this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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Just a reminder to the Mamdani stans in Lemmy, at some point he will (or already has) done things you will disagree with, because you have to make compromises in politics, and I fear the left doesn't understand that basic fact of the job and are always too ready to completely cut ties with anyone who doesn't check all the boxes at all times. The left's motto is "I want it perfect or nothing at all!" and this is great if you're an artist, not so great if you're trying to push a largely liberal population to better outcomes.
Whatever missteps you think you will think you're seeing are going to get amplified by the worst voices on the left too, with a lot of "Wow I thought I liked this guy, but this is uncool" sentiments. Just be ready for it, don't let yourself be influenced by mobs of people you think are your peers.
edit: yah, lot of people don't understand the actual job of politics and think they do from watching TV and movies. I worry deeply for our future.
"The Left needs to fall in love; The Right simply falls in line."
The left is unrepresented in this two party system. Why do Blue states still use First-past-the-post voting if democrats are so concerned with 3rd party voters and the spoiler effect? Republicans arent stopping this state level legislation from being passed.
This is not about just one political opinion it something common in all political opinions.
what? there is many good movies and TV-shows that correctly reflect (sometimes even make feel) politics
Anybody who expects a100% perfect politician is a fool
And then there's the other segment of the population who say "we can never have a perfect politician, SO MIGHT AS WELL ELECT A DUMB VERSION OF HITLER JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS"
Agreed but the top comment of this reply chain is so disingenuous. It's like someone posting "Hey guys, its my birthday!", then they pop in to be contrarian and say "don't forget you are going to die someday."
I don't get why they left a comment like this. Are they upset Mamdani won? If they actually like Mamdani they could have said "I hope the American people continue to support people like Mamdani if or when it comes out that they aren't some perfect superhero, and are just human like all of us".
Specifically the comment focuses on the left and attacks them as being non-compromising, and acts like this is a fact, when the left has shown its self to be quite compromising time and time again.
Remember its not left vs right, but top vs bottom and the only attacks done should be on the top. Anything else is divisive and helps the billionaires stay in power.
Anyone who expects a system based on collaboration and conpromise to bend 100% to their will was a fucking miserable entitled jackass to play with as kids.
Right. More than 0% would be nice, though.
This just reads like a bad faith interpretation of anyone on the left who might have ideological differences between themselves and Mamdani. That doesn’t mean they aren’t pragmatic. For example, if you believe that our current government cannot be reformed then compromise with the right wing is often the least pragmatic way to bring about change. Pretending that this means you’re making perfect the enemy of the good either means you’re being disingenuous or you just don’t understand the perspective you’re critiquing.
Your comment reads as a bad faith interpretation of their post.
It doesn't matter if it is or not. That's how it reads.
(stop guessing at the motivations of a poster and deal with their points pragmatically, otherwise it's all just a fantasy... you have no insight into them (or anyone else)... you are not the "faith decider")
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and oh look it replies like a duck too, forgive me for thinking it’s a duck. Maybe take your own advice and engage with my points instead of getting so needlessly defensive.
I don't think you actually don't understand what kind of attacks or pushbacks I'm talking about, which makes me question the whole reply.
Well your argument sounds like ones I’ve heard 1000x over defending elected officials like AOC whenever they do something like vote to fund Israel’s iron dome or forcibly stop a railway strike. The problem is, trading favors and votes is the kind of game that only works when you have a network of wealthy benefactors. If you think that these types of compromises are necessary, it likely means that you have some degree of blind faith in the American political system.
I am not rejecting my rare-as-fuck, popular pro-social candidate who actually works towards better outcomes over isolated actions that I don't fully agree with, we have to get out of this black-and-white mentality or we will never have someone "good enough" and that's what I am rejecting, this fucking binary attitude that both the right and left have embraced with all their heart, what's most infuriating is this attitude is artificially implanted and people like you think having a 2-dimensional perspective of politics is equivalent to having "principles."
This isn't "principles" it's performative.
You’re arguing against a caricature of the left wing critiques levied at politicians like AOC or Mamdani. You’re ignoring how those actions, which are frankly not isolated, are indicative of a very different perspective and theory of change than many on the left have. Pretending that any other theory of change is actually just black and white moralism is an incredibly bad faith way to argue. Honestly, it’s just a ridiculous perspective to have when you would be hard pressed to find similar critiques levied at electeds like say Rashida Talib.
Sure, because the critiques I see leveled at good, progressive politicians ARE in fact caricatures of actual political criticism, they're often narrow-minded and out-of-touch with the moral complexity of actual political work.
My problem isn't with the impotent criticism itself, it's the millions of people who browse lemmy and twitter and reddit and other online spaces where deeply online, impressional young self-described leftists hang out and get all their values from the majority, and if they see an attack on a leftist or progressive leader that seems effectual and aligned with progressive values, they will latch on immediately and not change their mind, because people just work that way.
I don't care what your actual criticisms are, I just want people to be aware that not all criticism is going to be good faith, and not all criticism is going to be smart. The left gets caught up in groupthink as easily as the right but hate to admit it. We're all just people, but the left is particularly good at shooting themselves in the dick because they want their representative to be perfect.
Can you elaborate?
I am sure you understand what I mean when I say Mamdani is going to face a lot of reactionary flack from the left as he does unpopular things as part of his job as mayor, and I think people who aren't expecting this don't really know how cities or politics work.
Mamdani WILL make deals and do things that you will have "ideological differences" with, and it's on us to decide if the criticism he will face is ideological in nature or the expected efforts of the few who will do everything they can to blow up the worst interpretations of the business of city management in order to make people like you and me bicker and fight about if Mandani should still be supported.
Already happening. He has a good working relationship with governor Hochul and endorses her above a DSA candidate.
But she put out her neck for him and made things possible. If he did not reciprocate nobody in Albany would cooperate with him any more.
Somewhat related based on arguments I keep seeing, the number of people who don't understand that Albany is the state capital and that New York is a state as well as a city, and that the mayor of New York has to also deal with a governor, is really frighteningly high. What the fuck are people learning in school? Anything at all?
Legitimately there is a problem with stupidity on Lemmy. I don't know if it's because the average user is younger than other sites or what, but I have seen the absolute dumbest, most blatantly wrong shit get upvoted all over the place and there are a number of people who will get into arguments over obvious misreadings of articles.
I’m Canadian, so I didn’t learn anything about new York at all.
Prolly depends on where they are from, I'm from SoCal and was convinced that New York was a city state until I was like 11. I could see other people having the same thought for even longer if they aren't told explicitly like how my history and geography classes did, looking at you Utah and your idiotic claim that you guys colonized San Bernardino, you cunts.
It's not entirely wrong to think of nyc that way. It's not strictly true, but practically the city dictates much of the state's politics. It's similar with Chicago and Illinois.
There's no DSA candidate in the primary. Hochul was running against another centrist (who has since withdrawn due to no chance of winning).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_New_York_gubernatorial_election
edit: can the downvoter please name the DSA candidate in the 2026 NY gubernatorial election, it should be pretty easy to find since I linked the article if they exist
You are correct and I was misinformed, but not by much.
Andrew Delgados running mate India Walton is a DSA member who Mamdani supported earlier. And the DSA is mostly supporting Delgado over Hochul, which has garnered a lot of DSA criticism for Mamdani backing Hochul.
https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2026/02/socialists-not-thrilled-mamdanis-guv-endorsement-even-zohran-gets-it-wrong-sometimes/411228/
https://www.leftvoice.org/the-problem-with-municipal-socialism-a-response-to-liza-featherstone/
the politically correct thing is very often not the morally correct thing and it sucks. it's the reason i am not in politics and also not in prison (i think i would probably set something on fire)
Well said, and I agree. I have done a lot of community work but backed out of actual political work when I had the offer because I know how gross the game will feel to swim around in it. I have mad respect to the rare political leaders out there who retain their values and sanity while dipping into a world that treats all our lives and futures like pieces on a gameboard, where you have to be willing to sacrifice pieces to win.
Ok we do have to compromise, but the compromises are what got us into this mess in the first place. Like you can't compromise with capitalism because the compromise was either genocide really fast or slower genocide. Sometimes the compromise will get you nowhere.
Our entire society is built on capitalism and the influences of capital, you simply do not make any progress without SOME level of compromise or incorporation of capitalist principles and standards into your policy-making and community building, so black-and-white interpretations of how this works are exactly the danger I was warning about. He's pro-socialism, sure... but that doesn't mean you're going to see New York city become socialist.
Ok well let's take healthcare for example. If you compromise with capitalism, you can't eliminate insurance companies. Even tho socialized medicine has proven to be a better model for decades, compromise with capitalism got us Obamacare which is technically better than the previous model but it didn't make anything cheaper and it was prone to subsequent administrations gutting it.
Or compromising with the military industrial complex, means we still build weapons and fight wars and fund genocides. What exactly can the compromise be?
You can go through multiple industries and you'll find that as soon as you say "someone still needs to profit" then the game is over. Whatever you were trying to fix suddenly becomes secondary to profit.
This is no more intelligent than the first comment you made, you're just elaborating a point I already said isn't realistic, none of this applies to reality or New York politics. It's shower-arguments.
Hey man you can try to compromise withthis system your whole life, it's not going to get better.
Once you realize that, the next conclusion is obvious.
What's your alternative? Do you think an armed revolution is going to happen? Do you think the millions of comfortable liberals are going to be fine with that?
We cannot push this all at once, all we can do is nudge the needle back towards progressivism until it starts to choke capital. We don't have an army, we don't have enough uncomfortable people, we don't have fucking leadership so lets get real.
That won’t work. When has it ever worked? Labor right were won through violent strikes often times involving shootouts with the police. Civil rights were won with mass public disobedience alongside the looming threat of violent confrontation. Dr. King derided the same comfortable liberals you seem to want to appeal to. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect incremental progress through compromise and insider politics when that’s never been an effective strategy.
Of course I don’t discount the reality that we are not in place where enough people are ready and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to put capital on the defense. That said, inequality is rising, living conditions are degrading, and the US government is becoming increasingly brazen about the ways in which it intends to sell out its own citizens to the highest bidder. The path of decline that we are on will create a mass of people with not much left to lose. That’s when there is real opportunity to organize people into something capable of turning the tide.
Basically we can prepare for that eventuality or we can have a blind faith in a handful of well intentioned yet painfully impotent elected officials. That’s not to say we should sit out elections but rather said elections need to be a tool for organizing disaffected people rather than a promise to change the system from the inside.
What do you mean "worked"? What is "working" to you?
I care more for material outcomes so when we talk about whether or not something is "working" I want to define what that means. Has progressive politics fallen off a cliff in the 2010's on? Yep. But where was it before that? What had society scored? How many accomplishments can I list towards a better future should I list? It was activism and pushing for marginal progress that got us everything from gay marriage to 8-hour-workdays to repairing the hole in the ozone layer.
There are a lot of things we want for a better world, and we're simply not getting it all at once, nor fast. So again, your choices are the following:
Armed rebellion and social revolution akin to what China did, which is making any tankies that made it down this far already get erections, but this is not a fair or just outcome unless you've decided that individual rights and cultures are not a progressive value after all. Also, see previous: we have no army nor mandate, and even if we did it, we would have to live next to tens of millions of people who wanted none of this.
Social reform through rebuilding community and reforming politics through actual involvement and making incremental, boring-ass advances which mean all that shit you probably hate like sitting through city council meetings about the distribution of funds for various infrastructure projects while you sit there looking out the window at a world burning. It's not the fun path, it's often not even the winning path... but the reason we've lost so much ground in the 2010's on is precisely because people have lost interest in trying. We all checked out of community and now everything is a shit pile which took years to pile up, and somehow we expect we can shovel it all away in one go because suddenly we're in a huge hurry because now we're noticing how bad it's gonna be.
Check out. Stop caring, work your 9-5 and collect your 401k, and despite all else happening in the world, the chances of you living a long, happy, healthy life with normal outcomes is very, very high. Why are your chances of living a long, fruitful, happy life without political involvement so high? See above: people worked for it, pushed for it, demanded better for their country and got us here.
If we all just choose #3 we will have nothing, and if we choose #2 we will probably have serious, horrible losses but we will also have gains. Our species simply is not going to be what we both wish it was, we are going to be fighting ourselves forever so we need to change mindset that we can "fix" things. You can't fix the nightmare of greed and capital and genocide any more than you can "fix" having to do your laundry. It is forever.
So understanding that our overnight success is probably a childlike fantasy akin to the right's obsession with the Rapture or race-wars or whatever, would you be able to sit through that city council meeting on fund distribution without clawing at your desk and looking out the window? Because that's where we need to get to and we need to get there in a hurry because that proceduralism that we all hate is a necessary evil, because those comptrollers are going to be the ones who will find fraud first, and that fraud is what is holding up all the corruption above it. We need engagement and actual passion, and if New York can do it and elect an actual passionate leader who wants better outcomes, we can do it anywhere but it takes effort towards boring, small steps forward.
Oh come on. There are countless options you’re just ignoring between sitting through a city council meeting and a protracted people’s war. I even gave you examples of how progressive politics was advanced in the past. If you don’t want to learn the lessons of history then why should anyone listen to do? Are you actually that allergic to any sort of politics that inspires and mobilizes people? You can call anyone who wants to do more than sit in a city budget meeting a “tankie” and then pat yourself on the back all day, it won’t make your argument any less wrong. I mean seriously, the last meaningfully economic progressive policy was the creation of Medicare and Medicaid which happened in the 60’s and yet you’re acting like the decline started in the 2010s. But yeah sure, progressivism was doing so well during the Reagan and Bush eras. Lol
I can't spell it out across such a fine-tooth list of qualifiers to appease your specific vision of what you want to see happen, but whatever it is, it doesn't succeed without actual effort towards the less-flashy, more nuanced and balanced direction for policy and representation. My examples were broad-speaking and not literal and... now i'm done, this is just going to get pedantic and derailed about nine-million specifics and examples and counter-examples of this and that, and I have community to build. Have a good one.
Well one of the ways we can liberate our minds is to get off mainstream social media. So kudos to us for doing that.
I think the next steps is to create the conditions for revolution to be successful. The no 1 thing I think is to BUILD COMMUNITY. I have been volunteering at free clinics for the last few years. I try to have gatherings when I can. Then The next most important thing is to organize, so join an organization that offers something that fits. I recently was offered a job at a coop. I've attended some DSA events, trying to figure out a way to fit more of that in my life. The next most important thing is to build your independence from big tech. So get off their services as much as you can.
You're right, were not ready to take to the streets, even tho that is the real thing that needs to happen. So we as individuals can help build our independence, organize and believe in community. We can get there, it'll take a long time, but just because it seems like a big task doesn't mean we can't get there eventually.
I have been endorsing building community and working towards active participating in that for years and years and continue to endorse it as our answer to most of our worst issues, but we have to also understand that we don't get ecscape from politics, which definitionally means compromise between two or more forces. Those communities will still need representation, those representatives will still need to interact with a world that is largely controlled by forces we don't agree with, and thus people you like will have to do things you don't like from time to time, otherwise we're just roleplaying and trying to build a militia in private and that gets us nowhere.
That's all I'm saying, we do not turn our backs on people otherwise fighting for a better future just because they have to make tough choices to earn political capital. We just have to understand the nuance here and when it crosses a line to corruption.
Mussolini was not dragged out by a plucky band of rebels with their own, separatist value system, he was arrested by his own king and government due to political pressure and handed over to the opposition group. We still need to interact with the system and play the game.
I think that's probably the right course. We are forced to work with what we got and you can't abandon the people that are here. But I think it's important to be mindful that compromising will only get you so far. It will never take you all the way.