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> Mamdani. Millennial candidate. No dirt. Other that some stupid stuff he said while he was young, his policies are relatively common sense and middle of the ro
> Mamdani. Millennial candidate. No dirt. Other that some stupid stuff he said while he was young, his policies are relatively common sense and middle of the road, and are aimed at leveling the playing field.
Look, Mamdani ran a good campaign, and if I was an NYC voter (I am not) I'd probably vote for him out of the options provided.
However, this just is not true. Many of his policies are neither "common sense" nor "middle of the road". Especially not on education and dealing with the homeless and public transit. And lots of his dumb comments were from like 2 years ago, not 12 - he was not "young" when he said them.
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1) "intifada" has not historically meant "peaceful resistance". It has referred to events like October 7th, and the 1st and 2nd intifadas which killed more people than the Troubles did in about 1/3rd as much time, etc.
2) Also dumb shit like "queer liberation means defund the police" and "when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF"
True that "intifada" doesn't imply peaceful, but it simply means "uprising" in Arabic. For example, the Warsaw ghetto uprising is called the Warsaw ghetto intifada in Arabic. Its central connotation is resistance to an oppressive regime.
Why does queer liberation means defund the police sounds dumb to you?
You know that for generations the police have been beating, arresting, and accosting queer people just because they are queer, right? A practice that continues to this day? (Just this year, Seattle police raided gay bars because they were gay bars)
You know that defund is not the same as abolish, right? And that the nypd has an operating budget in the billions annually?
You know that queer health care, particularly access to prophylaxis and safe facilities is woefully under funded, resulting in high homeless, violence, and drug abuse rates in the queer population right?
And that when you put them all together you get, "taking money from the police, who have historically and contemporaneously abused queer people, and allocating those funds to the medical and social welfare of queer people would be liberatory".
That sure as shit doesn't sound dumb to me, that sounds extremely reasonable to be honest given the context, history, and needs of the queer community.
> And lots of his dumb comments were from like 2 years ago, not 12 - he was not "young" when he said them.
If you're talking about the "globalize the intifada" comment, he actually never even said that, but a whole lot of people (you among them, it seems like?) have been brainwashed into thinking he did through political maneuvering.
The root of that whole drummed up controversy was him refusing to blanket condemn the phrase when media people (never attributing it as something he himself had said) kept asking him to.
And he was always very clear what his reasons for that were, which were extremely reasonable to anyone who isn't a kneejerk ultra zionist.
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> About the only response to this stuff a reasonable person can muster is "he doesn't believe that now"
He clearly still believes in police reform. In some places that includes reducing police budgets in favor of more effective public safety programs. That's what "defund the police" means. Not "abolish", reduce funding. In NYC he's running on maintaining police funding at current levels and adding additional nonviolent peacekeeping capacity. He may personally believe that ultimately funding can be redirected further, but that's not what he's running on.
Criminal justice is majorly fucked in the US broadly. We incarcerate non-dangerous people with minor offenses way too long, and we let dangerous repeat offenders walk free. The answer isn't so simple as "lock more people up" or "let everyone go", we're in a trickier bind than a straightforward over incarceration or over lenient set of policies. Mamdani talks a lot about reducing penalties for minor nonviolent offenders, and for increasing rehabilitative capacity, but he does retreat to rehabilitation too readily (from a rhetorical efficacy perspective) when questioned about how to handle repeat offenders.
I don't think he's actually changed his values at all, he's just polished his phrasing and set more achievable near-term goals.
>Many of his policies are neither "common sense" nor "middle of the road"
It seems like common sense to hear "cityfolk pay taxes, buses are paid for by taxpayers. Therefore, bus rides should be free for cityfolk". There's a lot more to it, but most voters are not going to read the 50 page proposal that Mamdami would need to submit to the govenor to get the wheels rolling.
I think that's enough for it to fall under "common sense". Policy you can explain in 3 sentences or less. Homeless people need help, not to be arrested. Invest in an organization who makes sure that these people get help so they don't stay on the streets.
(I can't find his education policy on a quick skim of the website and plan).
> Not "abolish", reduce funding.
Yeah, I understand that's what people are saying to rationalize it. And like I said: we'll find out! But see my reply to the sibling comment, where I link directly to his words:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45820126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45820126
He's well-documented, saying many times, in many different variations, in many different places, that he wants to eliminate prisons, "dismantle" the police, and so on. One or two comments you might be able to brush aside, but this is a consistent pattern.
Oh, the answer really is “let everyone go,” and then “get rid of all billionaires, cap wealth at $100,000,000 and tax the rest at 99%, and make sure every single person has a high-quality, safe place to live, good food, medical care, and friends.
Suddenly there will be far less crime.
> Suddenly there will be far less crime
Less, much less, but not zero. You'll always have the odd person who ends up a problem even under optimal circumstances. The range of trait expression in humans is very broad, and there are a lot of humans. You can't run away from that, but you can be compassionate about it. Insisting that your socialist utopia will simply render all humans happy and harmless, and as such there will be no need for forceful law enforcement is obviously wrong and harmful to your movement.
> "I think that frankly, I mean, what purpose do they serve, right?” Mamdani said when asked by a co-host of “The Far Left Show” in August 2020 if prisons were obsolete.
> “I think we have to ask ourselves that … I think a lot of people who defend the carceral state, that defend the idea of it and the way it makes them feel, they’re not defending the reality of it and the practices that are part and parcel of it,” he continued.
> “Because if you actually break it down … how many people come out the prison system better than they went into the prison system?”
From the New York Post so presumably this is the worst they could find on the topic.
>About the only response to this stuff a reasonable person can muster is "he doesn't believe that now".
My response is "looks good to me. Accepted". if police aren't protecting the people they shouldn't be funded by taxpayers. All for police reform.
And yes, if we aren't jailing everyone for being homeless or smoking weed, we'd need less prisons. If prisons were about reform, we'd nedd less prisons. These all make sense.
But I guess if detractors just want to take soundbites, remove all subtlety, and blast it out to twitter's 280 character limit, then their plan worked. It's just a same these same people would try to downplay 90% of the stuff Trump said in 2024 that he is doing in 2025 to the letter.
It's so depressing that the entire Mamdani debate has become mired in Israeli politics. You can completely ignore that issue, and still have plenty of questionable stuff to talk about. He has repeatedly talked about defunding the police. Literally, not figuratively, and not that long ago [1a-c].
He said he wanted to close down Rikers Island, right in the middle of the debates [2]. He said that prisons are unnecessary [3]. He said he wants to empty jails [4-6]. His comments on crime and policing, in general, are quite extreme. I could set literally every other topic to the side, and this would be a voting issue for me.
These are his words. I'm not taking them out of context or reinterpreting them. About the only response to this stuff a reasonable person can muster is "he doesn't believe that now". Yeah, OK. I guess we'll find out...
[1a] "NO to fake cuts - defund the police." https://x.com/ZohranKMamdani/status/1277414510131916801 https://x.com/ZohranKMamdani/status/1277414510131916801
[1b] more on his historical comments on defunding: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/31/politics/mamdani-defund-police-shooting https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/31/politics/mamdani-defund-p...
[1c] "dismantle" the police (in this case, the Vice squad): https://x.com/ZohranKMamdani/status/1336087694636707841 https://x.com/ZohranKMamdani/status/1336087694636707841
[2] "Yes, we have to close Riker's island" https://www.facebook.com/reel/1380642053476909 https://www.facebook.com/reel/1380642053476909
[3] prisons unnecessary: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/out-of-touch-mamdanis-old-prison-remarks-resurface-law-enforcement-slams-nyc-hopeful/articleshow/122772663.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/out-of-touch-ma...
[4] "the goal must be to abolish [prisons]" (plus multiple other variations on that theme) https://x.com/peterjhasson/status/1937682021276410317 https://x.com/peterjhasson/status/1937682021276410317
[5] "The entire carceral system is an unreformable public health hazard. Defund & dismantle." https://x.com/ZohranKMamdani/status/1328828240757215234 https://x.com/ZohranKMamdani/status/1328828240757215234
[6] "what purpose do [prisons] serve?" https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1945929553274196188 https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1945929553274196188
[1] does not mean no more police. The NYPD has $11 billion in funding and has offices all over the world for some reason when they should really just be city-sized for NY. They are overfunded, and he believes they should not be.
[2-6] indicate that our current prison system is punitive and does nothing in the way of rehabilitation or reform. No, he will not close every prison. Yes, in an ideal world we would not need hundreds of prisons full to the brim because we would actually rehabilitate and release people. This is hardly a fringe opinion and it is in fact a very common criticism of our prison system. Interpreting these statements as "he is just going to stop prisons and let all the violent criminals out in one go!!!" with no further though IS reinterpreting his words uncharitably because obviously that would be stupid.
Re [1], he explicitly says the opposite in the posts I linked to. You're just ignoring what he literally says and writes, and substituting your own feelings on the matter.
Regarding prisons, again, he is explicitly talking about closing down prisons. He has moderated his rhetoric more recently on this issue, but no, your interpretation of the subject is not what he's saying here, and it clearly isn't what he means, even today.
He has a long history on these topics. I'm not misinterpreting his comments.