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Zohran Mamdani is reshaping the Democratic Party faster than anyone expected
(www.the-independent.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2026
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Progressives have been hoping for someone like Mamdani to actually win an election for a long time, now. If he is what finally instigates a break in the wall the Democratic party has erected, it's not surprising that others are picking up their sledgehammers.
Democrats are plenty progressive, Mamdani's policy stances are pretty normal, but without state and federal majorities we're not gonna see fuck all for change.
But leftists are both useless and totally destructive at the same time according to neo-liberals.
I hope this brings enough change to make the Democrats actually progressive instead of giving lips service to it then doubling down on corporatism.
It won't be easy. We must keep getting progressives in office if you want more than lip service.
the Democratic Party is a lot less monolithic than people make it out to be, it’s just that a lot of influential people in the back end have been fighting to keep progressives out, arguing that they needed to stay close to republicans to win “moderate” voters.
More visible progressive wins will erode that narrative and allow various parts of the coalition to abandon the neoliberal orthodoxy imposed on them by corporate consultants. We can’t get anywhere untill that dead weight is dropped. Maybe the Democratic Party won’t be the one to adapt to the new conditions, maybe something new will take their place, but nothing is going to happen till that narrative is dead.
The Democratic Party has HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of politicians in it. From far left to center right.
True leftists, like any medium-small minority, can make or break any coalition of medium-small minorities. And likewise, they can't really direct policy all on their own, because the rest of the minorities in the coalition aren't on board yet. One minority can't make it, but they can break it.
I also hope this brings progressivism to the Democratic party. That would be a good way to bring more of the coalition on board.
Thank you!
The thing that drives me crazy is when progressives act like they have a massive majority of the people behind them.
Back in the day, Jerry Falwell leveraged his Moral Majority into power by sending his church people into every local GOP club.
If the usual attendance was twenty folks, the MMs would show up with fifty. They might only have fifty followers in the whole town, but all of them were there where it counted.
Who cares if the Dems go progressive? It's the voters who are important. The Republicans kept resisting the rising far right movements like the Tea Party, and then MAGA, but the voters just bulldozed right over them.
The corporatist establishment Democrats all made it extremely clear that they would prefer a corrupt asshole like Adams for Mayor, but the people told them to go fuck themselves, and now the DNC has no choice but to get on board.
The voters don't have to do what the DNC demands, but the DNC has to live with whoever the voters force upon them.
The DNC has been pretty progressive for about 16 years.
The DNC will continue to ratfuck progressives in primaries and has historically burned down the house before letting progressives take over.
Leftists already attacked him for not firing the cops involved in last winter's snowball fight.
Kamala Harris received 1,748,140 votes in New York City,
Zohran Mamdani received 1,036,051 votes
Thank goodness he wasn't getting more help from the Left.
Damn, almost like, there was some sort of third party candidate splitting the vote in his election.
Or the fact that people are idiots and a large % only vote every 4 years
Kind of proving my point there.
People had a choice between a known molester, an idiot, and the Democratic Socialist and the DS barely edged through.
It's almost as if the progressives don't have a commanding majority and have to work with others if they want to advance.
I mean, he still won a significant majority even with the vote split. And he won a majority In precincts that trump won In the election.
A more interesting question is, if there had been a been serious candidate to the left of Harris in the general election, would she have polled more like coumo did?
I don’t think it’s safe to assume that she would have won more votes than mamadani did in the same situation. And comparing the outcomes of a national 2 candidate race to a local 3 candidate race is not really telling you anything unless you introduce the counterfactuals and do polling to fill in those gaps.
Right now we’re seeing a lot of polling showing DS candidates outperforming corporate democrats in a lot of battle ground and purplish red states. Arguably attempting to appeal to coumo type voters damaged Harris’s chances In battle ground states by alienating unaffiliated voters.
Could just tell them what's been told to progressives for decades, "Vote blue no matter who."
I can't think of one time in recent US history that a 3rd Party candidate split the ticket and hut the GOP.
In fact, the GOP regularly throws money to the Libertarians and/or the greens if they think it will help them.
If people had voted blue we might not have the Supreme Court that threw out Roe V. Wade.
You might want to read up on Frederick Douglas. In 1860 he had a choice of supporting a strong Abolitionist or Abe Lincoln. Lincoln had repeatedly said that he would keep slavery if it meant keeping the Union together.
Douglas knew all the horrors of slavery first hand, and knew that it made more sense to win and be on the inside than to lose and no be heard.
Ross Perot in '92 maybe?
We have a real bad "No True Scotsman" problem
I edited my comment to point out that Mamdani got fewer votes than Harris did when she ran in NYC, and Harris did worse against Trump than Biden did.
People vastly overestimate how popular their positions really are
lol You mean a presidential race got more votes than a mayoral race? Ya don't say?
Mamdani got 51% of the vote going against sex criminal Cuomo and shock jock Silwa.
Harris got about 65% of the NYC vote.
No way can you pretend that 'the Left' beat the dems.
That's still over 9% more than the runner up got.
In a three way election.
Without the support of his own party.
With tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars spent on 24/7 smear campaigns against him by both major parties.
With a unanimous local billionaire-owned media alliance fearmongering about him.
While spending a total of $10.7m
Compared to all that, the unequivocal DNC leader getting 65% in a presidential election where 100% of the party political machine was behind her, she was the only alternative to a literal fascist idiot and also sex criminal experiencing severe cognitive decline, and they spent over a billion dollars is absolutely PATHETIC.
Because general elections historically always have higher turn out. I think that's what they're trying to get at specifically.
Mamdani got fewer total votes AND a smaller percentage of the vote than Harris.
If you try to push the narrative that Mamdani and the Left were super popular you're deluding yourself.
Hopefully he keeps doing a great job and brings in more voters.
But be real. He got very lucky when Adams got caught in a big scandal, and the only candidate the regular Party could find was already saddled with a giant scandal.
Higher voter turnout changes those percentages. You seem to be thinking that votes scale proportionally with turnout? That's not always the case.
Anyway the more candidates you have the more split the vote will be. Plus the media/Trump campaign didn't pump millions of dollars into a smear campaign against Harris in NY. Why? Because they didn't expect to turn NY red so they focused resources elsewhere.
An insane sum of money was spent trying to put Mamdani down
Lmao
Lmfao.
Its hilarious how people think this is even practically possible
We're literally talking about a progressive that just became the mayor of the city that is at the very heart of American finance and capitalism. AOC could get elected president and you would still be saying it's not practical.
AOC is a zionist, who cares?
Literally, not with that attitude
attitude doesnt matter, its just not possible practically.