The test of an explanation is whether it explains the failure of the alternatives. These explanations don't. Cuomo was also not based on identity politics and came across as fairly calm.
For that matter, so was Kamala.
Zohran won because:
1. He was young, fresh, charismatic, good-looking
2. He was anti-establishment (this matter more than left or right)
3. He advocated serious left-wing policies that appealed to the people in NY and of the kind that old-school Democrats are too bought-out and mealy-mouthed to ever advocate
4. He had unabashed moral stances, as, most prominently, on Israel & Gaza, and again on the aforementioned economic issues (tax the billionaires).
5. He had an excellent sense of how to use social media and advertising -- fresh, funny, and relatably.
In fact, in pretty much every one of these 5 he was like AOC, who was the last person to upset the apple cart in NY in this way.
about "stopped antagonising entire demographies" - Zohran certainly has anatogonised the Jews, by his reaction to Oct 7 Hamas attack back in 2023. Perhaps it got him votes with some Dems, but it certainly is a huge liability, seen more broadly.
As well, he's quoted as proposing to tax "richer and whiter neighborhoods" - how is "whiter" not an identity politics? Of course it is...
Zohran is very popular among Jews, such as Brad Lander.
He's antagonized *Zionists*. It's not at all clear whether Zionists should even be considered Jewish at this point, since they seem to ignore all the Jewish laws.
Do you even know who Zionists were and are? Not all Jews were lucky enough, or scared enough, to get the hell out of the Continental Europe by 1917 or so.
Let me share here a cover of an old, about 1900, (Jewish) Bund (an East European party of these Jews who opposed Zionist idea of getting back to the ancestors' land) song. Some modern US Jews seem to be as detached from reality and history just as the text of this song is.
Yeah, I not only know a great deal about Zionists, I can tell you the different factions of the movement.
Labor Zionists, who had a paternalistic colonialist vision, have been utterly crushed.
The people in power now are Revisionist Zionists, followers of an admirer of Mussolini, who supported forcibly expelling people from their homes to steal them, from day one.
Once in power, the government of Israel didn't HAVE to start bulldozing fruit trees and olive trees (explicitly prohibited by the Torah), but it has been for decades.
You can make an "everyone sucked" argument in 1948, and you can make an argument for Labor Zionism (though it's a colonialist, paternalist, Eurocentric argument; they were responsible for the Yemeni Baby Stealing scandal). But by the time Likud took power in the late 1970s, it was unremitting aggression and evil, and that's been the government of Israel under Likud ever since.
It's genuinely unfortunate that the Bund was essentially defeated everywhere. And more unfortunate that they made such a bad tactical mistake in Russia that they enabled Lenin to defeat the Mensheviks.
Israel has arguably been the least safe country in the world for Jews since at least the 1970s, and this gives the lie to any modern Zionist argument.
I feel sorry for anyone born in the country, since they didn't choose where they were born.
The rabbis who created the Judaism of the last 2000 years or so created it after the destruction of the Second Temple. They warned very specifically against the sins of the Zealots. They said that these sins were what got the Second Temple destroyed, and that Jews must not do that. Likud is repeating the sins of the Zealots.
Your interpretation of the history of Israel is straight out of Soviet textbooks :-) Arguably, since the 1970s Israel was a destination of choice for Jews from the USSR - and not only them. As to "unremitting agression and evil", it's the Israel's neighbours who conducted non-stop agression since 1948.
Pretty popular for Jews from the notoriously antisemitic USSR and Russian Federation, yes.
As to "unremitting aggression and evil", who's committing genocide right now? Who's invading Syria? Who's invading Lebanon? Before that, who committed the Sabra and Shatila massacre? Who has been bulldozing fruit orchards and houses to steal land, continuously? That would be Likud.
You're just repeating Israeli government propaganda, and it doesn't have anything to do with post-1979 reality.
Israel's neighbors haven't attacked Israel since 1973. (Yes, they did from 1948 through 1973.)
Since the 1970s, however, it's been Israel attacking its neighbors. 50 years of aggression.
Sabra & Shatila ? That's Lebanon's Cristian militias, not Israel. (Although IDF bears blame for allowing it to happen).
Invading Syria? Well, Syria's current lawlessness has affected local Druz population, and here Israel is protecting local Druz - not the least keeping in mind that Israel has a large Druz community.
Invading Lebanon? Does the word Hezbollah sound familiar to you? They, you know, stockpiled Iranian ammo in huge quantities for a reason.
Stealing land - it's Religious Zionists, not Likud. Tolerated by Likud lately, yes. I'm not saying it's pretty, but you are seriously mixing things up. Mainstream Zionists gave up on the East Bank long, long ago.
Since 1973, Israel has to do preemptive strikes, that's all. It doesn't want a repeat of Yom Kippur War, obviously. And it's been making peace deals, successful with Egypt and Jordan, not so with Palestinians.
While I think these are general trends, there is something else going on, which is related but subtly different.
The "establishment" was running a sexual harrasser (Cuomo) and a self-dealer (Eric Adams), both of whom also simply failed to do basic function of government stuff (like getting NYPD to stop parking on the sidewalk), declaring it "impossible". They were also both obsessed with cars.
Sexual harassment is not acceptable to the younger generations, for the most part.
Self-dealing is not acceptable to the younger generations, for the most part.
Most of NYC does not drive cars, but takes buses & subways instead.
Everyone wants the government to do the basics.
If I were to describe a common theme of the "establishment" candidates, it would be: they feel that they have the right to do criminal and corrupt things, that their buddies do too, and the people shouldn't complain if nothing works.
Now, it's surprising to me that this has *ever* been a successful political platform, but I've also watched _Servant of the People_, which satirizes the attitude: even Goloborodko's own family reacts to his election with "Hooray, we get our cut of the corruption now!"
Anyway, this "corruption for everyone, but I want my gang on top" politics is clearly very old, but it is extremely unpopular among younger people in the US. (And for that matter in Ukraine.) You can see that type of "everyone's corrupt but I want my gang to be on top" attitiude back again with Donald Trump voters.
But Zohran Mamdani campaigned on an actual good government platform, where government does things for everyone and the people in power only benefit to the extent that everyone benefits. And vast majorities wanted that.
Cuomo and Eric Adams just represented another brand of "everyone's corrupt but I want my gang on top". People are hungering for someone who is actually not corrupt.
S1E18 of Servant of the People (the Katya episode, where Goloborodko tries to find someone non-corrupt to run the roads department) has really stuck with me.
I don't know how much you know about NYC, but the exact same plot would be completely convincing if set in NYC
Zohran looks good too because the democrats have no one to present. They all are clueless and just push race, identity politics, and "I'm a victim" talk (the social causes party). This is what people are tired of. Everyone wants to be a victim and/or martyr now. This is what is taught in the university's now. All the victims, who wants to be a victim? (lol isn't everyone kinda of a victim? Is or was at one time, or can be very easy made into one!)
The University = The "New Religion" (Religion of nihilism)
The test of an explanation is whether it explains the failure of the alternatives. These explanations don't. Cuomo was also not based on identity politics and came across as fairly calm.
For that matter, so was Kamala.
Zohran won because:
1. He was young, fresh, charismatic, good-looking
2. He was anti-establishment (this matter more than left or right)
3. He advocated serious left-wing policies that appealed to the people in NY and of the kind that old-school Democrats are too bought-out and mealy-mouthed to ever advocate
4. He had unabashed moral stances, as, most prominently, on Israel & Gaza, and again on the aforementioned economic issues (tax the billionaires).
5. He had an excellent sense of how to use social media and advertising -- fresh, funny, and relatably.
In fact, in pretty much every one of these 5 he was like AOC, who was the last person to upset the apple cart in NY in this way.
about "stopped antagonising entire demographies" - Zohran certainly has anatogonised the Jews, by his reaction to Oct 7 Hamas attack back in 2023. Perhaps it got him votes with some Dems, but it certainly is a huge liability, seen more broadly.
As well, he's quoted as proposing to tax "richer and whiter neighborhoods" - how is "whiter" not an identity politics? Of course it is...
Zohran is very popular among Jews, such as Brad Lander.
He's antagonized *Zionists*. It's not at all clear whether Zionists should even be considered Jewish at this point, since they seem to ignore all the Jewish laws.
Do you even know who Zionists were and are? Not all Jews were lucky enough, or scared enough, to get the hell out of the Continental Europe by 1917 or so.
Let me share here a cover of an old, about 1900, (Jewish) Bund (an East European party of these Jews who opposed Zionist idea of getting back to the ancestors' land) song. Some modern US Jews seem to be as detached from reality and history just as the text of this song is.
English text comes at 0:50.
https://youtu.be/tQMRwk8WDd4?si=ty8uUgWDkoisAL3O
Yeah, I not only know a great deal about Zionists, I can tell you the different factions of the movement.
Labor Zionists, who had a paternalistic colonialist vision, have been utterly crushed.
The people in power now are Revisionist Zionists, followers of an admirer of Mussolini, who supported forcibly expelling people from their homes to steal them, from day one.
Once in power, the government of Israel didn't HAVE to start bulldozing fruit trees and olive trees (explicitly prohibited by the Torah), but it has been for decades.
You can make an "everyone sucked" argument in 1948, and you can make an argument for Labor Zionism (though it's a colonialist, paternalist, Eurocentric argument; they were responsible for the Yemeni Baby Stealing scandal). But by the time Likud took power in the late 1970s, it was unremitting aggression and evil, and that's been the government of Israel under Likud ever since.
It's genuinely unfortunate that the Bund was essentially defeated everywhere. And more unfortunate that they made such a bad tactical mistake in Russia that they enabled Lenin to defeat the Mensheviks.
Israel has arguably been the least safe country in the world for Jews since at least the 1970s, and this gives the lie to any modern Zionist argument.
I feel sorry for anyone born in the country, since they didn't choose where they were born.
The rabbis who created the Judaism of the last 2000 years or so created it after the destruction of the Second Temple. They warned very specifically against the sins of the Zealots. They said that these sins were what got the Second Temple destroyed, and that Jews must not do that. Likud is repeating the sins of the Zealots.
Your interpretation of the history of Israel is straight out of Soviet textbooks :-) Arguably, since the 1970s Israel was a destination of choice for Jews from the USSR - and not only them. As to "unremitting agression and evil", it's the Israel's neighbours who conducted non-stop agression since 1948.
Pretty popular for Jews from the notoriously antisemitic USSR and Russian Federation, yes.
As to "unremitting aggression and evil", who's committing genocide right now? Who's invading Syria? Who's invading Lebanon? Before that, who committed the Sabra and Shatila massacre? Who has been bulldozing fruit orchards and houses to steal land, continuously? That would be Likud.
You're just repeating Israeli government propaganda, and it doesn't have anything to do with post-1979 reality.
Israel's neighbors haven't attacked Israel since 1973. (Yes, they did from 1948 through 1973.)
Since the 1970s, however, it's been Israel attacking its neighbors. 50 years of aggression.
Sabra & Shatila ? That's Lebanon's Cristian militias, not Israel. (Although IDF bears blame for allowing it to happen).
Invading Syria? Well, Syria's current lawlessness has affected local Druz population, and here Israel is protecting local Druz - not the least keeping in mind that Israel has a large Druz community.
Invading Lebanon? Does the word Hezbollah sound familiar to you? They, you know, stockpiled Iranian ammo in huge quantities for a reason.
Stealing land - it's Religious Zionists, not Likud. Tolerated by Likud lately, yes. I'm not saying it's pretty, but you are seriously mixing things up. Mainstream Zionists gave up on the East Bank long, long ago.
Since 1973, Israel has to do preemptive strikes, that's all. It doesn't want a repeat of Yom Kippur War, obviously. And it's been making peace deals, successful with Egypt and Jordan, not so with Palestinians.
While I think these are general trends, there is something else going on, which is related but subtly different.
The "establishment" was running a sexual harrasser (Cuomo) and a self-dealer (Eric Adams), both of whom also simply failed to do basic function of government stuff (like getting NYPD to stop parking on the sidewalk), declaring it "impossible". They were also both obsessed with cars.
Sexual harassment is not acceptable to the younger generations, for the most part.
Self-dealing is not acceptable to the younger generations, for the most part.
Most of NYC does not drive cars, but takes buses & subways instead.
Everyone wants the government to do the basics.
If I were to describe a common theme of the "establishment" candidates, it would be: they feel that they have the right to do criminal and corrupt things, that their buddies do too, and the people shouldn't complain if nothing works.
Now, it's surprising to me that this has *ever* been a successful political platform, but I've also watched _Servant of the People_, which satirizes the attitude: even Goloborodko's own family reacts to his election with "Hooray, we get our cut of the corruption now!"
Anyway, this "corruption for everyone, but I want my gang on top" politics is clearly very old, but it is extremely unpopular among younger people in the US. (And for that matter in Ukraine.) You can see that type of "everyone's corrupt but I want my gang to be on top" attitiude back again with Donald Trump voters.
But Zohran Mamdani campaigned on an actual good government platform, where government does things for everyone and the people in power only benefit to the extent that everyone benefits. And vast majorities wanted that.
Cuomo and Eric Adams just represented another brand of "everyone's corrupt but I want my gang on top". People are hungering for someone who is actually not corrupt.
S1E18 of Servant of the People (the Katya episode, where Goloborodko tries to find someone non-corrupt to run the roads department) has really stuck with me.
I don't know how much you know about NYC, but the exact same plot would be completely convincing if set in NYC
Zohran looks good too because the democrats have no one to present. They all are clueless and just push race, identity politics, and "I'm a victim" talk (the social causes party). This is what people are tired of. Everyone wants to be a victim and/or martyr now. This is what is taught in the university's now. All the victims, who wants to be a victim? (lol isn't everyone kinda of a victim? Is or was at one time, or can be very easy made into one!)
The University = The "New Religion" (Religion of nihilism)