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.
Who says he has to do it through purely electoral means? Why would you even assume that’s the plan? He’s a politician. The electoral part is where he fits in. That doesn’t mean he expects the rest of us to sit back and watch once he gets elected It’s never this approach or that, it’s everything.
It’s the only thing I see him doing. I don’t see him organizing workers or tenants and helping them unionize. I don’t see him distributing mutual aid. I don’t see him engaged in mass education. I don’t see him arming the poor and training a people’s army.
The electoral part is the only part I see him doing, and the only part I see his supporters doing.
Again, I’d be happy to see him prove me wrong.
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If you think that’s a realistic expectation to have for someone running for office in the imperial core you are in desperate need of a reality check. Even if your goal is an armed revolution there are so many prerequisites that have not been met to make such a thing possible. This is what happens when you spend too much time reading about revolutions and not enough time getting in touch with the people around you.
The Black Panthers existed.
But I notice you skipped over all the other things he could be doing, but isn’t, because he’s just doing electoralism and has no politics outside of it.
My point is you can’t expect him to do everything all at once. He’s chosen electoralism for himself and that is what he’s dedicated his time to. If your issue with Mamdani is that you think electoralism is pointless for socialists then just say that, and we can have that discussion.
One man doesn’t have to do everything. He is making space for those things to happen. Rent freezes and free transportation are at least cousins to mutual aid by my estimation, and they help free up resources in the community for members to do more. Again, one man, one role. Activists don’t make very effective politicians, and visa versa.
He’s not just one man. There’s an entire team of people behind him and an army of volunteers, and they all seem to be solely focused on the election. What I want to see is for him to focus on his role as merely the electoral front of that larger organized effort, he focuses on the election and the rest of the people around him have plans that extend beyond and outside of elections. That’s not what I’m seeing.
My expectation is, once the election is over, they’re going to go home and forget about politics.
We’ll see.
Sounds like armchair quarterbacking to me honestly, and you have no idea what else those people have going on.
Is it a fucking secret? Why would any of this be happening behind the scenes? We should have an idea what else they have going on! It would be the height of stupidity if they were engaged beyond electoralism but they kept it in the dark so no one could find out.
I’m not saying it’s a secret, but it’s not exactly stuff the media is gonna be covering now, is it?