He’s a “sewer socialist”, his most radical pitch is… making buses free. It’s easy to get outraged by labels but when you strip them away and look at the actual politics it’s all pretty middling. Which is a large part of why he won.
His actual policies aren't that radical to be honest. Yeah the subsidized grocery store idea is one thing, but making busses free or telling hedge fund centibillionaires that it might be a good thing for American capitalism long term if they paid another 2-5 million dollars in tax isn't exactly the workers taking complete ownership of the factories.
For all intents and purposes, he's a milquetoast centrist who wants his city to be a bit better, and thinks it could be a bit better by doing things like making transportation cheaper.
You don't see him advocating for firebombing the NYSE or arresting Met Gala attendees.
And fuck, he's trying. God forbid someone care about their constituents, or their own city. Nope, let's smear him for not kowtowing to a country on the other side of the planet. Eric Adams just wanted to line his own pockets. Bloomberg wanted to line his own pockets. And now we blast a dude who grew up in NYC who just wants to do some really basic things to try to make life a bit better?
They're different economic philosophies, but most Western countries have a mixed system incorporating elements from both. Voting for Momdani doesn't necessarily mean you want total public ownership of the means of production. His manifesto is only moderately more socialist than the status quo.
> the core tenet of Socialism replacing capitalism
You can say Mamdani is a socialist. You can say the core tenet of socialism is replacing capitalism. But you can't say both. If Mamdani is a socialist, then replacing capitalism is not the core tenet of socialism. If the core tenet of socialism is replacing capitalism, then Mamdani is not a socialist. Those two things do not go together.
No, not at all. Socialism is a reaction to extreme capitalism, and basically a call for socialism today is just saying "capitalism is cool and all, but there needs to be some guardrails so capitalism doesn't eat itself".
People voted for the mayor in NYC because capitalism started to eat itself in NYC, and the non-billionaires who actually make up the vast majority of the city wanted a change.
A simple, and reasonably small increase in taxes on the wealthiest of the wealthiest (who are in NYC because its a world class city and their businesses couldn't really "make it" as easily elsewhere) is not socialism. It's saying to the hedge fund billionaires "hey - we don't appreiciate that you're operating your businesses here yet refusing to help pitch in financially in order to keep our world-class city world-class". If Ken Griffin can afford to drop a quarter billion dollars on an apartment he spends ~25 days a year in, or Bill Ackman wants to continue to hire people educated at Colombia and NYU, they can afford to pay another 2-5 million dollars a year in tax".