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Andrew Yang announces he is running for Mayor of NYC!


PenelopeWitherspoon

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She has to win like 58% of the absentees, which doesn't seem too unlikely.

It's either going to be  0.5-1.5 point margin either way in the end, I think.  Adams likely wins, but Garcia has a really good chance to squeak it out. 

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On 5/18/2021 at 3:39 PM, UpperWestside said:

When I read that, especially after all of the protests from last summer, I shook my head. He has no plan to take on the mental health crisis here. To even come to the conclusion that you want a police officer on scene to speak with someone who is mentally ill shows he has quite literally ignored everything related to it that people have been pushing for here.

that specific question was asked about a scenario where a mentally ill person was being violent towards someone on the street.

 

i'm not yang gang at all, but he's getting railroaded for a lot of things he didn't say.  and in a race where the leading candidate is perceived to be tougher on crime than the others, i find it odd yang's getting heat for that.    

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23 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:
28 minutes ago, Reynolds Woodcock said:
It’s a shit show right now
 
 

God, the NYC Board of Elections is a fucking joke.

NY is not good at election counting. The primaries last year, NY-22 in November and now this. 

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1 hour ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

A homeless person in NYC?  Wow, color me shocked.

That isn't a normal homeless person.  He is missing all his belongings.  That is a person strung out on something who passed out in the middle of the sidewalk.  Still might be homeless, but this is different than normal.  

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16 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

That isn't a normal homeless person.  He is missing all his belongings.  That is a person strung out on something who passed out in the middle of the sidewalk.  Still might be homeless, but this is different than normal.  

A junkie passed out on a NYC sidewalk.  Again, color me shocked.

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3 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

That isn't a normal homeless person.  He is missing all his belongings.  That is a person strung out on something who passed out in the middle of the sidewalk.  Still might be homeless, but this is different than normal.  

Is there a camp not too far? Here in Portland most of them keep their stuff in a camp. Even when strung out they'll go back afterwards.

 

 

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They re-ran the vote. Adams leads Garcia (without absentees) 51.05 to 48.95 (14,755 lead, so slightly less than yesterday). 

Garcia's lead against Wiley in the second to last round is 347 votes.  But I expect Garcia to move on to the final round regardless, as the absentee ballots should favor her (40% from Manhattan). 

Looks like Adams picked up 36% of the 19k uncounted votes from Election Day that were put into the tally today (the "missing Bronx votes"). 

Likely not enough for Adams - the 125k absentees should skew more pro-Garcia than Election Day votes.  Garcia may be the fave. 

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11 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

Prior to COVID, when was the last time you spent a significant time in NYC?  

You got me, it's been a few years.  But over the last 20 years I've lived 18 of them in cities in the same ballpark size wise as NYC and have seen a few junkies passed out on the sidewalk, in the bushes, etc.  It wasn't an every day occurence but happened enough that I wouldn't think to take a picture and post it on the internet.

In sum, I guess I'm sorry the dregs of society have decided to infiltrate your little posh safe zone.

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You got me, it's been a few years.  But over the last 20 years I've lived 18 of them in cities in the same ballpark size wise as NYC and have seen a few junkies passed out on the sidewalk, in the bushes, etc.  It wasn't an every day occurence but happened enough that I wouldn't think to take a picture and post it on the internet.
In sum, I guess I'm sorry the dregs of society have decided to infiltrate your little posh safe zone.

Manhattan was like Disneyland compared to most cities pre COVID. Probably one of the safest urban areas in the world. And unless you’ve lived outside the US, no US city is even ballpark to NYC in population and density. NYC is 8.5M people. The MSA is 20M.

LA is no. 2 with 4M and 13M.

I saw more shit like this in Houston compared to Manhattan.
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Manhattan was like Disneyland compared to most cities pre COVID. Probably one of the safest urban areas in the world. And unless you’ve lived outside the US, no US city is even ballpark to NYC in population and density. NYC is 8.5M people. The MSA is 20M.

LA is no. 2 with 4M and 13M.

I saw more shit like this in Houston compared to Manhattan.
Sure
I don't know anyone that lives there that celebrates this though. A bit of murder and grime is celebrated.

Manhattan is a bit too Disney
But then I have friends moving to Jersey for back yards so ymmv
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Interesting read: 

 

New York isn’t really a tabloid city anymore. But in recent weeks, as Eric Adams came into focus as the city’s likely next mayor, he did so as a kind of political character familiar from the tabloids: the provocateur, the media’s gleeful antagonist. As the summer heat reached Orchard Beach, in the Bronx, Adams posed shirtless for the news cameras—sixty years old, vegan and ripped. He said that he might have to carry a handgun in Gracie Mansion, for protection. On the campaign trail, he told outsized-sounding stories about himself: that he had been a squeegee man; that, after the birth of his son, an enemy within the N.Y.P.D. had shot out the windows of his car. On primary night, David Freedlander, a reporter with New York magazine who had questioned stories like these, tweeted that he had been excluded from Adams’s June 22nd victory event in retribution. (The campaign said that this wasn’t true.) From the podium, Adams made a point of chastising “younger” reporters for following Twitter more closely than the politics of the city’s poor neighborhoods—his base. His supporters chanted, “The champ is here.”

The next day, still weeks before the final tally in the primary, Adams—a Brooklyn machine pol, longtime cop, state senator, borough president, and up-by-the-bootstraps centrist—declared himself “the face of the Democratic Party.” Across a year of Zoom debates and candidate forums, Adams proved to be the best talker of the candidates, the most adept at condensing politics into tangible images and phrases. His rivals spoke about the necessity of including “Black and brown communities” in the city’s prosperity. But when Adams said, “We don’t want fancy candidates,” everyone knew what he meant.

Adams is the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York, which probably assures him of election in November, as the second Black mayor in the city’s history. (His Republican opponent will be Curtis Sliwa, a radio host and founder of the Guardian Angels, who is most famous for having once staged his own kidnapping.) The national press has mostly not taken up Adams’s claims that he is a figure of national significance, in part because the election often seemed, given the sheer scale of the city, quite small. An ex-cop of no real ideological distinction (Adams), the city’s former sanitation commissioner (Kathryn Garcia), the general counsel to the current mayor (Maya Wiley)—it sounded like a strong field in a small Midwestern city, and the candidates frequently struggled to catch attention in a race often conducted via Zoom. The city’s most prominent progressives (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jumaane Williams) did not run, which left the proceedings without a vivid ideological dimension. The designated celebrity candidate, Andrew Yang, turned out to be less interesting up close, and faded to fourth place. Demographics favored Adams, and they proved to be destiny, if only barely: a decisive tabulation released Tuesday evening, after the final round of ranked-choice voting, gave him the victory over Garcia by all of eighty-four hundred votes.

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2 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

NYC is great at electing bad mayors. 

Sorry missed linking the article. But also interesting is the article is attempting to cast this as a broader democratic foretelling: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/eric-adamss-victory-and-the-uncertainty-of-the-biden-era-democratic-party

The demographics were easy enough to see on a map. Garcia, a pragmatist who received the coveted endorsement of the Times, won Manhattan and the museumgoer belt: Brooklyn Heights, Riverdale in the Bronx. Wiley, whose campaign emphasized racial justice and cutting the police budget, won the gentrifying neighborhoods of North and central Brooklyn. Yang was strongest in Queens, where there are many Asian American voters, and in certain Hasidic neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The poorest parts of the city all went to Adams: the eastern and southern ends of the Bronx, Brownsville and East New York, in Brooklyn—a centrist coalition of working-class Black and Latino voters that broadly mirrored Biden’s core voting bloc in New York. The political analysts who made a case for Adams’s victory generally emphasized the strength of this coalition in a party whose heroes often entice only voters with college degrees. Howard Wolfson, once a leading aide to Michael Bloomberg, predicted recently that Adams’s “message of ‘justice and safety’ and ‘possibility and opportunity’ will resonate far beyond NYC and will chart a course for Democrats around the country.” But even that endorsement suggested an uncertainty that is quickly coming to characterize the Democratic Party during the Biden years: it can see how important working-class voters are to its electoral prospects much more easily than it can figure out how to help them.

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  • 2 months later...

I'm not a yang fan, but I do long for a political reality that offers something other than the death cult that is the GOP and the impotent clusterfuck that is today's democratic party. It's depressing to listen to the geriatrics that control both parties yammer on about their bullshit. 

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Did y'all even read the memo? It was fantastic (spoilered below), but especially this part which is what I feel like is the worst part of politics in 2021 and keep trying to say on here:

Quote

 

So why do I feel in my heart that this is the right move?

While it was simply a small piece of paperwork, I genuinely felt a shift in my mindset as soon as I signed it.

My goal is to do as much as I can to advance our society. There are phenomenal public servants doing great work every day – but our system is stuck. It is stuck in part because polarization is getting worse than ever. Many of the people I know are doing all of the good they can – but their impact is constrained. Now that I’m not a member of one party or another, I feel like I can be even more honest about both the system and the people in it.

 

 

Spoiler

I changed my voting registration from ‘Democrat’ to ‘Independent’ today. It was a strangely emotional experience.

I registered as a Democrat back in 1995 when I was 20 years old to vote for Bill Clinton’s re-election. It was a no-brainer for me. I went to a college that was very liberal. I lived in New York City. Everyone around me was a Democrat. Bill Clinton vs. Bob Dole? Clinton was one of the youngest presidents when he was elected and seemed more in tune to me, as a 20 year old.

Keep in mind that I grew up the son of immigrants and my family did not talk about politics at all growing up. I still have no idea how or even if my parents voted. I have a vague recollection of my Mom watching a debate and saying, “I don’t like him” but I can’t remember who she was referring to. She doesn’t remember either.

Throughout my twenties I remained a staunch Democrat, though like many others I was drawn primarily to national races. I co-hosted a small fundraiser for John Kerry’s campaign at a bar when I was 29 – I think we raised maybe $3,000. I thrilled to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 and, to a lesser extent, his re-election in 2012. Around this time I was invited to the White House to receive recognition by the Obama White House as both a Champion of Change and a Presidential Ambassador of Global Entrepreneurship as the founder of a non-profit, Venture for America that helped create hundreds of jobs in the Midwest and the South. Bringing Evelyn to meet the President was a lot of fun.

In 2016, I donated to Bernie Sanders’ campaign – everything he said struck me as true – but then voted for Hillary Clinton against Trump.

When Trump won, I was surprised and took it as a red flag and call to action. Having spent six years working in the Midwest and the South I believed I had some insight as to what had driven Trump’s victory. I spent several years making the case for what I believed was the major policy that could address it – Universal Basic Income.

As you’d imagine, as a Democratic presidential candidate, I met a lot of Democrats around the country. Literally thousands. At first, many didn’t know what to make of the odd Asian candidate talking about giving everyone money. But over time I established deep relationships with some of the local leaders who have worked in party politics for years. Al Womble in Iowa, Steve Marchand in New Hampshire, Jermaine Johnson in South Carolina and others.

I also became friends with some of the other candidates out in the field. Cory Booker, Michael Bennet, Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke are people I’d consider friends who are motivated by the right things. As I’ve become more of a household name, I’ve worked with many senior officials. I headlined several fundraisers for the DNC and participated in fundraising appeals. I was a surrogate for Joe for months.

I spent weeks in Georgia trying to help win the seats for Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock, helping raise millions to do so. I’m proud of helping to activate Asian American voters in what I believed were historic races.

And running for mayor, I similarly met and became friends with activists and elected officials who are longtime public servants on the Democratic side. People like Grace Meng, Ritchie Torres, John Liu, Carlos Menchaca, Kenny Burgos, Vanessa Gibson and Dan Rosenthal are excellent.

Again, I have at this point dozens of friends and confidantes who are entrenched in the Democratic Party. I’ve been a Democrat my entire adult life.

And yet, I’m confident that no longer being a Democrat is the right thing.

Please, keep in mind that I am NOT suggesting that you also change your voter registration to Independent, as I have done. Doing so could disenfranchise you if you live in the 83% of the country that is very blue or very red. For this reason, I considered either not making this change or not talking about it.

So why do I feel in my heart that this is the right move?

While it was simply a small piece of paperwork, I genuinely felt a shift in my mindset as soon as I signed it.

My goal is to do as much as I can to advance our society. There are phenomenal public servants doing great work every day – but our system is stuck. It is stuck in part because polarization is getting worse than ever. Many of the people I know are doing all of the good they can – but their impact is constrained. Now that I’m not a member of one party or another, I feel like I can be even more honest about both the system and the people in it.

The key reform that is necessary to help unlock our system is a combination of Open Primaries and Ranked Choice Voting, which will give voters more genuine choice and our system more dynamism. It will also prevent the spoiler effect that so many Democrats are concerned about, which is a byproduct of a two party system with a binary contest and simple plurality voting.

I believe I can reach people who are outside the system more effectively. I feel more . . . independent.

Also, on a personal level, I’ll admit there has always been something of an odd fit between me and the Democratic Party. I’m not very ideological. I’m practical. Making partisan arguments – particularly expressing what I often see as performative sentiment – is sometimes uncomfortable for me. I often think, “Okay, what can we actually do to solve the problem?” I’m pretty sure there are others who feel the same way I do.

I’ve seen politicians publicly eviscerate each other and then act collegial or friendly backstage a few minutes later. A lot of it is theatre.

I’ve also had people publicly attack me and then text or call me privately to make sure that we were still cool. It just had to be done for appearances.

Perhaps it’s the nature of my upbringing, but I’m actually more comfortable trying to fix the system than being a part of it.

One very senior Democrat member of Congress texted me to say, “I’m sorry to see you go. But I know you’ll do as much good as you can from the outside. And eventually, remember the outsiders become the insiders.”

I’ve got to say it feels really good to be building my own team. This is where I’m most at home.

Recently, in an interview I commented that I wasn’t particularly driven by a desire to hold office. I’m working for impact.

Breaking up with the Democratic Party feels like the right thing to do because I believe I can have a greater impact this way.

Am I right? Let’s find out. Together.

 

Edited by DonkeyCigars
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19 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Dems/liberals/progressives that bought into Yang's schtick.

RlLljV.gif

I don't think anyone from those categories ever made up the bulk of Yang supporters. The Democratic party never was a good fit for Yang nor his supporters so it makes sense that he is leaving.

 

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43 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

He’ll be a registered Republican within 12 months.

He’ll stay an independent who “hates” both sides but always somehow votes GOP. We have a few of those here 

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19 minutes ago, WillUSAF said:

Andrew got a taste of the rough and tumble world of politics while he fumbled his way through the NYC mayoral primary. Since he didn’t find retail politics to his liking, he decided to go his own way. He’s the Susan Sarandon of Kyrsten Sinemas.

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