The whole "Do we want to win elections or not" is why we're stuck with 112-year old Dems who are living in the past, thinking Trump will dutifully follow the law, because aw shucks, that's how it's always been done. I mean I'm not opposed to a 112-year old with vitality, but our current Dems are sleepwalking. Where are they as RFK is canceling the measles vaccine?
Is the election that clueless, ineffective 112-year-old, really a "win" in any sense beyond votes? Fetterman won. Manchin won. Gerry Connolly won the chairman post before passing away. But none of them really worked for us. So that's not a win, it's a loss.
Also, it is really weird for anyone to expect or want NYC to be this all-white city. Everything about the city would be gone. Neighborhoods. Foods. Restaurants. Fashion trends and fashion week. Parades. Festivals. There would literally be nothing to enjoy. Astoria is great! So is Hell's Kitchen – 9th ave international food market is a glorious little shop of spices and otherworldly feta cheese.
I agree wholeheartedly, Yamuna. The "do we want to win elections" stance is so near-sighted and out of touch.
One lesson that Dems can take away from Trump's rise to power is that his campaigns debunked long-held conventional wisdom: To win a national campaign, a candidate must play to their base while pissing off as few people as possible, which is why politicians felt so wooden for so long. They were completely focus-grouped. Trump showed that you could piss off a lot of people and still win. He galvanized his base so much that they became evangelists, which led to an organic virality. That's one of the reasons why the polling was so off about him in 2015. He motivated unlikely voters.
All of which is to say, Mamdani, who couldn't be more different from Trump, charted a similar path in that he pissed off a lot of people -- Dems and "moderate" (such a misnomer, by the way) voters -- but excited many more people because he actually stood for something. Dems need to throw away the old playbook. It's not working. Dems need to stop playing not to lose and start playing to win.
I'm from Long Island, but I live in Georgia. My family is still there, so I keep up on NYC/Long Island/Tri-state area politics. I don't understand why people are so freaked out about Mamdani winning a primary for NYC mayor. Particularly, people who do not even live there or have any connection. But the reaction is absurd, from both parties, but honestly, the Democrats are the most disappointing. Does his win send a message? Yes. It says establishment Dems hooked their wagons to the wrong candidates, or their preferred candidates did not run a compelling enough campaign that would drive people out to vote for them. It says Democrats in NYC do not want an establishment candidate. It says they want change. And every time the establishment tries to stick their fingers in elections to get their preferred candidate into the general, it messes everything up.
I miss NY, immigrants and all. I've always been proud to be from NY because of its diversity and culture. I am trying to find a way to move back. I live in a blue area of Georgia, but I have had enough of the south. I enjoyed reading your take on things.
Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I very much appreciate it. I completely agree about establishment Dems. There’s a paternalistic condescension about refusing to listen to what their constituents are telling them.
Regarding Georgia, some of my wife’s family lives there. Most live in Hampton, which is definitely not my speed, but her sister recently moved to Decatur, whose downtown we liked. There seemed to be some nice pockets around there, like Virginia Highlands. But if you wanted to move back to NY, we would welcome you back with open arms!
Keep bringing the realness like this, challenging sacred cows and mixing it up, and I'm sticking around.
BTW, some friends of mine who know me outside of this world have replied in other comments on Substack using my full name, so I'm outed. 😄 Call me Claude. It's a pleasure reading your work, Pablo.
- Upstart disruptors who inject energy, change, innovation and rapidly grab consumer loyalty and energy as they meet unmet needs and grow.
- Stodgily entrenched with steady income streams, calcified customer bases and a cemented brand image locking them into old methods that don't shock longtime customers away from the brand. Like a bank, their goal is to pump out reliable low-risk returns. They're used begrudgingly if there's no better option.
The irony is that many organizations start out in the first group and eventually mature into the second. Once they reach the latter stage, they've bought into the myth of their own inevitability and invulnerability. It's at that point they become the most vulnerable to being unseated by the entrepreneurial first group.
Dems have been stuck in the second group for a while now. They ignored AOC as a fluke. They've reveled in wins by young reps like Max Frost but ignore their ideas. Now, they're discounting Mamdani to their peril.
So many Dems feel snakebit by splinters from Nader and Sanders' presidential campaign that progressive third-party is now a curse word. AOC, Jayapal, Mamdani, Crockett and others willing to mix it up, need to go their own way into a new party after getting reelected. This group of new progressives can then force a coalition that moves Dem polcies to the left in order to get the third-party votes they need to pass legislation.
Spot on, C. I resisted the notion of a third party for progressives, but the longer establishment Democrats bury their heads in the sand, the more I warm up to the idea.
The whole "Do we want to win elections or not" is why we're stuck with 112-year old Dems who are living in the past, thinking Trump will dutifully follow the law, because aw shucks, that's how it's always been done. I mean I'm not opposed to a 112-year old with vitality, but our current Dems are sleepwalking. Where are they as RFK is canceling the measles vaccine?
Is the election that clueless, ineffective 112-year-old, really a "win" in any sense beyond votes? Fetterman won. Manchin won. Gerry Connolly won the chairman post before passing away. But none of them really worked for us. So that's not a win, it's a loss.
Also, it is really weird for anyone to expect or want NYC to be this all-white city. Everything about the city would be gone. Neighborhoods. Foods. Restaurants. Fashion trends and fashion week. Parades. Festivals. There would literally be nothing to enjoy. Astoria is great! So is Hell's Kitchen – 9th ave international food market is a glorious little shop of spices and otherworldly feta cheese.
I agree wholeheartedly, Yamuna. The "do we want to win elections" stance is so near-sighted and out of touch.
One lesson that Dems can take away from Trump's rise to power is that his campaigns debunked long-held conventional wisdom: To win a national campaign, a candidate must play to their base while pissing off as few people as possible, which is why politicians felt so wooden for so long. They were completely focus-grouped. Trump showed that you could piss off a lot of people and still win. He galvanized his base so much that they became evangelists, which led to an organic virality. That's one of the reasons why the polling was so off about him in 2015. He motivated unlikely voters.
All of which is to say, Mamdani, who couldn't be more different from Trump, charted a similar path in that he pissed off a lot of people -- Dems and "moderate" (such a misnomer, by the way) voters -- but excited many more people because he actually stood for something. Dems need to throw away the old playbook. It's not working. Dems need to stop playing not to lose and start playing to win.
I'm from Long Island, but I live in Georgia. My family is still there, so I keep up on NYC/Long Island/Tri-state area politics. I don't understand why people are so freaked out about Mamdani winning a primary for NYC mayor. Particularly, people who do not even live there or have any connection. But the reaction is absurd, from both parties, but honestly, the Democrats are the most disappointing. Does his win send a message? Yes. It says establishment Dems hooked their wagons to the wrong candidates, or their preferred candidates did not run a compelling enough campaign that would drive people out to vote for them. It says Democrats in NYC do not want an establishment candidate. It says they want change. And every time the establishment tries to stick their fingers in elections to get their preferred candidate into the general, it messes everything up.
I miss NY, immigrants and all. I've always been proud to be from NY because of its diversity and culture. I am trying to find a way to move back. I live in a blue area of Georgia, but I have had enough of the south. I enjoyed reading your take on things.
Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I very much appreciate it. I completely agree about establishment Dems. There’s a paternalistic condescension about refusing to listen to what their constituents are telling them.
Regarding Georgia, some of my wife’s family lives there. Most live in Hampton, which is definitely not my speed, but her sister recently moved to Decatur, whose downtown we liked. There seemed to be some nice pockets around there, like Virginia Highlands. But if you wanted to move back to NY, we would welcome you back with open arms!
P.S. I don't know what the unsubscribers read to make them leave in a snit, but I didn't see anything in this but facts and objectivity.
Yeah, I'm not sure, but I'm done trying to figure it out. All I care about is having people like you here.
Keep bringing the realness like this, challenging sacred cows and mixing it up, and I'm sticking around.
BTW, some friends of mine who know me outside of this world have replied in other comments on Substack using my full name, so I'm outed. 😄 Call me Claude. It's a pleasure reading your work, Pablo.
haha nice to formally meet you, Claude!
As one of the Bob’s said in Office Space, the pleasure’s all on this side of the table. 😁
There are two types of enterprises:
- Upstart disruptors who inject energy, change, innovation and rapidly grab consumer loyalty and energy as they meet unmet needs and grow.
- Stodgily entrenched with steady income streams, calcified customer bases and a cemented brand image locking them into old methods that don't shock longtime customers away from the brand. Like a bank, their goal is to pump out reliable low-risk returns. They're used begrudgingly if there's no better option.
The irony is that many organizations start out in the first group and eventually mature into the second. Once they reach the latter stage, they've bought into the myth of their own inevitability and invulnerability. It's at that point they become the most vulnerable to being unseated by the entrepreneurial first group.
Dems have been stuck in the second group for a while now. They ignored AOC as a fluke. They've reveled in wins by young reps like Max Frost but ignore their ideas. Now, they're discounting Mamdani to their peril.
So many Dems feel snakebit by splinters from Nader and Sanders' presidential campaign that progressive third-party is now a curse word. AOC, Jayapal, Mamdani, Crockett and others willing to mix it up, need to go their own way into a new party after getting reelected. This group of new progressives can then force a coalition that moves Dem polcies to the left in order to get the third-party votes they need to pass legislation.
Spot on, C. I resisted the notion of a third party for progressives, but the longer establishment Democrats bury their heads in the sand, the more I warm up to the idea.