June 25, 2025, by Jonathan Larsen, cross-posted from “The Fucking News”
Mamdani Blowout Gives Dems a Victory Model They Can Oppose
Socialist Muslim unapologetic about Israel shows how Dems can win,
which they will now work to combat
Desperate for a model of how to win again, Democrats got one last night with the victory of state Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim socialist immigrant who didn’t make Pres. Donald Trump the star of his campaign but ran on a rent freeze, free child care, free fucking buses, tons of new residential housing, and paying for it all with higher taxes on the rich assholes who think they fucking own this place because its politicians too often act like they do.
It was the nation’s biggest primary since the Democratic Party somehow lost to Trump last year. Nationally, Democrats took note that the model they have sought for charting a successful future had arrived, with a vow to rally behind it destroy Mamdani and everything he stands for.
Disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) led in all but one of the polls leading up to last night’s stunning upset, in which Cuomo won all but one of yesterday’s Democratic mayoral primaries. Cuomo conceded pretty much immediately, but didn’t immediately say whether he’ll run in the November general election.
Because this was a ranked-choice vote, Mamdani needs 50% to win, and we’ll get the next count on July 1, but the reason Cuomo conceded is that even he knows he’s cooked. Coming in third was Comptroller Brad Lander, who cross-endorsed with Mamdani, so Lander’s votes will likely go disproportionately to Mamdani.
It wasn’t even close. Mamdani had 43.5% of the vote as of last night, with Cuomo far behind at 36.4%. Democratic strategist Trip Yang told the New York Times, “This is the biggest upset in modern New York City history.”
The ballot in November will include current (in case you forgot) still-Mayor Eric Adams — whose corruption allowed Trump to onboard Adams as an unpaid contributor by carrot-and-sticking the federal investigation of Adams — and perennial Republican hopeful Curtis Sliwa, who pollsters say has a realistic shot in 1989.
Big money that would have rallied to support Cuomo in November will now be deployed against Mamdani.
Kathy Wilde runs the Partnership for New York City, which is a partnership of rich people for keeping New York City in the hands of rich people. She told Politico that “This is a capitalist city that has a historic relationship with Israel,” and warned that “there will be a serious surge to try and prevent [Mamdani] from becoming mayor.”
No doubt there will, but you just fucked up your best shot at it, partnership for rich people.
The argument against Mamdani is that his platform of free stuff for people won’t actually win over voters. Who just voted for him.
Mamdani was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), while Cuomo was endorsed by former Pres. Bill Clinton.
And before Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) can lecture us about how the Mamdani model could never work in blue-collar, auto-working Michigan, the United Auto Workers (UAW) endorsed Mamdani — because “we don’t need another hack politician like Cuomo” — and said this morning that Mamdani won “because he made it clear whose side he’s on: workers.”
Mamdani was also endorsed by 50,000 volunteers. Fifty … thousand. In a city of get the fuck outta here.
Now, was it hellishly hot in New York City yesterday? Newsfucker, it was. And could that have kept Cuomo’s older voters at home? Maybe!
So maybe Cuomo shouldn’t have overseen what Pete Sikora of New York Communities for Change called a “lost decade” in which Cuomo as governor did jack about climate change except make it worse with fracking. Which helped make it too hot for some of Cuomo’s voters yesterday!
Besides, turnout was high yesterday. Just like early turnout.
And before national Democrats can lecture us that New York City is super-socialist so of course Mamdani’s win there isn’t translatable elsewhere, allow TFN to introduce two of the city’s last four mayors:
Both Republicans, Newsfuckers! And former Mayor Michael Bloomberg was one of the moneybags backing Cuomo, pouring millions into the pro-Cuomo super PAC, along with billionaire Trump donor Bill Ackman. Thirty million dollars in outside money, the New York Times reported, “buried” Mamdani in attack ads.
They outspent Mamdani, they out-Christianed Mamdani, they out-antisemitismed Mamdani, they out-Trump-bashed Mamdani, and they lost.
New York City is so diverse it elects Republicans. But Mamdani didn’t win based (just) on massive turnout in tiny socialist enclaves in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Newsfucker, Mamdani won some areas of Staten Island, where free-range retired cops and firefighters roam free.
Here’s the map, from the New York Times, with Mamdani in orange-ish and Cuomo in some sort of nauseating weak teal:
That’s Staten Island, exiled at the lower left, with Mamdani’s socialist stank slathered over a good chunk of it.
Mamdani won with South Asian-American voters in Queens who had voted for Adams. He won those Latino voters in Queens the national Democrats are so worried about.
who else voted for Mamdani? At least some of New York City’s one million Jewish people. Lander’s Jewish and cross-endorsed him. Sanders is not only Jewish, he’s from Brooklyn.
The city, including Jewish New Yorkers, rejected the cynical conflation of antisemitism with supporting Palestinian rights and opposing the murderous policies of an Israeli government that in Trump’s own words doesn’t “know what they fuck they’re doing.”
Mamdani managed to win without backing down from even ostensibly fatal moves like saying “globalize the intifada,” refusing to accept the scare-monger definition of “intifada” even in the face of Cuomo’s campaign essentially calling him antisemitic — even as Cuomo ran an Islamophobic race against Mamdani.
His rivals ran on more-copping the most over-copped city in the nation, while Mamdani promised to boost mental-health spending.
And voters rejected the street-crime fear-mongering of Adams and Cuomo and corporate media because the voters fucking are the city and so of course they know the real pickpockets aren’t street pickpockets, they’re the rapacious Partnership for New York City assholes making the city unaffordable.
As the Wall Street Journal points out, the average rent for a New York City two-bedroom apartment is $5,560. That’s monthly, for you out-of-towners. And after a new law went into effect this month banning brokers from charging renter fees, the landlords now paying those fees hiked rents even higher:
Of course, the complaint is that a rent freeze will make it impossible for landlords to earn a living. But that’s the point: Landlords already don’t earn a living. And nothing with “lord” in it should be a profession. But we’ve allowed Wall Street and corporate America to commodify the basic human need of a place to put your shit.
Ironically, it’s Mamdani, the young guy with new ideas, who’s looking at the past, when landlording wasn’t a sprawling corporate operation fueling massive corporate profits.
Cuomo, notoriously servile to the state’s real-estate interests, centered his housing policies on boosting developmenters. Mamdani centered his rent freeze and the creation of public housing funded by tax hikes.
The savvy smart insider commentary will dismiss it all as, well, Mamdani had a massive canvassing operation. But that’s the point. His platform inspired those volunteers, and when they went out to spread the word, voters fucking bought it.
He didn’t win despite his platform and because of canvassing, he had that canvassing because of his platform. He democracied.
In a shocking twist, it turns out everyone likes free stuff like buses, affordable homes, and city-owned grocery stores free of hedge-fund-fattening profit margins. Especially when it’s all paid for by rich people. Who are taxed aggressively to recoup just some of what they extracted from an economy powered by ALL THE FUCKING PEOPLE.
Here’s Ocasio-Cortez to Mamdani: “Billionaires and lobbyists poured millions against you and our public finance system. And you won.”
Here’s Lander: “This was such a campaign between a hopeful vision of the future and a sort of dark, sour politics of the past … And people said, we want that vision of the future.”
Lander also gave a shout-out to Cuomo’s campaign, saying, “Good fucking riddance.”
Democrats outside the city will, of course, dismiss Mamdani’s victory and insist that his policies won’t fly elsewhere. Maybe, but only if those same Democrats shoot those policies down.
For instance, Mamdani needs the sign-off of Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and the Democratic-controlled legislature to raise city taxes. Which they don’t wanna do, because their donors pay those taxes.
But now they know that saying no means taking a stand against Mamdani’s clear mandate. And Hochul’s up for re-election next year, with a lot fewer than 50,000 volunteers.
READ MORE IN TODAY’S THE FUCKING NEWS:
- Iran Still Close to Bomb,
- House Dems Defend Trump Instead of Constitution,
- & more…
Pretty perfect storm for Mamdani honestly. He ran a fantastic campaign but also benefitted from everything that could’ve gone right for him happening. Cuomo running a god-awful campaign along with all his baggage, massive heatwave depressing Cuomo’s coalition turning out, other candidates working with Mamdani rather than punching against him in an effort to benefit themselves. Pretty fascinating how it all ended up. It will be interesting to see if this momentum will continue for 6 months until the general (which he is heavily favored for) when there will be lots of attack ads and whatnot plastering the airwaves.
Curious to see if Silwa drops out and unofficially endorses Adams to try and form a grand coalition in an effort to beat Mamdani. Will also be interesting to see how black voters vote in the fall and if they will vote for Mamdani with the dem nomination, or if they will vote for Adams like they did in 2021.