Mamdani-Endorsed Candidates Beat Incumbents In First Step Towards World Domination
Congratulations Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier.
New York voters must be pretty happy with how things are going under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, as all three of the progressive candidates he backed won their primaries last night — two of them against incumbents.
First, former New York City Comptroller, democratic socialist, and total sweetiepie Brad Lander handily unseated Rep. Dan Goldman in the Democratic primary for New York’s 10th Congressional District, with about two-thirds of the vote. Lander is a fan of Medicare for All, abolishing ICE (he put his body in between immigrants going for their court appointments and the ICE agents trying to cull them right there in the hall), pausing aid to Israel, support for Palestinians, and rejecting funding from corporations, cryptocurrency operations, and AIPAC, and he is straight up awesome on labor. He opposes non-compete contracts, helped to pass a “just cause” law in New York City which prevented fast food workers from being fired for no reason and wants to extend that to all workers.
I have been saying for years that the smartest damn thing Democrats could do would be to oppose at-will employment in favor of just cause firings. I mean, Big Antacid might not like it, but imagine the peace people would have if they knew they didn’t have to worry about losing their job for no reason or a very bad reason? Quite frankly, I feel like all Democrats should run on a platform of “middle-of-the-night panic reduction.” Because while no politician can do much about the hideously embarrassing thing you suddenly remembered you said 12 years ago, they can make sure you’re not freaking out about losing your job for no reason, having no place to live, and not being able to pay obscene medical bills or your student loans.
But I digress!
Next, state Assembly member Claire Valdez won her bid for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat against Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso — who, to be clear, is also a progressive and would in no way have been a bad choice, but refused to go as far as calling Israel’s actions against Palestine a genocide. And, you know, it’s a little hard to read reports about Netanyahu’s stated desire to take over 70 percent of Gaza and how the UN recently determined that Israel has been deliberately targeting children with bombs and airstrikes, and not feel some kind of way about that.
In her speech, Valdez thanked the UAW, which had also backed her.
“This victory is not mine, it is ours,” Valdez said at her election night party. “It belongs to UAW, and it belongs to New York City DSA. It belongs to the entire coalition that believed in this campaign and built this movement. As I look out at this crowd, I see the faces of those who build hard work into victory.”
Admittedly, I find that pretty delightful. More candidates supported by UAW, please and thank you!
Following Valdez’s victory, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a relatively unknown DSA organizer and activist, defeated 10-year incumbent and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Rep. Adriano Espaillat. As with the other races, support from AIPAC was a factor here, with the PAC having infused $650,000 into Espaillat’s coffers to keep him from losing to Chevalier, and Chevalier criticizing his support of Israel’s actions in Gaza.
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Of course, not everyone was pleased. Donald Trump more or less lost his mind about the victories, all-capsing on social media about how they are all scary communists. “Many Communists running in badly failing Blue States,” he wrote in one post. “The votes seem to have them doing quite well against each other. The bad news is that history has conclusively shown that the downtrodden States that they will soon be running will ONLY GET WORSE. MAGA!.” He then followed that up with “America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!”
To be clear, none of the candidates were communists. Also, to be clear, Donald Trump has absolutely no idea what a communist even is.
His old pal Steve Bannon was equally dismayed and shared his thoughts on the matter on his sad internet TV show, and even — please sit down for this — managed to get antisemitic about it.
“New York’s a foreign city. Go look at the Knicks parade. Go look at what’s happening in the streets of New York when millions turn up. Go look at Mamdani’s base. It’s a foreign — these sanctuary cities — this is all by design. These people are smart and they’re vicious and they’re focused and they understand the way to take America down is internally.
“What do you think the MAGA movement started with? Hey, we’ve got to secure our borders and get all the illegal aliens out of the country. […]
“It’s not a conspiracy theory. These people are doing it methodically, and they’re doing it up in your face. The universities, all of it. And the progressives with — mostly driven by Jewish intellectuals — have hated this country and that is why these universities are cesspools.”
I do love how it’s always “in your face” with these people. I swear to God, you could get them outraged about anything just by adding “in your face” to it. You could say “Look at that bitch, eating peanut butter, RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE!” and they’d be outraged.
Bannon knows the only argument he and his people have left is “Actually, these people only pretend to want all these nice things for you because they hate America and want to take it down from the inside!” It can’t be that we just want things to be nice for people, that we want them to have jobs and homes and to be able to afford to eat — no, we must have a secretly evil reason for it. They don’t know what it is, they don’t know what the actual end game after “destroy America” would even be, but they know it’s something to do with Jewish intellectuals. And that it’s bad.
Hot tip, if your only argument against someone or something is “Yeah, but I think they’re only doing that because they secretly want to take over the world and then … do evil stuff in some capacity!” you probably don’t have much of a case.
Anyway, congratulations to all these folks on winning their primaries and for making Donald Trump and Steve Bannon very, very sad. May they all continue to do so in the future!
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Every centrist dem seems to have lost their minds.
"Why are people voting for people that say they are for making lives better and not us, who hobnob with wealthy elites and are looking for comfy positions where we don't do anything/higher office."
It's so heartening to see more and more people embracing the Democratic Socialist party. Like most of us here, I've always considered myself a Democrat, progressive, liberal, the works. But the past decade has shown us that the Democratic party as we knew it has slipped into a controlled opposition party at best. They've failed us, the people of this country, and we're not going to blindly follow along anymore. Good on us!