This coming weekend, Chile will witness another presidential election — the ninth since the U.S.-backed dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet stepped down from power in 1990. While several candidates are seeking to woo voters in the first round of balloting this month, the main battle for the presidency will most likely come down to two figures in the second round in December: the Communist…
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When voters across the country filed into polling stations on November 4, making choices that could shape their communities over coming years, residents of Somerville, Massachusetts, also had the opportunity to vote on a question of international significance: whether their city should boycott and divest from companies complicit in Israeli apartheid and genocide in Gaza.
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As President Donald Trump on Monday pardoned leaders who tried to overturn his 2020 loss, the US Supreme Court took up the national Republican Party’s argument that counting mailed ballots shortly after Election Day violates federal law. Voting by mail has long been a target of the GOP president, who has falsely claimed that the practice fuels voter fraud. This case concerns a Mississippi law…
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Unable to stop Zohran Mamdani’s momentum after he won New York’s mayoral Democratic primary last June––fueled by a message of populist policies and social justice, and unperturbed by nonstop bad faith attacks by pro-Israel bullies––centrist and liberal media has adopted a different, more subtle tone in their effort to “moderate” the Mayor-elect: using the trappings of pragmatism and technocracy to whittle down the redistributive policies and class-driven language that defined his campaign. Rather than govern as he campaigned, as a crusading outsider socialist standing for tenants, Gaza, and workers, they insist it’s time for Mamdani to Grow Up, put on his big boy pants, purge his circle of Democratic Socialists, and hire Serious People motivated by Serious Solutions.
This makes sense. After all, traditional media attacks on Mamdani fell universally flat for months on end. Nothing seemed to stick, in part due to the fact that Mamdani seems to genuinely be a choir boy whose greatest transgressions are saying objectively true, but critical, statements about Israel and referring to his parent’s cousin at his “Auntie”––two things, it turns out, 90% of the world does. So a new tactic has emerged, one of attempted co-option, supposedly good faith advice, phone calls from powerful and famous Democratic luminaries, backroom meetings with “business leaders,” and the parallel implied threats of pushback if he doesn’t go along with The Way Things Are. This piece isn’t meant to be a commentary on whether this approach has been, or will be, successful (the jury is very much out on that). But it is worth documenting the way this particular mode of ideological disciplining works, and how it
Zohran Mamdani’s historic mayoral victory on November 4 created a political earthquake both inside and outside New York City. With bold policies aimed at challenging the status quo in the U.S., a once obscure, long-shot democratic socialist candidate has become a celebrated new star of the Democratic Party — a party whose leaders continue to remain reluctant to endorse him. As the dust from…
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