Welcome to Progressive Politics! A place for news updates and political discussion from a left perspective. Conservatives and centrists are welcome just try and keep it civil :)
(Sidebar still a work in progress post recommendations if you have them such as reading lists)
Wait, so if candidates actually run on what voters want, they can succeed?
Amazing
Yes, because the new normal expectation is that common sense is far from common, and that no matter who you vote for, the results will be more of everything that's wrong with the world
I don’t consider any of Mamdani’s proposals especially left-wing, either. They’re all bare-minimum, common-sense social programs that pay dividends. The fact that people are going mad over this tells you exactly how far gone the US has become.
absolutely disappointing that the Democrats would rather have a sex pest mayor than someone just a LITTLE more left than them.
I don’t think they care so much if you are left of them…. It’s left of center right that they are worried about….
They’re not shocked, they’re alarmed that the left has gained such a clear and dramatic groundswell of support and that they found a flaw in a mechanism they have traditionally used to tilt the scales in favor of machine incumbents.
They are taking steps to mitigate this, I would absolutely expect them to even overtly rig the general, and everyone should be paying attention to who owns the voting machines, whether the software is audited, and how the votes are tabulated.
It appears that the success of Mamdani isn’t so much a vote against Trumpian politics, but more a vote against the stale nothingness of the Democrats top brass
People worth their salt, especially academics, mentioned this multiple times, neoliberal politics is no longer working. People want anything away from the forty-year old, outdated policies. Populism is getting a bad rap (either unintentionally or deliberately) but it is simply democracy. When surveyed, many voters who'd be open to vote right are also willing to vote left provided that bread and butter issues that affect day-to-day lives are addressed. Mamdani won the primary because he ran on providing common sense policies that the duopoly parties and oligarchs have brainwashed many Americans to fear. It seems that Americans are gradually waking up from establishment conditioning.
If American progressives continue with running on addressing bread and butter issues, and take away the narrative from the right, then the country could be saved from fascism. There may not need be a civil war to oust the Trump administration, but only time will tell.
I have met a shocking number of Trump voters who really like or liked Bernie Sanders. That number is four, but it's still shocking and I don't go out much. Obviously they aren't paying much attention to policy or reality, but I wonder how common this is? My father-in-law is one.
If you look at it in the way that both people promise to shake up the system
Sometimes the direction is less important than the action
I mean, fuck trump and the only thing he wants to shake is the pockets of everyone else, but there is a commonality that can't be ignored
The Bernie-to-Trump pipeline is real. They both promised to shake things up, but the Democrats decided that they'd rather promote Trump, then let Bernie win. Most voters are sick of the status quo, but they don't know enough of the details, and vote for whichever candidate promises to fix things.
They like Trump because he promises change. They also like Bernie because he also promises change. But for the last three elections, the Democrats have run status-quo politicians that keep telling the voters everything is fine. And the voters aren't having it.
Now we have a chance to point out the direction that the Democrats need to turn to if they want to actually win.
If Mamdani pulls it off, I hope he can keep his promises or at least give a good fight for common sense. For the moment, the USA is fucked up.
I can only hope, and I hope mamdani inspired a new decade of socialist resurgence in elections, not just here but in LATAM, Africa, Europe and Asia
You need to understand how politically backward the US is compared to Lat Am, Africa or Asia. My country is currently led by the most right-wing Prime Minister in our history. Even he will not talk shit about socialism, or try to stop our system of heavily subsidized healthcare (free for the poor) and university. There are communists in our Parliament, and they are seen as serious politicians, not some radical outfit.
The idea that Mr Mamdani's policies are somehow novel to us is laughable.
Sadly many voters do have the memory span of a moth...
*centrist but yeah.