kurtster wrote:
Hmmm, brown people.

 buddy wrote: 
So who then is running your party ?  What does your party stand for these days ?

I see AOC, Crockett and Mamdani as the ones who are running the show.

 buddy wrote:

free dumb. Unfortunately, there is an abundance.

 kurtster wrote:
Demonstrably wrong.  I take umbrance of your apparent belief that we are either morons, or don't know how to read & think for ourselves.

But hey, it's Independence Day.  You be you, with what freedom is still left for us to enjoy.

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 
Communism is about no private property, just for starters.

 islander wrote:
He certainly wouldn't work everywhere in the country. But he seems to have tapped into the current energy where people are fed up with the whole lot of Democrats and Republicans. How many times have you heard voters complaining that there are very few Dems willing to put the gloves on and fight for their constituents when it comes to Trump? I would expect there to be a lot of folks running as independents in 2026, not wanting to be associated with either party. And I would guess there will be more successes than failures with that approach. 

 Steely_D wrote:
As my granpappy used to say....they make average possible.

 rgio wrote:

Sad to say, but there’s a strategy in remembering that there’s a bottom half to the Bell Curve and they vote - sometimes with vehemence.

 rgio wrote:
Performative BS, but hey they set a new record! That might land Jeffries a book deal too.

 black321 wrote:
All hands on deck!

 steeler wrote:
Dems keep pretending to be Mr. Smith, and are getting their asses handed to them by a wanna-be dictator on a third-tier social media platform.

The electorate has about an 8 second attention span.  You either ignore it or exploit it... 

Quite the speech.

 black321 wrote:

So I think of this as a giant 'it depends'. The basics of his policies are pretty reasonable - We value education and supporting people, so Education and public transit should not have a transactional cost (it's not free, it's paid for with taxes, and probably paid more -higher teacher salaries, because we actually value it). Housing is trickier because it's such a value store/investment/business, but people do need affordable housing, or wages have to rise to make it affordable - again, we value people being housed.

So yes, more taxes. We tax all kinds of things and people get it, but we seem to get more upset when it impacts people we will never be. Billionaires pay a lot of dollars, but they have billions. If they pay millions (more), they still have billions. It's that scale thing that people don't understand - How much more is a billion than a million? about a billion. How much more value does a peaceful prosperous society have to a billionaire vs a millionaire? Hard to tell, but they have a billion more dollars and that's how we measure a lot of other things.

Massachusetts (same national neighborhood, and not really known as a low tax state to start with)  raised taxes on millionaires, and they have had a 38% increase in the population of  millionaires. - https://www.axios.com/local/boston/2025/04/29/millionaires-massachusetts-income-surtax-increase . So I'm not convinced on the whole "you can't tax the rich or they will leave" thing.   They get the most benefit from our society, they should pay the most.

Edit: also for the record. He's a wake up call for everyone - a populist message can get traction on either side of the dial.

For Democrats, Mamdani Is a Wake-Up Call—and a Bad Example

He shows how the party is falling short, but he has the wrong solutions.

By Tom Suozzi

Zohran Mamdani, the socialist who just won New York’s Democratic mayoral primary, is a charismatic, smart and effective campaigner with whom I disagree. His campaign tapped into the same economic discontent that powered Donald Trump’s rise, and his victory should serve as a loud wake-up call for the Democratic Party.
Mr. Mamdani correctly diagnosed the core issue confronting most Americans: The economy isn’t working for them. They can’t afford housing, health insurance or education for their kids. They’re worried they won’t have enough money to retire. Unfortunately, most Americans perceive that Democrats are too often focused on other issues, such as reproductive rights and LGBT protections. While these are vital, they’re not the first thing on most Americans’ minds as they lie awake at night worrying about bills, rent and job security.

Mr. Mamdani tapped into the same economic discontent—the same zeitgeist—that powered Mr. Trump’s rise. Democrats must recognize that the future starts with a message of economic security for American families.

Mr. Mamdani’s campaign made lofty, utopian promises: free public transit, free college tuition, more public housing, sweeping debt cancellation and massive overhauls of systems far beyond his authority, all paid for by huge tax increases. The last thing New York and other blue jurisdictions need is higher taxes. People are already fleeing cities and states with sky-high taxes. The 2030 census will reveal the extent of this shift, leading to these blue states losing even more congressional representation and political power.

There’s another way. Democrats can embrace the need to address the people’s angst about the economy and affordability, without embracing the socialism of Mr. Mamdani or the extremism of Mr. Trump. Democrats must continue to fight for stronger unions, revitalized manufacturing, and a labor market that rewards hard work over wealth accumulation. If we want to raise taxes on the wealthiest—or, at the very least, return to pre-Trump rates for those earning more than $400,000, which we should—let’s let Congress do it. Cities and states need to stop raising taxes and putting themselves at an unsustainable competitive disadvantage. Raise the minimum wage, but do it nationally, since 20 states still cling to the outdated $7.25 federal floor. 

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/fo...

 kurtster wrote:

Don't care about his party....his policies are s#$t

 kurtster wrote:

Kind of rich, coming from a National Socialist wannabe.

And no, this is not a cheap shot. Srsly. think about it. What is it about communism that raises the hair on your neck? I'm guessing it is control passing to a coterie of apparatchiks who have no accountability to anyone but themselves and get to call all the shots, disenfranchising everyone on the margins as they go.

And that is different to what Trump is currently doing, how exactly?

 kurtster wrote:
Without dealing with these directly, why weren’t you up in arms about a man with a history of welshing on deals, repeated infidelity to his immigrant wives, multiple bankruptcies, and multiple other business failures, who put his daughter and son-in-law in the White House (where they profited multimillions from deals), and said - outright - that he planned on engaging policies that would ruin the American economy?

I mean, by touting the greatness of that loser, you think you complaining about Mamdani is gonna budge anyone’s needle?

 black321 wrote: 
Mamdani is the new face of the party.  He is an outright communist.

Also an unrepentant antisemitic.

A quote from a video I saw :

"the end goal of seizing the means of production."

From :  2021 YDSA Winter Conference.

youtube / @DSADEMSOCIALISTS  02/27/2021

Ain't no denying it.  Seizing the means of production is what communists do.  No one else, just communists.

Meltdown

 black321 wrote:
All hands on deck!