Well, again, since I pay for housing in NYC, and housing costs are the engine that drives his candidacy, his positioning of housing seems pretty salient.
That said, the Dems freaking out about what could happen are just as silly as the Mamdani defenders who frame him as some kind of counterpoint to Trump in a country that’s burning: the ascendancy of Mamdani is mostly irrelevant to the Federal situation. And at the local level Mamdani is just more of the same old shit NY and other high priced big cities have been doing since the GFC, warmed over. It’s just a CTRL+C, CTRL+P of DeBlasio.
Because at this point it looks like there’s nothing coming from him that will really move the needle on housing costs. Maybe that doesn’t seem bad to you, but the one thing everyone with skin in the game agrees about is that the rent is too damn high in NYC.
I can’t imagine a less comparable thing than a Federal election in Canada and a Municipal election in NY.
Well, I do, and I’ve seen this movie before, except with better, more serious people than him and his staff. I wish him well, but my expectations are low. People predicting disaster right now are approximately as silly as those who did the same thing when DeBlasio was elected. But the people who expect good things from Mamdani have even less reason to expect them than those who thought DeBlasio would transform the city for the better.
Yep, all true. That’s why Mamdani will win, and you don’t get to do anything unless you win.
But that’s not in conflict with anything I said. And we can be honest about what’s happening here: a deeply unserious, lightweight nepobaby is about to take charge of the biggest and most complicated municipal enterprise in America. This guy makes Steve Adler look like a mindmeld of Robert Moses and Fiorello LaGuardia. He ran a great campaign, and I hope he does great things, but my expectations are under the floor.