cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/4911
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday delivered a frantic warning about progressive New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani as new polls showed him with a big lead over top rival Andrew Cuomo.
During a news conference at the US Capitol, Johnson attacked Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries for giving a lukewarm endorsement of Mamdani last week and accused the entire Democratic Party of embracing “Marxism.”
“By endorsing Mamdani, Hakeem Jeffries has endorsed and co-owned his positions, his past statements, his Marxist playbook, and everything else that guy espouses,” Johnson said. “So too does every single House Democrat who will be inviting their leader, Jeffries, to their campaigns.”
Johnson also said that Mamdani’s candidacy was part of a “socialist uprising,” and that “we have the responsibility to call out and sound the alarms” about his rise to power.
🚨Speaker Johnson says Republicans have “a responsibility to call out” the “socialist uprising,” pointing to NYC mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani. pic.twitter.com/X3StkxT4mU
— Off The Press (@OffThePress1) October 30, 2025The “socialist uprising” that Johnson suggested people across the country should fear includes policy proposals like an expansion of a fare-free public bus pilot program, a network of city-owned grocery stores, and a rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments—which has already been enacted at least three times in New York City.
During a Wednesday interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, Cuomo accused Mamdani of being “totally out of sync with how New Yorkers feel,” and then pointed to the fact that Mamdani has “dual citizenship” between the US and Uganda.
“His parents own a mansion in Uganda, he spent a lot of time there,” Cuomo said. “He just doesn’t understand the New York culture, the New York values, what 9/11 meant, what entrepreneurial growth means, what opportunity means, why people came here.”
Two polls released on Thursday, however, indicated that fear-mongering about Mamdani appears to be falling on deaf ears.
As reported by Spectrum News, an Emerson College poll showed Mamdani hitting the 50% threshold among likely voters, with Cuomo trailing by 25 percentage points. A poll from Marist, meanwhile, showed Mamdani winning 48% of likely voters, with Cuomo receiving 32%.
Although the Marist poll was better for Cuomo than the Emerson poll, it also showed that Mamdani would likely win the election even if Republican Curtis Sliwa dropped out of the race at the last minute, as Mamdani in a theoretical head-to-head matchup with Cuomo still maintained a lead of seven percentage points.
Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, told Spectrum News that Mamdani’s voter coalition appears to be strong heading into next week’s election, as he has improved his standing among Black voters while maintaining significant advantages among young voters.
In fact, noted Kimball, Mamdani even has a plurality of voters over the age of 50, whose support Cuomo needs to pull off an upset victory.
CNN polling expert Harry Enten argued on Thursday that the latest polls show Mamdani is the overwhelming favorite to win the election.
“Unless there’s a historically unprecedented poll miss, some Cuomo fans are living in a fantasy world when it comes to the NYC mayoral race,” he wrote on X. “Mamdani has, if anything, widened his big lead since September. Also, early voting stats are consistent with polls showing a Mamdani win.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
“AHHHH! You can’t vote for him, that’s Marxism!”
“Oh, is that what all of these overwhelmingly popular policies I like are?”I love this concept. Getting completely politically disengaged people to stop seeing communism as this Red Scare boogeyman and instead understand why they should want communism. Especially when it’s not even us socialists breaking that preconception, but the same exact people who call everything they don’t like “communism”.
That’s how I got into communism really, when I was a young lad I would hear right wingers say “the evil dems are going to make us all Socialist!” I wanted to know what that actually meant, and it sounded pretty dope to me. They have shouted this lie for so long, younger people don’t know anything about actually existing socialism or much about the USSR, they just hear “boogeyman that fascists are scared of”.
Honestly, I got into communism a similar way, when I was really little I’d see how ridiculous capitalism all seemed from a small child’s perspective, and every time I’d say so, or say that grownups needed to be better at sharing, my dad would call me a commie and explain that we fought a war to prevent the very system I was suggesting instead. So when I got a more detailed and neutral view of the Cold War presented to me, I was already of the mindset that the West was wrong to start the whole damn war, and nothing true anyone told me about it changed that perspective, and I learned well before any academic context explained “communism” to me, that my dad hates it, we fought a war to prevent it, but it sure as hell sounds like a better system than the one I’m forced to watch that same dad struggle with every day.
I was constantly told that everything I like is communism. Is it any wonder that by the time I was old enough to have a political opinion, I liked communism?
Same. Kept getting called a communist/socialist by everyone when I was suggesting very basic progressive things. Started researching what it actually meant and even did a school project to make a fake country modeled after Cuba. At first it was kind of a joke, but by the end it was like wtf am I a communist?
Also same. I went through several iterations of left ideologies before I finally started reading history or theory, made all sorts of embarrassing theoretical mistakes before I got to this point, but I totally got pushed down this path by being told basic shit like free healthcare was communism.
My dad buys into liberal economics 100% and loves Reagan. He was a US History, Civics, and Economics teacher, and he tried to actually be informed.
We were talking a couple days ago and he was doing some AOC slander (from a rightwing perspective). I joined in on the slander (from a left persepctive) and told him about how she said “I am not a radical, my ideas aren’t something out of the communist manifesto” and my dad said “Well she probably never read it. It is actually a great work and Marx had amazing ideas.”
Of course he will turn around and argue for abolishing minimum wage, he is anti-Trump but still votes ® in every other way, because I guess the democrats are just ontologically evil.
Average American voter moment
because I guess the democrats are just ontologically evil.
well he’s got the spirit
Yeah, my mum’s kinda the liberal version of that. You could literally quote Stalin and get her to agree, on certain issues, but she’ll never willingly read the piece he wrote where he said that thing she liked when her daughter’s friend said it. She’s “the most communist liberal I know”. If you call it communism, she hates it. If you call it sound common sense centrist economic policy, or just “pro working class”, she loves it.
Yeah, I guess the problem is that people like my dad understand Marxism somewhat, and think its valid, but that the magic of the free market is even better.
Yeah, my mom’s more… “look, capitalism is the worst system, except for every other one we’ve tried.” She can agree with socialism until you call it that. She thinks Marxist economics is correct until you reveal which school of thought you’re coming from. It’s like she just has a mental block surrounding the words, not the concepts. Like… she went to East Germany as a teenager (I am forever So Fucking Jealous) and says even though she didn’t care about politics as a teenager and still really doesn’t (she lived through the Cold War but knows less about it than I do), what she saw of the Eastern Bloc then was a nice place, but she still doesn’t like socialism. It’s so weird. She’ll talk about East Germany with the same tone of voice I use discussing it. And then say “capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others we’ve tried”.
I used r/random almost a decade ago (as an Impressionable youth) and got on a subreddit where they called each “Conrad” and “cumrade”, which I thought was a funny bit, and then I stayed for the historical materialism.
Yeah, I had a kid phase where I thought lame communism memes were peak humour. I’ve grown up now though… I only laugh at good communism memes. And Lenin’s snarky remarks about the exact same kinds of liberals we’re still dealing with a hundred years later.
Its not real Marxism if I can’t exchange 20 yards of linen for a bible.
the way politicians and media personalities frame pretty tame elections as like these violent skirmishes in the streets is so absurd. like some guy wants to improve the bus service, and they’re talking about it like machete wielding mobs have clogged the streets and are building a scaffolding in times square.
machete wielding mobs have clogged the streets and are building a scaffolding in times square.
I wish the Dems were as communist as the GOP pretends they are
I wish the GOP was as communist as the dems pretend they are
I wish the leftists in the US were as left as they pretend they are
“oh yeah? I’m so left, the tankies call me ultraleft”
Zohran promotes Sliwa to chief of cats and parades, clean sweep, Cuomo sent to Long Island exile.
Cuomintang
lmao
Puns like this are why I love it here
That pun is from Twitter, but fair
This is Staten Island slander which would normally be acceptable but Zohran won there (in the primary at least)
The White Boys Who Say Inshallah of Staten Island need to relocate ASAP
The Cuomintang probably also did a White Terror in response to civil unrest.
closed primary isn’t it? just means that the four centrists who live among the fascists voted for him.
Zohran promotes Sliwa to chief of dogs and cats
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
“gosh dang socialist wants to make peoples lives easier? UNFORGIVABLE. I SUFFERED AND SO SHALL YOU.”
This is unironically the mindset, right?
In many instances, these people just really can’t get over the fact they aren’t directly benefiting from the progress. The fact that there is no way to retroactively make their lived experience easier means that no one deserves that.
This is unironically the mindset, right?
Not always, because many of these people are just lying about having suffered.
The upper middle class (useless liberal class signifier) is full of people who “grew up poor” or “had it hard once” but they never actually were poor. They don’t understand poverty. They don’t know what it’s like to be underwater no matter how much they earn. They don’t know what it’s like to get their career capped at $15 an hour for the foreseeable future. They, quite crucially, do not have any stories where things didn’t get better.
I wonder how far they’re gonna go to stop him. The most likely thing to happen is that Mamdani becomes mayor and the establishment just obstructs him at every corner, but with how far we are into open fascism I could also see them just… not letting him be mayor. Make up some bullshit as to why Mamdani is disqualified and install Cuomo. Or maybe they say “Wow, surprise, Cuomo actually got 60% of the votes, stop asking questions.”
When Jesse Ventura won the Minnesota Governor race a kind of 1-2 punch was used against him. The media was hostile towards him and painted him in a bad light while the legislature stonewalled progress. Jesse would get mad at the media for smearing him, legislature would say, “See, he’s hard to work with”, the media continues smearing him, legislature continues obstructing his office, repeat.
Where Mamdani can succeed is his ability to appoint folks to the housing authority that will freeze rent. Jesse never had a mechanism like that he could unilaterally build in his vision.
I think with how he’s doing in the polls if they start to obstruct him from the dem side within the city if he wins in a landslide I could see people getting riled up into doing some Incredibly Funny Shit to people who deserve it (depends on how much Mamdani is willing to instigate it)
Imagine if Trump declares a national emergency and refuses to let him transfer power, just openly doing Chile 1973 to a major American city. I don’t want it to happen but it would be an incredibly clarifying moment for a lot of people
When in reality he calls actual socialist projects “dictatorships,” helping manufacture consent for the upcoming mass killing of Venezuelans
classic succs to succdem
During a Wednesday interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, Cuomo accused Mamdani of being “totally out of sync with how New Yorkers feel,” and then pointed to the fact that Mamdani has “dual citizenship” between the US and Uganda.
“His parents own a mansion in Uganda, he spent a lot of time there,” Cuomo said. “He just doesn’t understand the New York culture, the New York values, what 9/11 meant, what entrepreneurial growth means, what opportunity means, why people came here.”
Yeah, no one in New York would understand what it’s like to be from a different country.
The “mansion” is worth less than a one bedroom co-op in NYC.
People like Maher also say Mamdani is a reactionary because he doesn’t renounce his Ugandan citizenship, which is just silly on so many levels. They are basically trying to do the “Hamas throws guys off rooves” thing, but in Uganda the homophobic laws are directly linked to agitation from western Christian missionaries, not fucking Sharia law or whatever his insinuation is.
Lmao nyc is known as an immigration hub. Wtf is he on? Guy spent too much time in Albany
Honestly surprised Sliwa hasn’t overtaken Cuomo, seems like a lot more likeable less abusive version of the same crap
I hope Mamdani makes Sliwa the Cat Czar and turns New York into New Istanbul.
An elaborate plot to keep Adams in NYC after the election
Give those two a public access show
Adams just wrote the theory, Zohran and Silwa will do the praxis
American elections are largely about name recognition because a large chunk of voters are just free associating in the booth
It’s why there’s so many signs right outside polling stations. A bunch of mfs just vote for the last name they saw before entering
He has an ®, most voters are to dumb to realize that Cuomo is also an ® in disguise
Cope and seethe, crackers
thank god this election shit is gonna be over next week and we can stop hearing cuomo’s name except hopefully when he’s arrested for doing some sort of sex pest shit
Is Chris Matthews still alive? The hardball one whined about Central Park guillotines
yes unfortunately. also said this bullshit:
On February 22, 2020, commenting on the 2020 Nevada Democratic caucuses, Matthews invoked Winston Churchill’s feeling of disbelief following the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940 as a metaphor for the feeling of disbelief experienced by establishment figures in the Democratic Party to Bernie Sanders’s victory in the state.
Hopefully Mamdani winning gives him a heart attack.
Its time to water down his policies even more then
Cuomo said. “He just doesn’t understand the New York culture, the New York values, what 9/11 meant, what entrepreneurial growth means, what opportunity means, why people came here.”
I think the polls suggest that is in fact you who does not understand Mr Cuomo
How’s Mamdani supposed to know whose palms to grease, who to cozy up to, who to buy off, and who he can sexpester once he’s in office? Guy just gonna feel lost, I tell ya.
“Mamdani doesn’t understand! New York is actually a carbon copy culturally of Podunk, Texas!”
what opportunity means
