Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City on Tuesday, capping a stunning ascent for the 34-year-old state lawmaker, who was set to become the city’s most liberal mayor in generations.
In a victory for the Democratic party’s progressive wing, Mamdani defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa. Mamdani must now navigate the unending demands of America’s biggest city and deliver on ambitious — skeptics say unrealistic — campaign promises.
With the victory, the democratic socialist will etch his place in history as the city’s first Muslim mayor, the first of South Asian heritage and the first born in Africa. He will also become the city’s youngest mayor in more than a century when he takes office on Jan. 1.
I generally don’t want him to fail, like I don’t really want anyone to fail. But I do expect him to fail.
I expect him to fail in one of two ways:
He already knows or will learn that some of his promises are bad ideas and he will just not do those (this is not a bad thing in any way, we should generally commend people who learn new things and refuse to do bad things). But I would count this as a sort of failure in regards to what he promised to do.
Some of his promises he will do, and since humanity does have the power to bend economic reality, it may look for a while like those policies work. Unfortunately, economic reality bounces back hard when you bend it too much for too long. This will be a nastier failure, because for anyone not looking closely (which is a hard thing to do), it might look as he succeeded, and most of the blame of the fallout will go to the next people fixing his mistakes. This is a typical left/right pendulum swing.
I will reiterate that I don’t want him to fail, and will gladly accept new economic opinions if it starts to look like he’s doing a net good. In adult real world, I suppose it’s more reasonable to guess that some of his ideas will work, and some will not. The usual problem is that leftists tend to waste money on unnecessary or badly run public projects, but to my knowledge, there’s no specific theoretical reason for the left to do that – it’s just tends to happen. Which, when I try to think positively, implies to me that it’s possible for some leftists to do better in that area.
His version of Islam seems like a moderate one, so if that image is true, I have pretty much nothing against that. Some theological disagreements perhaps, but not hugely different from the disagreements that I have with other moderate abrahamic believers.
And it’s always/usually good when a 40-year (edit oh, more like 30-year old, wow) old beats a bunch of 70-year olds in the political arena. And it’s fascinating when fresh ideas come in. Perhaps all that will invite other “young” people to go into politics.
edit Plus in the current political climate in the US, it’s always good when a D beats an R.
Free bus fare isn’t going to “bounce back hard”. His policies are only extreme when you compare them to literal Nazis.
Cuomo would have sworn allegiance to a king if it let him keep his place. That’s not the kind of leadership we need to bounce back to.
It’s a shame people downvote this instead of replying.
The guy’s in favour of rent freezes, so there’s one policy that ain’t gonna work long term. Free buses OTOH, sounds great.
He can be the best choice but not be perfect ya know
Rent freeze might be stop-gap measure but it’s better than no action at all IMO.
I don’t know if it’s doable, but just running on that platform gives the cost-of-living issue visibility which in itself is good.
Lemmy pro-tip: Settings => [ ] show down votes