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A win for the people! Cuomo's campaign expenses were $56 million, 2.5 times higher than Mamdani's. Cuomo was mostly funded by billionaires, while Mamdani had mostly small sum contributions.
Why are capitalists so bad at investments?? Weren't they supposed to be the smart entrepreneurs?
$56 million is a lot to us to plebs. However, to billionaries that's pocket change.
According to https://www.news18.com/world/billionaires-who-spent-a-fortune-to-keep-zohran-mamdani-from-becoming-nyc-mayor-ws-dkl-9685336.html. The total spent by billionaires was $8.6 million. That's couch cushion money to a billionaire. A billionaire wouldn't even notice the money gone.
If anything it shows how cheap it is for billionaires to buy politicans. Billionaries are throwing pocket change at politcians going "Dance for us".
Because it's actually worked. The wealthy have become outrageously more wealthy in the last several decades because of their interference in elections.
Mamdani is a setback for their plans, but honestly 56 million dollars is effectively nothing compared to the money the elite, donor-class holds and uses to influence society. The only way we topple their stranglehold is to have more "Mamdani Events" in every major city and state while we still have democracy and can launch grass-roots elections to remove corruption and money from politics.
56 million dollars is pocket change for a single billionaire. It's less than that for a multitude of billionaires.
Well, that's the only peaceful way. Revolution is always an option. But also, as long as the economic system allows individuals to hoard vast properties, the wealthy will use their power to influence politics.
Sure, just as soon as the revolutionaries gain control of the military. Until we reach that day, all realistic plans for revolution are going to be at least on SOME level institutional and political in nature.
I like to repeat the story that Mussolini wasn't dragged out of his headquarters by an armed group of rebels who toppled the government, Mussolini was arrested and handed over to the dissidents by his own government and the king of Italy when the government caved to social and international pressure. (And the fact that allies were leveling a swath of destruction towards Italy.)
Of course. Serious revolutionaries know you must infiltrate or otherwise subvert the military to be successful.
Okay so we're roleplaying then.
What do you mean?
I could write a long essay about how unrealistic this notion is, or just do this... go ahead and sign up for one of the branches of service and and get back to me.
You say it's unrealistic, and yet every successful socialist revolution has had the backing of at least some of the military. This is the stupidest thing about liberals, they always imagine that the way the world is now is the way it will always be. But material conditions are constantly changing and what seems impossible now may seem inevitable tomorrow. But you'll never know if you keep dismissing the people who are actually trying to change the world as LARPers.
And btw, while I'm too old to be considered for military service, at least one revolutionary party, the PSL, has specifically created strategies to insert members into the military to foment revolutionary fervor. So yeah, people are doing exactly the thing that you deride as "unrealistic."
I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying that in the USA right now, in our current state and social trends and general attitudes, any attempt to spread ideology in our military that isn't reinforcement of current military doctrine, will be met with severe consequences. Even talking about it here puts you at very real risk. I am not joking.
But it's okay because we don't HAVE to change the military, we don't have to try to change the course of the largest, most powerful, strictly regulated and massively complex fighting force the world has ever seen, from supply auditors to aircraft carrier plumbing experts to fighter pilots to the massive chain of officers up to admirals and generals who have dedicated their lives to their sworn duties... they're not our enemy, we don't have to fight them.
We just have to change our communities. We just have to change our representation, we just have to change the feelings of our neighbors and encourage our kids to be more social and involved. We JUST SAW how effective this can be in one of the world's largest and most powerful cities.
Political capital is all about community. Trump walked all over our nation because he has a community under him that he has effectively demonstrated the power of. Meanwhile, the left and progressive movements broadly have been divided, scattered, splintered and unfocused so we don't have the capital to challenge that community despite being objectively smarter and more compassionate people. Seeing as how we don't have the unity and political capital to even challenge a bunch of mentally deficient toddlers with guns, we're light years away from subverting the military.
I agree with everything you’ve said, except that we don’t have to wait for community to be built to work on the military problem. We can do both simultaneously.
The PSL (and others, but the PSL is the most notable ML-oriented organization in the US right now) are aware of the current realities, btw. Their position is that there is a groundswell of class consciousness that is growing, but still very small. Their strategy is to nurture that growth while simultaneously creating a cadre of trained political operatives to provide leadership for the moment when that class consciousness is large enough that the idea of subverting the military isn’t so laughable. It’s a realistic strategy that is based on 200 years of revolutionary history, and successes and failures.
Truth is that this sort of thing has worked out for them before. Trump would not be in office right now if he wasn't bankrolled by Musk and Thiel. There were reports in early 2024 that the GOP was basically broke.
A few million to a campaign can be converted into billions of tax benefits. Just think of how much they got out of the Trump tax credits from the first term. Pile on top of that cases where they get sweet government contracts (like Palantir). It's all a direct shift of money from the working class and into capitalists with the government as an intermediary.
Which is to say that, yes, it is good investment for them. They can afford to miss a few sometimes. Generally, they play the game to win more than they lose. If you win every time, it's actually an Enron-style red flag.
Yeah but, Kamala outspent Trump by a wide margin. She had all the celebrity endorsements… and she failed miserably. More money is NOT the answer.
Like Mamdani said. They're spending a lot more than what he's planning on taxing them.
Historically and even now, it works. The ones who spend the most, gets the air time, and the George Carlin Americans eat it up and form their opinions after "doing their research" which is nothing but watching TV and facebook from other people who are George Carlin Americans.
It's super effective and that amount of money where looking at is chump change to these guys.
The funniest part is that I never, at least from the clips, got the idea that George Carlin was a conservative but he did always have an air about him that I think made conservatives believe he wasn’t talking about them.
Now, I’m sure this will prompt me learning some things about Carlin but hey, I’m open to that too.
He was more anti-establishment than anything else. He was also famous enough to be in the big club we're not in.
I'd like to point out feckless Democrats that while Citizens United is bad... money ain't everything.
Don’t worry. There is a small army of well paid McKinsey consultants right now reassuring the DNC that while economic populism won for Mamdani it would never work outside of New York. They will tell the ghouls bought and paid for by big money donors that yesterday wasn’t a complete loss, Liz Cheney could get some sympathy votes on the ticket if the DNC is just brave enough to make her the VP nom and pivot to the center.
Wait till they invent mind control and add shit to the water supply.
Never Forget, Flint, Michigan.