The NYC mayor’s race is the most watched political race in the US right now, by a large margin too (I guess the second most is Prop 50 in CA? Either way that one is way behind). After Tuesday, Zohran’s win will probably be the big story that normies IRL will be talking about here. “Socialism” will be a topic on top of everyone’s minds.
And I think everyone here - even if you have major issues with Zohran specifically or electoralism in general - should be ready to speak to it among the people in your life.
Opportunities like this don’t come around very often. Right now Americans are getting a ton of misinformation about what socialism is due to a demsoc running and very likely winning the job of mayor of the biggest city in the US. On top of that, this misinformation is transparently bad (“Zohran wants to sieze all the grocery stores in New York!”) that if you simply point to what’s actually being proposed, you will look pretty knowledgeable by comparison. This is all very low hanging fruit.
But you have to be prepared. Like literally, you should practice how you will respond to people who want to talk to you about Mamdani and socialism. The other day, AcidSmiley made a comment that I’ve been thinking about ever since: she said she had to deradicalize herself a bit from this site because she was having trouble interacting with normal people and not sounding like she was unhinged. I absolutely do this too. Whenever a topic tangential to socialism or imperialism comes up with people IRL, I end up overshooting. I scare people away even if they have a sense that I’m right. What I say sounds totally reasonable to us here, but to people who aren’t engaged with stuff it doesn’t matter how correct you are; if you can’t meet them where you are they will tune you out.
So for me, today and tonight I’m gonna skim through Ha-Joon Chang’s “23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism”. It’s not straight Marxist analysis but it’s written for the people I’ll be talking to. I’m also going to try and brush up on my knowledge of Zohran’s specific policies (like freezes on rent for rent controlled apartments, that seems to be one everyone brings up and I don’t feel I know enough about it).
For those of you who are strongly against Zohran or electoralism… do whatever you want ofc, but I’m just saying if a normie asks you about Zohran and you say “he’s just a social fascist” and scoff, then that will be a missed opportunity. People will have no idea what you are talking about and frankly probably won’t be interested in hearing more.
Because it’s just a label on a ballot? What the candidate actually does in relation to the party is what matters, not what line they run under.
There’s no formal membership or controls over who takes the Dem or Rep ballot lines. There’s no test. You never have to show up to any Dem events or take anyone’s calls. That’s on the candidate and if you get through the primary you get a bunch of “free” votes for holding that line.
If you run 3rd party people avoid you like the plague because of first-past-the-post. I wish it was different.
the point is to make it different. not to just submit to the two party structure. and ballot lines do matter if you want to build an oppositional party. it doesn’t make sense to run candidates that would only boost your opponent’s party.
I agree that we should have our own ballot line and be more out there with our views. I encourage Hexbears wherever you live to start running for local races and pulling that Overton window left.
Right now the Zohran campaign decided running under the Dem line was the best way to gain power and make people’s lives better, and they were right!
And holding that line makes a difference right now because voters are taught to only look at the two party lines and ignore third party options. There’s actually, what, 7 people running for Mayor? But only 3 get any attention or get invited to any debates. That’s a many-faceted problem, and the Zohran team gets to sidestep that problem by taking one of the two major party lines. If he ran as “Socialist” or something yeah he’d be a more “pure” candidate but would have polled at 1% and been ignored by everyone. And we’d be talking about Cuomo getting coronated tonight instead of likely getting destroyed.
to me the point is not “pureness” of a candidate, its that individual candidates gaining power does nothing to build a working class party. because why ever bother with another party if you can vote for the good dems?
I don’t agree with that. Having someone like this as Mayor of one of the largest cities in the world goes a long way towards building that working class movement. He will have the ability to switch parties and be a figurehead for a new party in the future. This election is building excitement all over and left orgs are going to grow as people see its possible for people with Zohran type platforms to take power. PSL will have an influx of members after today.
The biggest disagreement I have here is the expediency of this new party. I agree I want a separate party too! But I want new Yorkers to have their rent frozen, their busses cheaper, their groceries more affordable NOW, not years from now when a workers party organizes enough to win this seat.
I care more about having the right people in power than what line they run under.
If he does all those things as a democrat, all the influence that accrues as a result will go to the democrats.
I doubt that he will actually be able to achieve them all as a democrat anyway, and not meeting campaign promises is par for the course for Dems but likely to tank Mamdani’s reputation.
Well then he’s just a another disappointment, but I’m choosing to be positive & hopeful today.
What turns people off from organizing with the left is all of the negativity and purity testing. It’s exhausting. I get it, nothing anyone does is ever good enough and if no one meets all 250 of your specific policy points then they are liberal scum who deserve no support. Cool, enjoy your book club and getting nothing done while the rest of us actually work to make people live better lives. So sick of this negativity that is everywhere it makes me want to quit the left completely. I want to win not complain all day!
Were they? He hasn’t even won yet, let alone started exercising the power he would gain in doing so, but he has already started compromising with democrats. He is subordinate to a bourgeois political party. This isn’t purity testing or optics. He is on target to prove Lenin correct that people should run in liberal elections as part of a worker’s party, not just run in them any way they can. This is just anarcho-bidenism all over again.
I’d love to be proven wrong, but as I say the man has already started compromising before he has any power.
For New Yorkers’ sake I hope you’re wrong and the guy does the things he promises.
And if not maybe it’s time for some Hexbears to run for office? And if you have to take a Partisan line you don’t want to becayse it gives you the better chance of winning I’ll understand ;)