In just a few months, Mamdani, a 34-year-old state assemblyman and Democratic Socialist, has gone from a long-shot fringe candidate to a national figure — securing an upset win in the June primary, where voters 18-29 had the highest turnout of any age group.
Now, on the cusp of Election Day — where polls show him the clear frontrunner over his closest rival, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — Mamdani is counting on that youth coalition to show up again. But his pledge to address rising costs appears to be resonating with young people far outside of the five boroughs. It’s a message that many Gen Z and millennials say speaks to their most pressing concerns at a time when many feel hopeless about their leaders and yearn for new voices willing to break with political norms.
“When a candidate is able to speak to the concerns of the populace and validate those concerns … I think that that has a big impact, especially when it comes to young people,” said Ruby Belle Booth, who studies young voters for the nonpartisan research organization CIRCLE.
The young desperately want someone, anyone, to actually believe in… and it isn’t Chuck “strongly worded letter” Schumer or some other limp and ineffectual bureaucrat trying to do damage control for the Democrat party.
I met a waitress in Paris who reminded me to vote for him. I was syrprised someone overseas cared that much.
Was screwing around with IPTV last night, so the Cuomo ad against him.
“DANGEROUS PLANS” ohhhhh
the ad was infuriating. the guy wants to be a half decent human and they need to brand that as danger. seriously fuck these guys.
If he wins, I wonder how soon will some crazed redcap attempt assassination.
Watching establishment Democrats freak out over him has been very satisfying.
I’m an old dude, and it isn’t just young people who feel hopeless about our elected representaives, and want new, dynamic leadership. I may not have as long a future as they do, but I’d like what time I have left to not be terrifying.
I’m a young dude and biased I may be, I believe socialism is the ideological result of a capitalist society. It’s not a competition the way I see it. It’s as natural an evolution as how containerization arose from the era of virtual machines. Change is slow, but we’re having 5% more debate about the merits of democratic socialism than we were 5 years ago. It’s something that won’t go away, dominos are falling. Trump having destabilized things only helps broadcast issues that have always existed within this society and usher in new ideology that aims to address those issues. Modern politics is becoming more and more like progressives versus traditionalists, with each passing day. That evolution, away from left versus right, is evidence that capitalism is on the defensive.
Growing up on the 60s and 70s, we constantly heard about how we had to prop up terrible dictators, because the Communist/ Socialist system that would replace him would be worse.
But like you, I always thought that Communism/ Socialism was the natural bridge between a Dictatorship and a true Democracy. The Dictator goes to far in abusing the citizens, they rise up and take the country back for themselves.
Unfortunately, that usually means another dictator - Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. At that point, the citizens start to get behind the idea of electing their leaders.
That is, if they don’t get taken over by ANOTHER dictator.
I’m in my middle aged years, whatever I’ve read of him seems hopeful if he’s the future. Also not from the US but if they can vote in someone like that for, what is considered one the the top cities in the world’s, mayor that is encouraging. If elected I hope he proves what is better for people.
Seriously we always have someone okay vs someone that wants to take away benefits from the less well off of our neighbors and friends (I will say I’m luckier but not exactly out of that group). It’s refreshing to see someone to least state he wants to make a better balance.
Heaven forbid billionaires make a few less dollars that they only use to influence things to their preferences. No one is perfect but his ideals have merit it seems.
I’m well beyond my youth and I’ve been following his campaign since early this year despite living very far away.
I’m 35, I live in North Carolina, and the only TikTok videos I watch are Zohran Momdani’s… Just give me something to hope for, people. And I’m not unique. There are a Fuck Ton of me.
Crazy to think people want representatives who actually put forth ideas to HELP THEM…
This is why establish dems are as opposed to him as the republicans.
We’re seeing in real time how the system does NOT want things to get better for us, and the people who are supposed to represent us are representing their own agendas and preservation of the system that lets the administration dine in gilded ballrooms while we literally starve.
Mamdani got to the national stage through grassroots campaigning and involvement from people who care. You CAN make a difference if you get involved on a local level and get active in your community.
You CAN make a difference if you get involved on a local level and get active in your community.
And this is the VERY key part. Local organizing almost always makes larger impacts, because most people, to be perfectly honest, don’t give a shit about any form of organizing in their local community. It’s easier to cast a ballot for a federal candidate, “chip in” (as all political fundraising emails love to overuse so fucking much while setting the default for every donation to like $50 or some bullshit after asking 20 times a week) a few bucks, and be done with it, than it is to walk down to every house over a few block radius and have a chat with any person who answers the door about a local candidate or policy.
To use Zohran as an example, he’s already gotten hundreds of thousands of votes, but as of one of his campaign’s emails yesterday, got just 1,000 people to canvass today (a day they were trying to break the record for most doors knocked in a single day, which is meant to attract a large swath of anyone who wants to canvass for him).
One person in a thousand canvassing for him is infinitely more impactful to the end result than one person voting by ballot.
walk down to every house over a few block radius and have a chat with any person who answers the door about a local candidate or policy.
I can’t say enough about how effective this is. You will learn a goddamn SUPER POWER if you do this, you will learn how to get people to listen to you, how to be heard, how to be social and involved. It might not seem like much, but a lot of the world is becoming very isolated and sheltered, the people who can go talk to a stranger about politics are literally going to dominate the power structure of the future.
Learning emotional intelligence, learning how to make someone feel heard and use their feelings to guide them to better ideas, these seem like far-off skills but you can do it, you can influence people so much easier than you think just by making them feel listened-to and involved with something bigger than themselves.
When someone visits your home to talk to you about a controversial topic and they are polite, respectful and ready to defend their ideas, you will remember the interaction. You will think about it, you will think about the topic. It goes from an abstract “read it on the internet” narrative to a real-life thing that impacts people and this makes you take the idea more seriously and give it more nuanced thought.
There are organizations that help coordinate these kinds of efforts, I recommend https://www.progressivevictory.win/ as a great starting point for getting more involved with your local efforts.
schumer and hakeem made that clear, to support israel, which also supporting the gop. so a UNIPARTY.
This has been a problem since Obama was elected, and before. The d’s do not want progressives. That’s what happened to Sanders. We need a new party.
We need a new party.
That would be ideal, and maybe it can happen, but we can also do what some of the actual progressive democrats in the party want, which is overhaul the party, eject the elderly old liches who don’t want change, build an actual progressive foundation of local leaders and state representatives so that we’re no longer propping up these worthless, geriatric, out-of-touch democrat leaders.
Again, we have to stop attacking the top of the pyramid, we have to start carving out the base so it collapses. It’s not as fun and exciting as starting a new club with new rules and hoping it takes off, but it takes advantage of existing power structures and political investment, it just takes doing that hard thing nobody wants to do which is getting far more involved than just ranting on social media every four years.
Also a better voting system where you just rank at which place you want each candidate and it doesn’t divide the votes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote
https://youtu.be/l8XOZJkozfIWe need a new party, or we need to renew the party. Since there is no path to the former that doesn’t go through the latter, let’s renew the party.
Almost like there is a large, unmet demand for leftist politicians at the national level. Hmm, no, couldn’t possibly be it.
I don’t even know if it’s that. I wonder how much of it is just “shit is clearly bad… Let’s please just try something different and see if it helps.”
We’ve been doing the exact same stuff for so long and everything gets worse. The current administration’s solution is to just go backwards and try the old stuff that didn’t work again and see if it will work now somehow.
the current one, is trying to not release epstein files, plus they want democrats to cave so the republicans can have thier sound bytes on fox to blame the shutdown on them, knowing thier supporters wont research past the headlines they will believe it.
wonder how much of it is just “shit is clearly bad… Let’s please just try something different and see if it helps.”
It’s kinda both from how I see things. When Bernie wasn’t given a chance by the DNC in the primaries in 2016, the Bernie supporters flocked to vote Trump. The Sanders to Trump pipeline is real. Slavoj Zizek made a great point that people want someone outside of the neoliberal status quo, and Americans got that, but with Trump. Americans are kind of at the crossroads of what they really want.
When Bernie wasn’t given a chance by the DNC in the primaries in 2016, the Bernie supporters flocked to vote Trump. The Sanders to Trump pipeline is real.
clinton supporters formed a literal PAC to get mccain elected because they hated the idea of a black president that much.
its beause bernie pretty much has the same loud mouth charisma as trump, bernie was more palatable, when that dint happen they went to next best things, these are “undecided republicans”
Yeah, it seems like the left and right agree that shit needs to change, but the right has been convinced it’s the left’s fault instead of it being the mega-rich.
Historically they make noise but don’t actually come out to vote though.
Republicans don’t vote for democrats either, but the party keeps courting them anyway.
I say vote him in and let’s see what happens.
Definitely. Because where else are we going to find leaders? Not in congress. Bernie’s cool and all, but also old as shit. Would’ve been pretty great if his nomination wasn’t stolen. The only other heroes we have are dead. I watched a video by CerosTV about it yesterday. I recommend it.
I’m afraid to ask, but is there a reason you don’t mention AOC?
she said she would do more in congress than in the presidency.
That’s fair, and still a leadership role imo, as is any ellected official from a mayor or DA to the highest office in the land.
She voted wrong on a single bill amendment that wasn’t going to pass regardless of her vote. It’s the stupid purity test bullshit.
Not really. I don’t have any problems with her lol
I think it’s worth propping her up as a leader with an actual constituency beyond the 1%. Bless Bernie for holding true and setting an example. He knows his star is fading but we will remember him.
He 's been going for such a long time, he honestly deserved to have been nominated over so many different people. Think of how much better the country would’ve been if he was nominated over Obama, Hillary, or Biden. He would’ve done better than any one of them. Our country could’ve existed without the influence of Trump on our everyday lives. We would have a politician that’s willing to improve our country.
I suspect she got a demotion after failing to stand against genocide.
She takes zero money from AIPAC.
oh it hurts to realize i no longer need the caption.
