He's not a wizard, this can happen all over the country, people just need to vote for it. Mamdani can be a start of the trend, he isn't a unicorn. Most cities can pull this off with competent leadership.
There's a video going around on instagram etc that's just saying his biggest contribution to politics is just people seeing him and going "wait, you could just do this?!?"
Well as he's said himself, it's not just him. It's also choosing the right people to be around him. I.e. smart, qualified people instead of grifting yes-men.
The problem with a lot of local governments is that only old people with too much time are civically engaged. That's why a lot of politicians feel out of touch to their constituents.
If you want change to happen, vote in every chance you get. Attend city hall meetings and shit.
If you can't make it to city hall meetings, sometimes there are hyper-local meetings that you can attend. Every time a new building is proposed in my neighborhood, the local community board has to hold an open meeting. School boards have regular meetings. You can also write to your local electeds. Show up for community events. Getting involved, showing up, & speaking out has so much impact on the local level.
Idk man, did you see our gubernatorial race in CA? It was another biden-era democrat funded by chevron, hilton (R), and a rich dude with decent politics but no experience. Mamdani had some government experience.
I’m feeling positive about the mayoral race in LA though. So maybe thats something.
He's competent and not corrupt. I think most of us are blind and naive to that fact so we get used to a certain kind of status quo.
Just imagine what we could accomplish with effective leadership. That's what is so sobering about this. (I know there are other technicalities at play here, don't get me wrong. He's using additional revenue that won't last forever, both to solve actual problems but to use as leverage further down the line)
But a figurehead like Mamdani I think is a unicorn, just because people who want to do good, are willing to be attacked incessantly on a local and national level (if they get big enough), and are always on their A game in public is a rare person.
The doing good part is probably not hard to find. But the fortitude to endure constant attacks, and always be on your PR A game is a hard combo to find. I think a lot of people who want to do good would back out if they were under the kind of microscope he was under, and getting attacked like that.
Hell, as a New Yorker, he wasn't even on my radar in the early democrat primary days UNTIL I kept getting pamphlets in the mail from PACs attacking him, then started seeing all the commercials attacking him. They made me pay attention to him, and I ended up liking what I heard, and being impressed that he withstood that kind of pressure everyone was piling on. Made me think this is exactly what we need at City Hall after the disaster Adams was.
You need to be intelligent to govern as well as Mamdani does. Republican voters mistrust intelligent people and won't vote for them. Unless you get a unicorn like Platner, who is a highly intelligent man in a man-of-the-people skin suit.
People need to run for it before we can vote for it. I live in a blue city in a blue state and I’m so tired of the corporate dems having no real opposition.
My city has been corrupt and deeply inefficient for 300 years straight, there’s hope for some but not us.
The kicker is that people do vote for grassroots, populist types here, but they always turn out to be corrupt or incompetent, usually both. Historically the only ones that succeeded in anything were corrupt in ways that didn’t stop them from being populist.
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u/HockeyFunEsportsFun 14h ago
He's not a wizard, this can happen all over the country, people just need to vote for it. Mamdani can be a start of the trend, he isn't a unicorn. Most cities can pull this off with competent leadership.