I loved Mamdani’s speech so much!
I hope you did too.
I’d like to discuss a couple of points:
Firstly, it was such a refreshing reprise of Obama level rhetoric.
And Mamdani does it in the same kind of historic way: just as Obama was the first black president... here we have an Indian Muslim from Uganda becoming mayor of Jewish and Catholic New York City.
Only in America can we get this!
And he was so unapologetic about his ethnic background he went on to use Arabic in his speech.
And if that wasn’t enough, he then ran his philosophical background up the flag-pole calling himself a Socialist Democrat right there in front of national television.
We already hear people criticizing him all over the map because… take your pick from the spaghetti on the wall. ‘He’s going to to saddle the Democrats with too much radicalism.’ No wait, ‘he’s going to be too off-putting to America, because you know, I mean, surely, you know… a bearded Arab man as spokesperson for the Democratic Party.’
I mean, they can dog whistle Zohran in the mis-info echo cave for years. Soros, anyone?
I believe all those criticisms are incorrect. I believe America has mostly moved on, and the dog-whistle problem we’re in is a 33% problem. That’s the number of Americans who voted in the Trumpet.
And Trumpet’s numbers are down to the point where it’s just those people. And many of them — the actual voters that voted — are bailing on him. He’s lost a huge numbers, especially Hispanics and young people who voted for him out of hope that he would fix problems like inflation.
But Trumpet has only made those things worse.
Mamdani’s amazing speech is going to be studied for a long time.
The issue that I am concerned about is not him or what’s in the speech, but what may be taken away from it because it has got slogan all over it.
This is NOT a criticism of Mamdani at all! To his huge credit he buckles down on the promises that he made explicitly at the end of his speech: and with call-and-response from his audience to boot!
He is not dodging or retreating to sloganism. He is deliberately tilting at the billionaire windmills, because he clearly knows and has demonstrated with his election that the power of the people can equal the power of the wealthy.
However, I do fear that other politicians will take away from his performance something less than an ironclad will to make Change. I fear they will see these slogans - Change and Hope - as the key to their campaigns to get power.
My fear is that we will see the Democrats feel their power from this election and go forward with sloganism and not with the actual promises like Mamdani has done.
Now, Mamdani’s has a significant issue with his bold promises because he probably lacks the power to deliver them (at least in a single term). But it seems that a broad swath of the public understands these challenges. And because everyone understands this, then if he gets 1 out of 4, that’ll be okay. If he gets 2 out of 4, that’d be more than OK. And if he can get progress on more, it’ll feel pretty awesome.
Mamdani is also apparently capable of explaining these issues in ways the public can understand, much like Obama.
But back to the sloganism and the coming dynamics in the next two election cycles where the Republicans are going to be trying to defend the indefensible.
Bill Clinton made the prediction that after George W Bush’s presidency, the 2008 election would be a “Refrigerator Election:” meaning the Democrats could run a refrigerator and it would be elected.
Democrats look likely to feel their power from this election and prepare to run their typical campaigns. They will be full of safe slogans, and not the hard work that needs to be done to restore Liberty and Justice in 2029.
They will probably add Change and Hope to something like “Restore,” and call it a campaign.
If they do this and decide not to do the hard work of defining their policies, because that involves risk of fracturing an unruly coalition, then we will miss the historic opportunity to fix the cycle that brings us despots and incompetence and corruption for government.
Mamdani makes the call in this speech:
“We refuse to let (the billionaire class) dictate the rules of the game anymore. They can play by the same rules as the rest of us.”
I say let us embrace that call!
Let us not simply name it Socialism, where the means of production, distribution and exchange should be owned or regulated by the government.
Let us call this “Fairism.”
Fairness, I argue, includes the social well-being of Socialism, but highlights a fundamental moral rationale: we can only hold society together if we maintain fairness at all levels.
And such fairness will bring about the support and security of all classes because not being supported and secure at the bottom, or anywhere in the spectrum of society, it not fair.
Let us answer his call with a set of fair rules for all that insure life can work out for all of us.
I believe that’s also a winning strategy: most of us will simply see Fairism as a good thing in itself. Those who don’t (our 33% problem) will have a hard time explaining themselves, and therefore a harder time getting elected.
I hope that the Democrats will get specific about these fair proposals.
My versions are at the ProjectLiberty2029.info wiki.
And particularly The Share: A Universal Basic Income equal to a minimum wage, paid for by a Fair Tax on All Income that the Wealthy cannot avoid, and that controls the National Debt.
Whichever direction we head to from here, that speech was quite the moment.
As Mamdani says: let us breathe it in, America.
Amen. America.
