After Mamdani Victory, Progressives Call for Primary Challenges to Democratic Establishment

Start with the 128 Democrats who voted with Republicans to table an impeachment vote this week.

I've got one in my district. I'll be on board with all efforts going forward to replace him.
- Just be on the lookout for Sinemas hiding among the progressives.
- Me, too. Guy is a typical weak, ineffective nothing. I would vote for any strong-willed Democrat who opposed him.

Primary every last one.

This isn't even time-specific advice. Strong primaries, everywhere, for everything, all the time should be the norm.
- Perhaps once you get preferential voting in, then primaries won't be as necessary.
  They're not a big thing here (Australia), because most people aren't party members, and each party has various methods of choosing candidates.
  I'm just out here proselytising for preferential voting (for single member elections, that is).
  Good on the new york democrats for using it at a party level 👍👍👍

The best way to have a Dem win the general, is a healthy primary.

If it's not then the only way shitty Dems get out of office, is giving the seat to a Republican.

The myth that primaries hurt in the general is a lie spread by neoliberals. It's bad for them because if you compare a neoliberl to literally anyone that's not a Republican, they look like a turd sandwich.

Are you saying we shouldn’t vote blue no matter who?
- Screw blue. If everyone votes blue, no matter who, we still live in a fascist, capitalist country going down the drain because politicians would rather cash checks from their corporate masters than do what's right. We need actual reform.
  Since it has to rhyme, vote progressive, not regressive?
- Very obviously no.
- Both. Vote your heart in the primary, head in the general. Whatever BS they put out is going to be better than the alternative, but if everyone shows up to primaries it might be actually decent.
- Too late for that now, isn't it? But vote red to end all wars and all genocide. That'll show Joe Biden.

Let's show them what "woke" really means. We are awake. And we see what they have been doing. And we are going to stop it.

Hogg them all.

The other side is already scouring obscure precedent to use to disqualify and deport him. So while this is great news, I won't hold my breath for any sort of actual election victory past the primary.

Going through the motions of elections right now feels very much pointless since only someone incredibly naive would think that the right has any intention of allowing elections to matter any more.

The sooner Americans realise that it's Let Them Eat Cake time the sooner they can move on with guillotine o'clock.

Peaceful protests, boycotts and sternly worded letters rely on the people you're protesting having a sense of shame. Which the right (and most of the left) no longer have.

This is not nearly as true as it seems. Sustained protest and sustained cultural change can and does work.
Hell, look at all these nazis covering their faces. You think they're proud? Republicans in Congress are incapable of making eye contact with their co-workers. Proudly defiant my ass, these people know the score.
Far more of them are looking to hop off that burning pile of shit than we realize, and we need to openly be a place where everybody who abandoned that loser ship for real can come join the normal people looking to stop it.
- Yes. They are proud.
  I hate to tell you, but they're not covering their face out of a sense of shame; they're covering them in order to prevent retaliation from people who disagree with them. They have no shame about what they're doing.
  If they are recognised and shunned, or refused service because of their actions, there's no shame or self-reflection. it's still the fault of the "damn libs". THAT'S why they cover their faces; because they know they're actions are unpopular and will get them retaliated against.
  But knowing their actions are unpopular doesn't mean for a second that they're ashamed of those actions. On the contrary, the fuckers are proud to be doing Trumps dirty work.
- So after 8 more years of walking around with signs and nothing happening, can we please try moving atoms around in physical reality to enact change in physical reality?
Peaceful protests, boycotts and sternly worded letters rely on the people you're protesting having a sense of shame. Which the right (and most of the left) no longer have.
They can do a lot more than that - it can scare them, and that will have an effect.
At their core, Conservatives are cowards. They are literally afraid of EVERYTHING - it's their primary characteristic. They want to remain in their safe little bubble, with no changes to anything. Any changes can only bring uncertainty, and uncertainty is terrifying to them.
So when the crowds at the protests get larger and larger, week by week, they begin to realize that they are outnumbered, especially the leadership, who KNOWS they cheated to win the election, and know they don't have anywhere near the numbers on their side that they claim. They know that when the Tipping Point arrives, and the Left finally rises up, they don't stand a chance.
All they have to defend themselves is empty bluster, and they are scared shitless that we all see it, which we do. That HitlerPig/ Hegseth presser this morning is a perfect examples. Those were two frightened cowards, demanding that everybody acknowledge their empty power, and hoping nobody will realize how weak they really are.
So protests, boycotts, letter campaigns, etc. all serve to amp up their fear, and sooner or later they will do something about it. It's likely that the first reaction will be violent, but when the counter-response is crushing, and continues to be crushing, they will quickly start demanding to make a deal.
That's when we should purge MAGA once and for all. No mercy.
- I wish I saw a single Democratic member of Congress talking about plans to seek criminal prosecution against ICE agents. These people running around in masks abducting people need to be indicted on various federal charges, including violations of civil rights. The problem is right now Dems can't even bring themselves to discuss the idea; their plan is to win back power then immediately declare "it's time to unify and move on," at the same Republicans start to plot Project 2033.
Going through the motions of elections right now feels very much pointless
“going through the motions” is a huge reason why we’re on the other side of issues to these fucks: we’re on the side of due process, faithfully executing, reading the law as intended, of evidence, of science
we don’t jump the gun because we don’t let our feelings dictate when, where, and how we dish out punishment - we wait for evidence so that we can be effective, and fair

I’ve been kind of confused about this whole thing. In the US, are even mayoral elections Democrat VS Republican? What happens if more than two people want to run for mayor?

This was a primary election so both major parties were fielding several candidates. The reality is no Republican is getting elected in NYC as long as we have free and fair elections in the USA so the democratic primary winner is the most likely person to win in November when the general election is held.
You are not obligated to run under a party in US elections. It just makes it easier to win.
- My concern is that Cuomo is planning to run as an independent and my pessimism is telling me that somehow he might win. I mean no one thought Trump would win in 2016 or again in 2024, but here we are.
  But the part of me that wants something to hold on to is desperately optimistic that this might be the start of the change.
Mayoral elections like most US elections are multi-party in principle, but usually there are the two major parties and the rest are marginal or fringe. Some offices are solidly enough controlled by one party that the primary essentially determines the general election winner. Example: AOC primaried out the incumbent in a solidly Democratic seat. She then ran in a general election against a Republican and others, but none of them really mattered.
I don't know whether the NYC Mayor election is like that these days. I know NYC has had Republican mayors in living memory, like Ghouliani. Bloomberg (I just checked) did two terms as a Republican, then a 3rd as an independent on the Republican ballot line. He later ran in the 2020 presidential primaries as a Democrat.
Right now there's a situation where Andrew Cuomo (anointee of the NY and maybe even national Dem establishent) just lost the primary but might run as an independent. If the Dem establishment keeps supporting him, maybe he has winning chances. Something like that happened with Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, who lost a Dem primary but then got re-elected as an independent with Dem party support. His opponent (Ned Lamont, now governor of Connecticut iirc) wasn't even left wing from what I remember.
For his independent run, Lieberman started a new party "Connecticut for Lieberman" and ran as its candidate. After being reelected, the new party had served its purpose and became useless to him, so he forgot about it and the incorporation documents expired. Someone else then got control of it (I guess that's like domain squatting) and apparently used it for some entertaining pranks. I wasn't around for that though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_for_Lieberman
- Huh, that kind of sucks to be honest. In Ontario (and I assume the rest of Canada), Mayoral elections don’t have parties involved at all. It’s just individuals and your city ward’s individual candidates. Truthfully, the candidates often have some former experience with a provincial or federal party (or at least an endorsement, but they don’t run under any party banners)
  I think it makes more sense that way since local politics work a lot differently than state/provincial and higher politics.
It depends on the city. Mine (Madison, WI) doesn't officially list any party affiliation for mayor or city alders. We also use a runoff election system, so we're not stuck on two parties for local things.
In practice, candidates are often backed and/or endorsed by some political parties. Common ones are Progressive Dane (county level party) or Working Families (which has national reach and is basically a socialist party working within the Democratic party). When they move up to state or federal seats, they usually join the Democrats while continuing to work with the Working Families party.
Yes, very much so. Each party has their candidate. Some states might let multiple members of the same party run, and there have certainly been instances where people have run unopposed for certain offices, but generally most elected positions in the US are partisan.
It has been a key Republican strategy for several decades now to control as many states governorship as they can manage because it allows them to do things like gerrymandering and to pass state policies that favor Republicans.
- That’s sad to hear honestly. I thought city politics would be the one place Americans could escape the two party BS
The whole two party system thing in general isn't really a rule per se, you're allowed to run as part of some other party or independent of one, for any office that I know of. In smaller local elections like town councils and such you can even be competitive that way. It's just that the way we do voting, most of the time, means that for any election in which a reasonable number of voters participate, only two parties can be competitive and any more would actually make their side less likely to win. It's a not originally intended side effect of the rules we use, that now serves to keep the existing parties' monopoly on most higher offices.
Cities and states sometimes have different rules for different races. Cities are often so Democratic, that elections sometimes end up being between two Democrats. I've even seen Republicans register as Democrats so they have a shot at getting people just to listen to them.
Often races like judges, school boards, etc. are officially "non-partisan," but you can usually figure out which is which by their positions on the issues.
It depends. Some cities do nonpartisan elections (usually with some form of "jungle primary"), some cities do partisan ones. For the ones with partisan elections, there are often more than two parties, but parties other than the Republicans and Democrats rarely have a shot at office.
NY has a unique system in that it has a lot of parties, but many of them just endorse a candidate from one of the big 2 parties rather than running their own. This is why Cuomo isn't entirely out of this thing yet, unfortunately; he conceded the Democratic nomination, but he still has the nomination from the Fight and Deliver party (which he, himself, founded specifically for this election) and may choose to continue to run as their candidate instead of dropping out.

Clear out the cruft! Give us politicians we can get behind.

You basically have to clone Mamdani to fill out all the positions he should have.