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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   17208 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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Per Politico, Zohran Mamdani set to topple Andrew Cuomo in NYC mayoral race, at least the Democratic primary. Live results here if that changes. The general election is in November -- Cuomo left the door open as he conceded tonight already to run as an independent; current mayor Eric Adams already is intending to run as an independent. This is nothing short of a massive political earthquake. Here's what I see as the most important questions raised:

Did ranked choice (and associated strategy) make a major difference?

We don't know yet quite how much. In percents, Mamdani leads 43.5 - 36.4 with 91% reporting as of writing, this means on Tuesday ranked-choice results will be released as he didn't clear 50% alone, since Brad Lander who cross-endorsed Mamdani has 11.4, Adrienne Adams who did not for anyone has 4.1. But it seems a foregone conclusion he will win. I'm not certain how detailed a ranked-choice result we get. Do we get full ranked choice results/anonymized data, or do we only see the final result, or do we get stage by stage? The voter-facing guide is here which I might have to peruse. I think the RCV flavor here is IRV (fewest first-place votes eliminated progressively between virtual "rounds" until one has a majority)

In terms of counterfactuals, I believe the previous Democratic primary system was 40%+ wins, under 40% led to a runoff between top two, so Mamdani would have won that anyways. But the general election is, near as I can tell, not ranked choice, it is instead simply plurality, no runoff. This creates some interesting dynamics. Of course, it's also possible the pre-voting dynamics and candidate strategies of this race were affected.

My thoughts? It seems Cuomo was ganged up on, and I think ranked choice accelerated this. It will be very interesting to see how this did or did not pay off for Lander specifically -- was he close-ish to a situation where people hate Cuomo most, but are still uncomfortable enough with Mamdani to hand Lander a surprise victory from behind? Statistically this seems unlikely in this particular case, but it could still happen, and how close he comes could offer some interesting insights about how popular a strategy like this might be in the future.

Will Democratic support and the primary victory make a difference in the general election?

The literal million-dollar question. Cuomo might very well run again as an independent -- otherwise his career is kind of extra-finished, no? I suppose he could always try and run for Congress later, but this is a black eye no matter how you spin it. Eric Adams, the former Democratic candidate, has also had his share of scandals, so potentially there is some similarity with Cuomo on that level. But he does have an incumbency advantage, and has expected some kind of fight for a while. Republicans might back him more, however, depending on how much they dislike Mamdani. It's hard to say. Also, Mamdani would have the Democratic party machinery and resources behind him. How much will they pitch in? That's an open question for sure. It will certainly help to some extent, for legitimacy if nothing else.

Will these results generalize nationally? And if so, what part of the results?

First of all, you must see this as an absolute W for grassroots. Cuomo is a political super-insider, despite being a major bully who is widely disliked. Yet many former enemies have backed him anyways, especially more "moderate" ones. Interesting article link. Bloomberg for example backed him. He formed a super PAC "Fix the City" and it spent a ton of time on negative attacks against Mamdani, especially on his pro-Palestinian comments framing them as anti-Israel. There's that angle of course. I'd rather not get into it personally, but I'm sure there will be some observations about if the Israel-Palestinian issue was big or not, whether it was fair, etc.

Then there's the socialism angle. Do Democrats want more extreme left candidates? Are socialists ready for the big time? Was this Cuomo's unique weaknesses? Was is just crazy turnout among young people? Did AOC and friends help a lot? All things we will be thinking about for a number of months to come. Personally, I see this as Mamdani doing much, much better among kitchen-table issues for the median voter. All about affordability. Of course, the merit of his attempt is a separate question. He's pro rent control (economically sketchy but not unheard of), wants to create public supermarkets (horrible idea all around, supermarket margins are very small), taxing the rich (will they flee or not?), and is obviously young and not super experienced.

There seems to be a large cohort of fairly far-left educated millennial voters that frankly scare me a bit. Call it the Reddit generation. It's the same group that powered Bernie Sanders into stardom. They have the politics of university campus but they are larger than in the past due to the expansion of college education and they keep ideological coherence longer into adulthood due to reinforcement over social media.

We rely on older voters to notice when their policies are going off the rails and elect center-left liberals to clean up their messes. But boomers are a scarce resource and overall it seems like the ideological mix of the American voter is heading in a bad direction, with Mamdani as the latest symptom. The more ideological voters seem to be indifferent to how their policies affect their city or economy. Politics is a badge of righteousness rather than a tool for governance.

It reminds me of the sage, soft-speaking Islamic cleric speaking with profound meaning "democracy means government by the people, of the people, for the people... but the people are retarded"

It's the same with economics. It's known how to do economics to increase prosperity. You need to do capital deepening and R&D. The more the better. It's a little more complicated than that but only a little!

Capital deepening and R&D isn't even a topic of discussion in politics, outside of maybe Singapore, China or the UAE. Instead it's 'how much money can we take from productive people and give to old people?' Or 'how can we make things more expensive, can it take longer to build out any capital?' Could we make irritating popups appear on all the world's websites? Let's cap the number of doctors we train for zero rational reason, while lawyers proliferate beyond all control. How about invading and conquering an incredibly low-value, poor country and spending huge amounts on it? How about demolishing our industrial base and offshoring it? How about making medicine 'free' (funded by taxes)?

'Let's build some infrastructure at ludicrously uncompetitive prices' is at least capital deepening but it's not very good.

The closest they come to R&D is more spending on education which is 90% unrelated to capital deepening or R&D, it's Ipads or laptops in schools or making low value university degrees cheaper (funded by taxes) - or just administrative bloat.

It reminds me of the sage, soft-speaking Islamic cleric speaking with profound meaning "democracy means government by the people, of the people, for the people... but the people are retarded"

Point of correction: Rajneesh (AKA Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain), the man in that video, was an Indian "godman," guru, and founder of the eponymous "Rajneesh movement," which had an intentional community in Oregon in the 80s:

Rajneeshpuram was a religious intentional community in the northwest United States, located in Wasco County, Oregon. Incorporated as a city between 1981 and 1988, its population consisted entirely of Rajneeshees, followers of the spiritual teacher Rajneesh,[1][2][3][4] later known as Osho.[5]

Some of its citizens and leaders were responsible for launching the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attacks, as well as the planned 1985 Rajneeshee assassination plot, in which they conspired to assassinate Charles Turner, the United States Attorney for the District of Oregon.

Interesting, never knew that.

He seems to be rather like the Mule in terms of charisma, which is to be expected if such a simple clip of him can get 16 million views on youtube, forever memorable:

A number of commentators have remarked upon Rajneesh's charisma. Comparing Rajneesh with Gurdjieff, Anthony Storr wrote that Rajneesh was "personally extremely impressive", noting that "many of those who visited him for the first time felt that their most intimate feelings were instantly understood, that they were accepted and unequivocally welcomed rather than judged. [Rajneesh] seemed to radiate energy and to awaken hidden possibilities in those who came into contact with him".[286] Many sannyasins have stated that hearing Rajneesh speak, they "fell in love with him".[287][288] Susan J. Palmer noted that even critics attested to the power of his presence.[287] James S. Gordon, a psychiatrist and researcher, recalls inexplicably finding himself laughing like a child, hugging strangers and having tears of gratitude in his eyes after a glance by Rajneesh from within his passing Rolls-Royce.[289] Frances FitzGerald concluded upon listening to Rajneesh in person that he was a brilliant lecturer, and expressed surprise at his talent as a comedian, which had not been apparent from reading his books, as well as the hypnotic quality of his talks, which had a profound effect on his audience.[290] Hugh Milne (Swami Shivamurti), an ex-devotee who between 1973 and 1982 worked closely with Rajneesh as leader of the Poona Ashram Guard[291] and as his personal bodyguard,[292][293] noted that their first meeting left him with a sense that far more than words had passed between them: "There is no invasion of privacy, no alarm, but it is as if his soul is slowly slipping inside mine, and in a split second transferring vital information."[294] Milne also observed another facet of Rajneesh's charismatic ability in stating that he was "a brilliant manipulator of the unquestioning disciple".[295]

After watching the video and some others on the same channel, it seems mostly interesting as a really extreme example of the art of generating gravitas by speaking slowly and pausing a lot. Somehow, he manages to get you to slow down your mental clock to match the pace of his speech, rather than getting bored or distracted.

(And yes, he does come across as wise and witty, but a lot of people could probably muster this level of wit if they actually could take that long to decide what to say without losing their audience. The ability to keep the listener suspended seems to be key.)

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