After New York City’s race for mayor catapulted Zohran Mamdani from state assembly member into one of the world’s most prominent progressive voices, intense debate swirled over the ideas at the heart of his campaign.
His critics and opponents painted pledges such as free bus service, universal child care and rent freezes as unworkable, unrealistic and exorbitantly expensive.
But some have hit back, highlighting the quirk of geography that underpins some of this view. “He promised things that Europeans take for granted, but Americans are told are impossible,” said Dutch environmentalist and former government advisor Alexander Verbeek in the wake of Tuesday’s election.
Verbeek backed this with a comment he had overheard in an Oslo café, in which Mamdani was described as an American politician who “finally” sounded normal.
I live in Colorado where we just passed a resolution to pay for school lunches by a small tax on individuals making $300,000 or more.
I swear to God, there were a ton of people complaining about it. My favorite was a Facebook friend of my brother who posted “Why are we allowing people to vote on this who don’t make more than $300,000 a year if it doesn’t affect them? That’s not how democracy works.”
These people are fucking insane.
Did you point out TABOR does require a vote for all new taxes, to include ones that don’t affect everyone?
No, since it was my brother’s friend, I just told my brother that dude was a moron - and left it at that.
I wonder how the kids receiving school lunches would have voted and if that bloke would have liked the result. Do we have any clue how the vote was split among parents of school kids?
You suppose this guy thinks men shouldn’t be able to vote on women’s health issues? I bet he doesn’t see even the slightest conflict there.
Hypocrisy is not a bug, it’s a feature.
But I wasn’t asking about a reasonable perspective, just wondering out loud how a literal interpretation of his stance would turn out.
Is he going to skip off to Galt’s Gulch now? 🤣