If Mamdani wins, please keep your think pieces to yourself

Another big endorsement for Andrew Cuomo. And it only cost $959 million in tax breaks. [image or embed]

— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social) November 3, 2025 at 2:23 PM

When trying to make sense of complicated events, we have to accept that we’ll probably never know exactly what caused what—or to what degree. The data will always be murky. That said, we can make reasonable assumptions about causality based on common sense, particularly if we’re wary of politicians and pundits trying to force their personal hobby horses into the race. Though not foolproof, you’ll generally do well to limit your speculation to the simple and obvious—if those things are enough to explain what you’re seeing. The primary focus of discussion around the race has been ideological. Based on various headlines and opinion pieces, you might get the impression that free bus rides and some modest rent control represent the final stages of the great Marxist revolution. The second-biggest theme has been ethnic and demographic, despite little evidence showing those factors as major drivers. Commentary has also spent a great deal of time insisting that Mamdani tells us something important about national political trends—despite New York City’s long history of being a beast of its own. As with so many major political stories, the NYC mayor’s race has mainly been an excuse for people to make arguments they already wanted to make. We’ve seen this from both the left and the right. We’ve also seen—almost entirely from the pro–Andrew Cuomo crowd—a lot of “it’s not really about the hunting, is it?” think pieces. These almost inevitably come from pro-establishment types (with The New York Times, of course, looming large) who are desperate to talk about anything other than the establishment’s responsibility for pushing this walking embarrassment onto the voters of the country’s largest city. (I am contractually obliged at this point to remind everyone that there are more Angelenos than New Yorkers, but since we’re specifically talking about cities here, NYC does hold the crown.) If we put aside the hobby horses and the disingenuous arguments and limit ourselves to things that are almost certainly hurting Andrew Cuomo, what do we come up with?

It says Cuomo went to a senior center but apparently they don’t know how many casualties there were yet [image or embed]

— Point Blank Sandwich Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social) October 29, 2025 at 7:32 AM

He’s a disgraced and scandal-ridden former governor. His death toll during COVID would normally be enough to end a political career. His history of sexual harassment is so long and well-documented it has its own Wikipedia page. His qualifications for both governor and mayor seem largely limited to being the son of a famous father. (Question for current and former New Yorkers in the audience: how well-loved or even remembered is Mario Cuomo? As far as I recall, he was best known for teasing the press about presidential runs, but back in Arkansas we didn’t follow New York State politics all that closely.) His campaign strategy seems modeled after the scene with Sideshow Bob in the field of rakes.

His displays of entitlement...

and incompetence

Omg 😭 [image or embed]

— starmanjr.bsky.social (@starmanjr.bsky.social) October 31, 2025 at 3:28 PM

have been stunning even by nepo-baby standards. Plus, he just comes off as a racist asshole.

Andrew Cuomo’s campaign just posted — and quickly deleted — this AI-generated ad depicting “criminals for Zohran Mamdani.”Features a Black man in a keffiyeh shoplifting, an abuser, a trespasser, a trafficker, a drug dealer, and a drunk driver all declaring support for Mamdani. [image or embed]

— Prem Thakker ツ (@premthakker.bsky.social) October 22, 2025 at 5:08 PM

By comparison, Mamdani is charming, personable, and has run a strong, sure-footed campaign. There’s nothing mysterious about him being ahead in the polls, nothing that requires convoluted explanations or close readings of the political and analytical tea leaves, no need for 10,000 words on what this says about Americans' attitudes toward socialism or youth or even Trump. Just the opposite.

As mentioned in a previous post: 

There's an exaggerated (but not all that exaggerated) account of the death of Rasputin that goes something like this: the controversial monk was, within the space of a few hours, poisoned, shot, bludgeoned, shot again, and then dumped into an icy Russian River where he drowned. 

There’s a corollary to the famous definition of news as “man bites dog”: unusual events merit coverage. 

The same can be said for unexpected or seemingly unlikely events. We might say it’s not news that Rasputin died; it would’ve been news if he had survived. Same goes for Cuomo.