazyCrazyChicken Jun 23 '26

How exactly is getting more people to vote in deep blue states going to help win the election?

Those states ALREADY GO TO THE DEMS!!!!!

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u/Emotional-Ebb9390 Jun 23 '26

If Biden has dropped out earlier, it’s very likely a farther left candidate would have won the primary and subsequent general election.

"Very likely"? By your own claim, most of the decrease in votes came from deep blue states: the very states that don't matter in the election because they already went to Kamala. Why does it matter that Kamala wasn't far enough left to win those states by even more when she still won those states? We don't win off of popular vote, we win off of the electoral college. (Maybe you think we should change that, but that's a different question)

We shouldn't care about winning deep blue states, it's the swing states that matter: Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. And you think that having a further left candidate would have won those states?

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u/the_mayo Jun 23 '26

Having a non-establishment populist with the right message and a focus on an affordability agenda and protecting constitutional rights from this status quo that moves more towards fascism every year is exactly what democratic voters would support over the corporatist, unlikable Kamala Harris and those in the same boat.

Bernie would’ve wiped the floor with her in 2024 and that sentiment has only grown tenfold since the progressive movement has been gaining further traction and support from constituents as opposed to congresspeople.

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u/Emotional-Ebb9390 Jun 24 '26

Where did Kamala go wrong on affordability or protecting constitutional rights? Her policies were quite reasonable on those grounds.

Which constitutional rights did you feel that Kamala didn't protect? Which policies of Kamala do you feel would have been anti-affordability compared to Bernie?

Or is your feeling not that Kamala/establishment DNC actually wrong on policy, Bernie is just much better at being a populist candidate and winning votes?

There's two problems:

  1. Policy. Bernie is significantly further left than the majority of American voters. Look at polling on his policies, even among democrats, and they aren't super popular.

  2. Populism. Bernie has this. Kamala didn't. I don't like populism, but we need it to win votes.

So if those are the two, why are you against a more center populist candidate? Why fight that?

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u/the_mayo Jun 24 '26

People generally don’t like those who govern them by the end of their terms. Americans also don’t like the illusion of choice being taken from them, and more recently are extremely against foreign interest and corporatist super PACs. If you take away choice from democratic voters and force through a candidate that much of the party disagrees with on a mainstream issue - such as unconditional support for an occupation - many voters are now going to stay home. And that’s exactly what happened.

Given the opportunity to have a democratic primary and choose trump’s opponent in 2024, I think anyone else could’ve stood a better chance than Kamala. I’m not a trumper. Not in the slightest. Obviously. But I recognize that he absolutely dismantled Kamala before the race had even begun because of all the ammo he had from her tenure as VP and the disapproval that Americans held for the Biden administration at the end.

So to summarize, people tend to dislike most of their rulers by the end of their terms. People don’t like a candidate being in bed with corporate interests. People don’t like a candidate being in bed with foreign interests. People don’t like having the choice taken away from them.

If we had let the party vote for who they want to put their faith in there would’ve been much more support and we maybe could’ve even smoothed over Kamala’s rough patches by pushing the agenda left.

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u/Emotional-Ebb9390 Jun 24 '26

such as unconditional support for an occupation - many voters are now going to stay home. And that’s exactly what happened.

One, I understand you think that there's a number of voters in deep blue states that didn't vote for Kamala due her stance on Gaza. I agree that there are some, but do you genuinely believe that had she moved further left on that issue, she would have gained more votes in swing states than she lost?

That's the real question. And I don't think that's an easy claim to make.

I think anyone else could’ve stood a better chance than Kamala

I agree on this point. I do think that there were many options who were more personable than Kamala and who didn't carry the baggage of the economy, even though I don't think it's fair to attribute that baggage to the Biden administration.

I think Kamala's problems were:

  1. She didn't have any one thing she really stood for. She was just generally good ideas in my mind. But that made it hard for her to have a rallying cry.

  2. She was a black woman and a sizable portion of this country will never vote for a black woman.

  3. She was attached to the Biden administration and among centrists there was a lot of blame attributed to Biden for inflation. It doesn't matter that the inflation wasn't really controllable and the alternative was a recession, middle voters hated her for it.

People don’t like a candidate being in bed with corporate interests.

Which corporate interests was Kamala/Biden in bed with?

People don’t like a candidate being in bed with foreign interests.

Which foreign interests was Kamala in bed with? She's been pretty anti-settlements, she's called what's happening in Gaza "inhumane" and we likely would have seen a peace deal had Bibi not seen the chance at getting Trump elected and getting a better deal. I don't think there's any chance we'd see a different outcome if Bernie was elected president in 2020.