https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/nyregion/mamdani-police-apology-floyd.html
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, said on Thursday that he intended to apologize for comments he made in 2020 calling the New York Police Department “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.”
He said that the remarks, which he wrote in June 2020 in a social media post in support of the defund the police movement, were made after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis a month earlier.
The comments were made “at the height of frustration,” he said in an interview with The New York Times, and were not reflective of his current campaign or “my view of public safety and the fact that police will be critical partners in delivering public safety.”
He believes his left flank is unbreakable, so now he’s trying to shore up his right.
Except that’s not how it works. The left flank won’t just sit idly while their candidate appeals to their right, usually when this happens it caused reformers to hemorrhage their left. Without a clear party line on rightist deviations it’ll just make voters lose faith.
And then when they lose, the left will be the ones to blame: not the rat fucking happening in the elections, not the candidate making bonehead moves, but the voters somehow.
Every conservative I’ve ever met has been a stubborn motherfucker who’s never changed their mind about anything. Meanwhile, my leftist buds would throw their political heroes in the garbage as soon as they learn they start saying some stupid shit.
If the left flank will throw him out for saying “I’m sorry I called the police racist” then no wonder the Dems keep trying to win the center.
If even an inch of pragmatism is a step too far then even I would give up.
But it’s only “pragmatic” because there are non-leftist voters who might throw him out for saying “cops are racist”.
That’s not the calculus here. The problem is that the NYPD has a budget larger than the DPRK’s entire military including their nuclear program. The NYPD is also a bunch of thugs, extortionists, rapists, assassins, kidnappers, and torturers
And that department runs the security detail for the mayor and the mayor’s entire family. The mayor is required to be in their proximity at almost all times. They drive him around, they escort his vehicles, they manage crowds every day around him.
The pragmatism isn’t limited to getting votes. It’s life or death.
That’s a really good point, and it sounds like it would be pragmatic to not rely on the cops for security. That’s another place a Party would help, to provide security to candidates so they don’t have to rely on domestic right-wing death squads.
This is why I am not all that excited for Zohran’s tenure. I am excited that he got the votes, but the reality is he will not have the power to do what intends to do because realpolitik drives NYC.
It also looks like he’s also going to be coming into power at the start of a recession, and a mere mayor can’t do a lot in those conditions.
No, it’s pragmatic because frankly the police (even as corrupt and racist as they are) are necessary and making an enemy of them will undermine anything else he’d try to achieve.
lol ok
The dems always capitulate to “the center” because they are ideologically and financially committed to capital and do not want, under any circumstances, any variety of socialist in their party. It isn’t some strategy for chasing maximum votes. They would rather lose to the right than win to the left because of the class they represent.
The working class is surprisingly pro-police, without the police things go to hell. The police are a “public service” (even if in name only) and poorer people aren’t keen on that service being taken away.
I can’t be bothered going in-depth on this issue, because it doesn’t seem productive.
listen up you limp-wristed leftist worms. the police are the only thing keeping the BARBARIANS from the GATES. the thin blue line between CIVILIZATION and ANARCHY. the only thing keeping me from PISSING in my JAMMIES at night. no amount of dead black teenagers is too high a price to pay for their protection.
How is anything supposed to get better if we’re expected to swallow our representatives denying the institutional racism present in our society, especially when we’re the ones targeted by the violence and selective law enforcement?
What’s pragmatic changes from one era to the next. Being uncompromising is the new form of pragmatism, the new meta.
Within limits. Not preemptively provoking an organization like the NYPD is a good line. Not only are they heavily armed, not only are they very powerful, they also do genuinely reduce crime.
There was that NYPD strike where crime went down when police went on strike, but that was because they were ignoring minor crimes. They were still policing major crimes.
If all it takes to provoke the NYPD is to say what everyone else already knows, and what everyone else was supporting you for saying, what value is there in continuing to walk on eggshells around such fickle and unpopular people compared to just continuing to say the popular thing? They weren’t gonna be on a socialist’s side anyway, they work for the landlords.
Now that they know he can be bullied, they aren’t gonna stop. They’re like wild animals, you can’t show weakness
It does really show you how much of your so called “free speech” is free.