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Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

And yet, he’s the only candidate who seemed to have any willingness to address concerns of constituents in any significant way. The entire rest of the field was busy kissing Israel’s ring as if anyone in New York struggling to pay rent cares about that.

Just because a politician uses simple and catchy language doesn’t mean there isn’t policy substance behind it. Democrats have been losing for years trying to explain complicated macroeconomics to their voting base, Mamdani is one of the young democratic candidates who is a breath of fresh air.

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All right, and where is the substance? Yes, there could be some. But where is it? Anybody seen it?

Democrats have also been losing on social justice issues while ignoring the actual economic concerns of the poor. Well, is "there shouldn't be billionaires" a social justice slogan, or is it going to actually help the poor in some way? I think it's more a social justice slogan.

Kind of a silly question when the candidate has an entire webpage with details of his plan:

https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform

Uh huh. And where on that is "no billionaires"? I looked but didn't see it.

So we're back at "slogan, with no substance".

I have no idea why you’re hung up on the slogan. You need substance to justify it?

That’s like saying you need substance to back up a slogan like “criminals shouldn’t break into my house.”

I think voters understand intuitively why billionaires shouldn’t exist.

If you think no one in NYC cares about Israel… and I mean clearly you do, just in the opposite way.

Cuomo was a terrible candidate.

The #1 issue is the economy, by far, between voters of both parties. Foreign policy is #4 on the list out of 10 (Pew Research).

I’ll also remind you that this is a mayoral race. The pew research numbers I’m citing are for president of the United States.

I am quite aware that Cuomo is a terrible candidate, that doesn’t take away from Mamdani being a very good candidate in terms of his effectiveness at conveying his message and building a coalition.

Of course none of us know yet whether he will be a good mayor.

Democrats explaining macroeconomics to their voting base?? Never have I seen such a thing. They generally do what Mamdani did: promise things that people want for free or for cheap. With some hate for some groups added for balance.

You mean like cheap eggs and hate for undocumented immigrants and trans people?

You say Democrats just want to promise freebies so I’ll give you a fun challenge: find me the last Republican Congress that passed a budget that reduced the growth of the national deficit.

I’ll give you a hint there, it’s not the Tax Cut and Jobs Act nor the Big Beautiful Bill.

Meanwhile, Medicare for All was estimated by the congressional budget office (nonpartisan) to save money.

> promise things that people want for free or for cheap. With some hate for some groups added for balance

I hate to break it to you but that's the exact same playbook used by the current administration.

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