Hope Springs Eternal

After the disastrous 2024 election in the US, I’ve been quite depressed about the state of politics all across the world and frankly life in general; but hope springs eternal, and so I hope to bring some mildly positive news.

There’s a mayoral election in progress in New York City, USA. The election itself is in november; however, the Democratic primary for that election is happening right now, with early voting starting June 14th (today) and the primary ending June 24th. Because New York is heavily democratically slanted, whoever wins the democratic primary wins the mayoral election (more or less, there are some caveats).

New York is one of the largest cities in the USA, and has an outsized influence on politics and culture; several New York city mayors had later become candidates for president (though as far as I know, none of them won). Because of this, putting a good candidate in place as a New York mayor is essential, not only to resist encroachment of Trumpian fascism on the city level (e.g. by cutting all information sharing with the department of kidnappings aka ICE), but also as part of a broader attempt to unfuck the wider Democratic party and get them to actually do something productive (their failings are too numerous to fit into the margins of this post).

Fortunately, there is such a candidate! His name is Zohran Mamdani, and if you are capable of voting in the New York elections, I very heartily endorse him for mayor.

It is actually surprising how good Mr. Mamdani is as a candidate. His main focus is on affordable housing (specifically freezing rents, which is extremely popular in new york, and building a lot of new affordable housing), public transportation, and hunting landlords for sport; but taking a look at his policy platform, I don’t see any real issues with any of the policies he is proposing, which is extremely rare. He is some flavour of socialist, with publicly-owned grocery stores being a core part of his platform; and if you look him up on youtube, he is almost ridiculously good at public speaking. So many zingers.

It helps that he is an attractive 33 years old, and not an ancient dinosaur.

But the policies are cheap. What makes Zohran stand out is that he has 36 000 volunteers running all around the city, knocking on doors for him. This is a massive, incredibly grassroots campaign, and every single big business bastard, every single landlording leach, every single corporate cunt absolutely hates him for it.

Good, they can choke on it.

Currently, the most recent polls put Zohran neck in neck with the previous frontrunner and a serial sexual harasser Andrew Cuomo, within a couple percent, it depends on the poll; furthermore, Zohran’s numbers have been improving rapidly, with his biggest weakness being simply lack of name recognition. It’s very plausible that he wins the election, and I think that the final push right now would help him greatly.

What can you do to help?

Some people consider voting to be an individual effort, you go to the polls, you put your vote in, done. I don’t believe in this - I think voting is a heavily collective activity. With this in mind, here is what you can do to help:

• If you are a registered democrat in New York, vote for Zohran. Duh.

  • The New York democratic primary uses a ranked choice voting system. This means you get to rank five candidates, in order, and if your first choice doesn’t get over 50% (or they get shot before the election), vote will get transferred to the second one, etc. You can read the link for a more detailed explanation.

  • What this means in practice is that you should put five people on your list. It is best to put Zohran at the top, but if you like some other candidate, it’s fine to rank them above. Based on polling, it seems almost certain that it will be down to Cuomo vs Zohran in the end, so that’s where your vote will end up anyways. Zohran had personally cross-endorsed Brad Lander, and got a reciprocal endorsement for it.

  • Under no circumstances should you put the name Andrew Cuomo on the ballot. More on him below.

• The deadline for registering to vote in the democratic primary is… June 14th, which is today. I procrastinated on writing this post - don’t be like me, and if you aren’t yet registered, then get to it.

• If you know democrats in New York, you should tell them to vote for Zohran (and to not vote for Cuomo). If you, by some incredible stroke of luck, are in contact with some New York organisations (unions?), then that’s even better.

  • Posting to various places also tends to be reasonably effective.

• ANY AMERICAN: Early voting starts tomorrow, and will continue all the way until the 24th. This is a crucial time for volunteering to convince more people to either turn out or to vote correctly. Zohran has his own volunteer organisation here, but I also generally endorse Progressive Victory here, which does phone banking (i.e. calling people to tell them to go vote) for various progressive candidates in the US.

What about the other candidates?

What’s the difference between a fascist and a fascist collaborator? Trick question, both have already shipped you off to a prison camp. Keep this proverb in mind as we cover the other major candidates in this race.

Currently, the frontrunner* (latest released poll had put Zohran ahead) in the primary is so-called Andrew Cuomo, who is notable for having allegedly sexually harassed eleven of his subordinates in office, and for being a long standing democratic politician. His runner up (according to the latest poll, the gap is about 2%) is one Zohran Mamdani, a socialist. The incumbent mayor Eric Adams decided to run as an independent, and isn’t participating in the primary - if you see him on voter guides, that is a printing error. All other candidates are essentially no longer serious contenders at this point, because everyone else fell behind in the polls.

When evaluating the candidates, the key factor I would like you to consider is this: will they be capable of resisting the influence of fascism in the USA, to whatever extent they can?

Let’s start with Eric Adams, the incumbent mayor of New York City. He is not running in a democratic primary at all; instead, he intends to go on the ballot in November as an independent. His reasons for doing this can be summarised as “because he is a ratfucker”. The story here is pretty simple: Eric Adams is incredibly corrupt, and was being investigated for that corruption by the federal authorities. Then Trump won the election, Eric Adams went to his villa, attended his inauguration, and variously kissed the hand of his lord. Subsequently, Trump’s Department of Justice ordered all charges against Adams to be dropped, prompting half-a-dozen career prosecutors to resign in protest.

There are a lot of ways one can describe this set of events, but I prefer the classic term of bribe. The only, and I do mean only reason for Trump’s DoJ to drop the charges is if Trump is getting something from Eric Adams being in charge of New York City. Eric Adams is, to be blunt, compromised. He cannot be relied on to oppose fascism in the US in any way, shape or form, and must be treated as no different from any other trumpian underling, which is to say, as an enemy of all that is remotely good in the world.

This is why he is running as an independent: this charge-dropping scandal was so big that he knows he has no rat’s chance in hell of winning a Democratic primary. What he is trying to do is to split the final vote: in a race between himself, a Democrat, and a Republican, just barely eke out a victory, relying exclusively on his name recognition and incumbent status.

He should be sent packing back to whatever rat brothel he crawled out of. Fortunately, according to the polls, basically everyone hates him, so that is exactly where he will end up.

The second is alleged sexual harasser Andrew Cuomo. ‘Drew has had a long political career as a democratic politician, having served as an attorney general and governor of New York (the state, not the city). He is more or less the template of your standard neoliberal democratic party politician: old, corrupt, incapable of conceptualising any new ideas, and clinging onto power largely through personal relations.

Here’s the kicker: ol ‘Drew has received a lot of donations from Donald Trump-associated donors. It would not be entirely fair to describe this as a bribe; sometimes, business leaders donate money to whomever they think will win just as a way to seek favor. There are some quasi-legitimate explanations for this, just as there are for why he subsequently said he will “work with” Trump, or for his refusal to criticise Donald Trump’s blatantly illegal and unconstitutional arrests of peaceful citizens, unique among all other mayoral candidates.

However, I am not a fair person, so I am calling it a bribe. Andrew Cuomo is compromised; he is less compromised than Eric “King Ratfucker” Adams, but he is still compromised. We are talking about the difference of Trump having his entire arm up the man’s ass or just a couple knuckles. Andrew Cuomo is likewise corrupt; he is less corrupt than Eric “I would sell my own mother” Adams, but he is nonetheless extremely corrupt. He cannot be relied on to effectively oppose fascism in the US in any way, shape or form, no matter what he says to the contrary. The man believes in nothing, will stand for nothing, and will sacrifice you at the first opportunity he gets.

His proposed policies are also, frankly, hot garbage, and he did harass eleven innocent women about their gynecological records, but hey, who is counting.

Zohran Mamdani, on the other hand, has a strong, grassroots mandate. He is laser-focused on the central economic issues of our time: rent and the enormous wealth of the 1%. If anyone at all could help us dig out of this giant mess, then I think he’s the guy—which is why I think you should vote for him.