chapotraphouse

Ok, you said "climbdowns over other issues", what are the other issues? You mentioned "the intifada fiasco". Far as I can tell, he's never actually called for a global intifada. The most he said, is that the language is politicized, and he's not going to tell people to use something else, and has defended the use of the word intifada as simply meaning the word "struggle". I'm not sure that it qualifies as a "fiasco" because I've not seen anyone but chuds give a shit about it.

Talking about jobs cops shouldn't do obviously suggests that there are jobs that they should be doing,

Yes, the implication of this being that there are no jobs that cops should be doing. He's not a police abolitionist, to my understanding, so I don't know why this is something to even consider a "climbdown". Defunding the police has always been a reformist position. He's a Democratic Socialist; he is a reformist, which we understand will never bring about communism and the overthrow of capitalism, and yet his policies are still better on paper than anyone else on the field. This reformist position is why he's winning so hard. People are so starved for change that they'll even accept liberal reformist positions because they're not getting it from anyone else.

which is a complete capitulation, unless you're some kind of liberal who believes in the legitimacy of settler-colonial police forces.

Mamdani is absolutely a fucking liberal. Social Democrats are liberals; this isn't a mystery or a smokescreen. It's worth noting that Mamdani doesn't answer the question that is begged by his response, which is "How do you intend to fund the hiring of these human services workers?". The policies he outlines, hiring more human services and MTA workers, align with the liberal reformist defund the police policies, and so one can assume that's how he plans on funding these new hires, but until he actually answers, we won't know. This isn't some full-chested embrace of the police, like the chud Twitter account is suggesting.

The thing that I find so frustrating here, is the obvious landscape we're dealing with, which seems to be disregarded or downplayed. This is a political landscape that even reformists struggle to perform in. You would think, because of a couple of tweets from several years ago, Mamdani is running on the "Stalin's Big Spoon ticket" based on the conservitive and moderate liberal reaction to his win. Moderate Liberal policy makers are frothing at the mouth over even the most milk toast reformist policy suggestions. Reformist policies that were sprouting from the heads of liberals only five years ago.

I really am curious what the other "climbdowns" in policy are. This one doesn't seem to be one, even if he is dancing around the subject of how he is going to make these moves to expand human services employment.

I don't see why he should moderate his rhetoric more given that he's already basically certain to win. He should be doing the opposite if he's a candidate worth supporting. But instead he's just going to keep moving right and legitimising the rightmost sections of the DSA, who are hell-bent on making sure the organisation never becomes anything more than another Democrat-aligned NGO.

I am trying to understand where his position moved from and to. You can't say his position "moved right" without establishing what his position was and what his position is now. If Mamdoni was saying "Abolish the Police" then obviously, this is a turn to the right. If he was saying "Defund the Police," then this is pretty consistent with what he was saying. Here is now Fox News positions it:

New York Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani continues to walk past comments advocating for defunding the police, including at a National Night Out Against Crime event in the city on Tuesday night, but his opponent, Mayor Eric Adams, is not buying it.

"You can't become pro-public safety when you decide to run for mayor. That just can't happen," Adams said on Wednesday during a press conference, accusing Mamdani of flip-flopping.

"So are you just saying things to get elected, or are you saying things that you believe? Go look over my 30-year history, and you’ll see the consistency on what I want in this city around safety. Let's not tinker with what's working," he continued.

So is that your position to? That you can't be "pro-public safety when you decide to run for mayor"? Do words even have meaning? Because what Eric fucking Adams is implying here with the aid of Fox News, is that holding the reformist positon of "defunding the police" is at odds with "pro-public safety" because, in their framing, the only people who can provide public safety are the fucking cops. Mamdani didn't answer that question by saying "Well naturally I'm going to put more cops on the street". He answered it by saying "I'm going to hire other people to do the work cops are doing".

You know who shared that position with Memdani? Cory Booker:

Booker, a former mayor of Newark, said when he ran police departments, “exhausted” officers would ask, “‘Why are we using police to deal with the fragility or vulnerability of our society?’”

“There’s so much money going into our police departments that is a more expensive way to deal with it,” he said.

While oppertunists like Booker (read most of the Democratic Party) have abandoned this position (since it became no longer "relevent"), Memdani is still advocating for policies that remove cops from the equation of "public safety". Which is consistent with what "defund the police" meant in 2020.

I don't expect much from Memdani. He's not Lenin; you and I both know that. That said, watching moderates, centrists, and conservatives fucking puke over 2020-era reformist policy regarding public safety is what I would call a fucking win. It's an opportunity to dredge up all the fucking shit they were saying back then and show how much they've fallen. This is exactly why you support liberal reformists like Mamdani, because they generate rhetoric and allow you to leverage their measily offerings against the wider political establishment. According to the Washington Examiner, Democrats were "warm to the idea" of "Defund the Police" in 2020. Now look at them.

I agree that there should be a new party, but that's not going to happen. The parties are locked. There is no creating another party to contest the big two. This isn't fucking Europe. It would require one of the parties to split and I don't see those conditions anywhere.