What's next after Mamdani hits bedrock and finds a way to dig even deeper? Will NYC finally stumble back towards normalcy? Will it be too much of a Puerto Rican Caliphate at that point to even function?
Being a doomer faggot over politics is fucking gay as shit, but I ain't gonna front: I ain't optimistic for the near future. I'm both financially incapable of uprooting myself to move to greener pastures
and stubborn enough to stay in place even if I do have the means to relocate because New York's my home and I don't wanna be the obnoxious New Yohkah who won't shut the fuck up about New York after leaving the state. I'll start having sustained hope again when, or rather if, the GOP actually cuts the "losing with dignity" bullshit out entirely and actually plays to win the goddamn game for once.
Literally every single Republican candidate who ever ran for NYS governor or NYC mayor in the post-Pataki/Giuliani/Bloomberg era got mogged hardcore by Democrats. Institutional corruption and voter hostility ain't the only factors worth blaming. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the GOP fucking
sucks with ground-level voter engagement. Tom Suozzi's office regularly sends out email newsletters when Congress is in recess specifically to highlight meetings he's hosting within various public libraries across Queens and Nassau County. Democrats literally have volunteers going door-to-door collecting signatures for candidates to put on the ballot for municipal positions. Democrats are also the most acutely responsive to local pressure. You will
never see a Republican volunteer canvassing for signatures door-to-door specifically to put a novel candidate on the ballot. NYGOP is absolutely fucking milquetoast, thoroughly incompetent, and utterly impotent. You think that the Republican counties in Upstate New York have anything worthwhile to contribute to the conversation? Absolutely fucking not because they're in cahoots with their Democrat overlords in Albany.
Republicans have this really fucking annoying tendency to focus on the big ticket positions: POTUS, federal senators, federal representatives, governors,
maybe state senators and county executives if you're really lucky. You know who they
never fucking put forward on the ballot? Judges, DAs, comptrollers, city councilmen, county legislatures, state legislatures, need I go on? Republicans
really love going all-in on the "no-nonsense strongman" shtick, emphasising individuality more than anything else. Unfortunately, this ultimately means that they're fucking incapable of anything remotely requiring collective action because in Republican parlance (and paleocon/lolbert parlance to lesser degrees), the word "collective" is a dogwhistle for SOCIALISM(tm) even if the collective action is specifically meant to help bolster the Party on state and municipal levels and
not fiscal policy. Who the hell do Republicans even have for donors outside of the Koch Brothers and the Big Sugar assholes in Florida? There ain't even a broad coalition of conservative-aligned billionaires funding their PACs.
Democrats are guilty of using the proverbial fertiliser to artificially grow and overextend grassroots movements before gradually absorbing them into the broader coalition. Republicans are guilty of using proverbial pesticide to prematurely kill off grassroots movements, even if not doing so would be beneficial to their interests. Look no further than how Republicans reacted to the Tea Party vs. how Democrats reacted to the Democratic Socialist movement from 2016-2018 if you don't believe the proof's in the pudding.
