The Pushback Express

You don't need no ticket, you just get on board

Well, looks like we got it.

The whole Democratic sweep is good news. But Mamdani is the jewel.

I haven’t had the privilege of citizenship for 15 years, so though I spent most of my life in the City I hesitate to claim too much insight on that ground — the world is full of New York exiles, and I assume that for every one like me there’s at least one sunburnt white Florida geezer who wishes they’d put Julie Annie back in to lock up all the [your ethnic slur here].

And, in fact, back in the day my neighbors did put in Giuliani, and Ed Koch and Eric Adams too (after a ranked-choice primary, no less!). Never forget that the oligarchs all have palaces, pieds-à-terre, and other investments there, and the mind-rays of their media hit home as well as out in the sticks.

But there aren’t a lot of the old-school Archie Bunker hardhats left in the City, and they have been replaced by a younger, left-er, and (oooh how the Mamdamners hate this) darker-skinned population. Also, new or old, New Yorkers can also be kinda… truculent when you get on their bad side. Mamdani was fortunate to be opposed by two of the biggest symbols of shambolic establishment governance in New York history, and I think many citizens welcomed the opportunity that Mamdani presented to give them a big Fuck You.

Speaking of the despised establishment, get a load of Chuckface Schumer:

It’s almost like his constituency is not New York Democrats, or any Democrats or New Yorkers at all, but the Prestige Press — which hissed and snarled over Mamdani’s good poll numbers all along, as I have written about a few-couple times.

This week Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect had a nice roundup of late entries in the PP’s crusade against Mamdani, from the allegedly Liberal Media papers to the Murdochian sinkholes:

The Times has pulled back somewhat from its initial scathing take on Mamdani, due doubtless to its realization (“its,” in this context, probably means that of its publisher A.G. Sulzberger) that most of the paper’s younger readers and some valued subsets of its readers (those in academia and the arts) actually support Mamdani. Such considerations never concerned the [Wall Street] Journal, of course, which appeared to operate under the assumption that an anti-Mamdani editorial or column a day would keep a Mamdani victory away.

Nice, but he left off my favorite: Peggy Noonan’s column in the Wall Street Journal under the None-More-Noonan passive aggressive hed and dek, “New York, You’ve Been Warned/At the very least, don’t give Democratic Socialist Mamdani an overwhelming win he can call a mandate.” Predictably, the whole thing’s a nightmare, but the worst part is Noonan suggesting Mamdani’s moving story of post-9/11 suspicion affecting his own family was absurd: “New York is such a moving and astonishing place in part because what Mr. Mamdani suggested — fierce and widespread public discrimination against Muslims after 9/11 — didn’t occur, and could never have occurred because it is at odds with the city’s essential nature. We don’t like bigotry.”

This is ultra-rich, not only on its face, but also because right after 9/11 Noonan wrote a column about how she herself was profiling “mideastern-looking men,” specifically two obvious tourists whose skin tone rubbed her the wrong way: “I decided to call the FBI again… I was relieved at the story of the plane passengers a few weeks ago who refused to board if some Mideastern looking guys were allowed to board,” etc.

Peggy Noonan being full of shit is not news, though the vituperative tone of her column was almost shocking. (Must have been a five-martini job!) She also managed to throw in the old saw about how, if you scare off the rich by electing someone who doesn’t kiss their ass, they’re gonna leave and won’t you be sorry — “every one of them paid the already-high New York City taxes that pay the bills in this town,” at least those few of them who actually paid any taxes.

Noonan cited as her authority on this Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, which last week told credulous out-of-towners that “nearly a million New Yorkers [are] ready to flee NYC if Mamdani becomes mayor,” a just-so story that was speedily amplified by redstate shitheels like Greg Abbott.

This is ancient wingnut ordnance. I remember the claims that New York was being abandoned in droves thanks to Bill De Blasio’s liberal mismanagement, based on moving van traffic. The City, population 8.47 million, was not in fact abandoned; nor did it descend into anarchy and chaos, as conservatives also fantasized would happen.

But while such silly tactics always have a hint of hysteria, this year their hysteria tuned up to a higher, shriller pitch as the election neared. And I’m not the first to note that the reaction of the standpat, you-deserve-nothing, oligarch-sucking creeps to their defeat will be fierce.

Good. Because their self-unmasking will also bring benefits. Mamdani ran on a Make-Life-Affordable-for-All-New-Yorkers platform, and the assholes had absolutely nothing in answer to that except No. And they’ll keep marching with that message, along with Trump (who endorsed Cuomo!) and all the worst people in the world, right into the meat-grinder.

Because people are sick of that shit. And here the people rule.