Zohran Mamdani wins New York City mayor’s race, capping a stunning ascent

Rep Mikie Sherrill was elected NJ Governor and Abigail Spanberger was elected VA governor.

Which to me looks like a fairly broad Dem coalition that hits both the anti-Trump message but also focused on affordability.

It can be done. At least in a year where Trump isn't running.

To quote West Wing: What's next.

The contest drove the biggest turnout in a mayoral race in more than 50 years, with more than 2 million New Yorkers casting ballots, according to the city’s Board of Elections.

And this is the strategy I believe democrats should focus on instead of "appealing to moderates". Mamdami got almost as many votes in this race as there were votes in total in 2021. I'm pretty adamant that 2024 nationals were lost not because "everyone switched" (the numbers don't support that), but because some 4-8 million voters from 2020 stayed home. We need to Galvanize the voters with proper action and reform that they can get behind.

On that note, I am a bit shocked Cuomo still got 41% of the vote. And maybe a bit more surprised that Silwa only got 7%. I know NYC is peak blue bastion, but did Cuomo just end up sucking all the R votes or something?

PA Supreme Court holds its liberal majority and reportedly there's a 4th Mummy movie planned. You know, just to add to the good day.

Still pending, Prop 50 aka short term* reducing election integrity to try to keep having them? That is to say, redistricting in California

*We hope

Edit: Prop 50 passed!

I'm coming up on hour 40 without sleep and I have so many thoughts that I can't formulate into a coherent point, but I feel like I won't be able to sleep until I puke some of them out in front of you people. Apologies in advance.

You know that scene in Back to the Future where Marty plays "Johnny Be Good" at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance? The part where Marvin Berry calls up his cousin Chuck and says, "You know that new sound you've been looking for? Well listen to this!" That's how I feel about the Democrats right now. I, and millions of other people from all walks of life, are holding up the phone for Jefferies and Schumer, hoping to God that they will listen. Lord knows they need it. While the Democrats won big tonight - as is tradition - they are still very very unpopular.

About 13 months ago, I left another rambling mess of a comment about my fears that Kamala Harris would lose the election on account of her campaign's lack of a clear message. I'd link it, but who gives a shit, right? Since I'm just some dumb idiot, my big piece of advice/wish was for her to "just give us something." Something substantive. None of the dink and dunk means-tested bullshit that we've seen countless times, but something simple that speaks to the material needs of all working people during this period of unfathomable wealth/income inequality and high costs of living. Love him or hate him, Mamdani's campaign had that something. And because of that, he was able to go from an unknown state assemblyman to household name with a passionate base of supporters and a mind-blowing 100k volunteers.

The fact that a brown, Muslim, self-described socialist immigrant can pull this off against a hostile media and without a lick of support from the party establishment speaks to the power and potential of this brand of politics. Imagine if he had Barack Obama gassing him up for the past three months. Imagine if every liberal and Democrat pundit on the news backed him up the way conservatives back Republicans. Hell, imagine if every pro-Israel liberal said something like, "He and I might disagree about Israel, but that doesn't mean he's an antisemite," like the way Brad Lander did. I know this is the same shit that every other obnoxious Bernie supporter has been screaming for the past nine years, but we're starting to reach the point where Berniecrats are electable in spite of all the additional hurdles they face. Can we please please please just try putting these two things together this one time?

Obviously, the answer to that question is going to be no. Which begs the question: the fuck are we doing here? How is it that the two most powerful Democrats, who are both from NY, can see this once in a generation talent with Obamaesque enthusiasm and completely avoid him? Someone connect the dots for me please, because the only possible explanations I see are that (a) their political instincts are atrocious, and/or (b) Mamdani's platform goes against the special interests that they are beholden to. Either way, if things don't change, we're fucked. A patchwork of anti-Trump interests a la 2020 is not going to win enough congressional votes to undo the damage of the past decade. We're in big swing, need a movement territory. For all I know, our moment to get off this ride already passed, but if it somehow hasn't yet, this feels like our last shot. You wanna run a moderate somewhere where you think that is the only thing that works, then by all means go for it. But for the love of god, stop undercutting the left flank at every step.

Here's an argument that this might be good for YIMBY, depending on what Mamdani actually does:

Mamdani Has a Point About Rent Control

In many places, especially those where the housing shortage is most severe, the politics of building new units is toxic. The perceived costs of development often inspire intense opposition while the benefits take years, even decades, to materialize. This dynamic cannot be neatly separated from ideal housing policy. Mamdani argues that “freeze the rent” is not just a way of delivering relief from exorbitant housing costs; it is the only way to get enough voters on board with a growth agenda. A growing body of real-world evidence suggests that he has a point.

...

In a 2022 paper, the political scientists Anselm Hager, Hanno Hilbig, and Robert Vief used the introduction of a 2019 rent-control law in Berlin to study how access to rent-controlled apartments influenced local attitudes toward housing development. The fact that the new law included an arbitrary cutoff date (it applied only to buildings constructed before January 1, 2014) allowed the authors to create a natural experiment, comparing otherwise-similar tenants in otherwise-similar buildings.

Heading into the experiment, the authors hypothesized that having access to a rent-controlled apartment would keep tenants in their existing units longer and therefore make them more resistant to neighborhood change. Instead, they found the opposite: Residents who lived in rent-controlled apartments were 37 percent more likely to support new local-housing construction than those living in noncontrolled units. (Hilbig cautioned to me that “there is some uncertainty, since the confidence intervals are really large,” but that “the effect is definitely sizable.”) This gap was largest in neighborhoods that had experienced the sharpest rental-price increases over the previous decade. The authors concluded that by guaranteeing price stability, rent control eases residents’ fears that new housing will make their current living situation unaffordable. “The takeaway for me is that when people feel protected, when they feel secure, they become much less scared of change,” Hilbig told me.

...

Setting aside the specifics of New York City government, though, Mamdani may have hit upon a winning political formula for cities and states struggling to respond to the housing crisis. When I put Mamdani’s argument about rent control to YIMBY organizers—the people who are working to pass pro-housing laws in cities and states across the country—I expected them to roll their eyes. Instead, they lit up. In nearly every blue state that has passed significant pro-housing legislation, they explained, introducing some form of rent control has been crucial to getting those bills across the finish line. “It was absolutely essential,” Alex Brennan, the executive director of Futurewise, a Washington State think tank that helped spearhead an ambitious housing-reform package that passed in May, told me. “Saying that we’re going to have a lot more housing five or 10 years from now isn’t enough. Legislators want to know: What happens in the meantime? What are we going to do for those folks whose rents are increasing by double digits every year? We needed an answer for those people.”

https://prospect.org/2025/11/04/americas-dumbest-billionaires-fail-to-stop-zohran-mamdani/

It was disgusting stuff. But it also was palpably desperate, and coming from one of the worst candidates imaginable. Mamdani is exceptionally talented, on par with the young Barack Obama in my estimation, but (also like Obama, whose first U.S. Senate opponent was Alan Keyes), he was also exceptionally fortunate in his opponent. It’s easy to dunk when you’re playing against a fifth grader.

Heartening to see an actual left-wing progressive win, I thought America was just cooked at this point.

Though for a leftist I (very weirdly, I know) do actually have my doubts about rent control as anything but like a fleeting temporary measure. It has been known to shrink housing supply, and unless accompanied by a chainsaw to zoning laws and massive public housing works, I think it may be detrimental in the long run. But that's it! The rest of his platform is good. Also heartened by how he didn't drop transgender people as an expedient minority like some other democrats did.

Incredibe. The DSA is having a moment, and I hope it grows by the day more and more.

Cuomo just had to shut down the boos in his concession speech as he congratulated "Mandami" [sic] and he was not particularly successful.

New Yorker here. Here is a piece from a local news site that resonated with me, and I think sums up the local view of what was ultimately a very local election: What an embarrassing time to be a New York City hater

Off topic, Hasan was barred from Mamdani's upstairs election party, and I think it's mildly hilarious. So many streamers always try to make the moment about themselves.