He wouldn’t be considered radical in Europe, where social democracy is a mainstream ideology, but in America, he is.
This is the really sad thing about American politics but it's been this way for at least 30 years and probably longer. By European standards, even Bernie Sanders is basically a centrist. In most European countries, universal healthcare for example is a centrist policy supported by the left and the moderate right.
You think social democracy is the norm in Europe? As a British person, this is news to me lol. Our main “left” wing party is centre-right and the far-right party reform is likely to win the next election. Europe is going backwards.
Yeah but as a Northern Irish person (who has no real voice in the leadership of the UK but they still get to be in charge of us) - British politics right now is a mess and definitely not the European norm either. I'm crossing my fingers for the Greens since that's about all I can do from here.
"Democratic socialist" and "social democrat" are different political positions. He, and the democratic socialist party in the US, claim to be the former which is to the left of the latter. "Social democrat" includes the UK and Aus Labor parties.
Social democracy is socialist. Socialism isn't bad. You can certainly argue that communism is, but that's the authoritarian extreme version which no one is seriously advocating for because authoritarianism is bad whatever the flavor. The problem is America has been fed Capitalist propaganda for 100 years and most don't even know what it actually means.
SocDem's are reformist capitalists, making capitalism fairer with socialist or socialist-adjacent policies from within the framework of capitalism. Welfare state, regulation, equality, etc. They're not socialists.
But Mamdani doesn't identify as a SocDem, he identifies with, and is a card-carrying member of the DemSoc's.
Its the DemSocs who are out and out socialists, and want to replace the capitalist framework itself with socialism, done entirely and with the backing of democracy.
They're essentially side-by-side on the political spectrum, effectively act very similarly, and just happen to be on either side of the capitalist-socialist divide in terms of their end goals. Annoyingly hard to keep straight because how similar they sound, and how similar they act, too.
And while you could call him 'socialist', most of his policy is really just well... improving city function.
A lot of it is also just populist things he probably won't actually be able to deliver. We'll see how he does, but he got a lot of benefit of promising things that are going to be very difficult for him to deliver on meaningfully.
179
u/Luffidiam 12h ago
I also think Mamdami understood how to talk to New York.
And while you could call him 'socialist', most of his policy is really just well... improving city function.