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Ross Barkan Profile picture
@RossBarkan
Sep 24, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
The untold story is how few famous or prominent politicians want to be mayor. A huge departure from 2013, when at least five very viable Democrats tried to replace Michael Bloomberg.

nytimes.com/2020/09/24/nyr…
Consider the field today. It's literally two elected officials of note - Borough President Eric Adams and Comptroller Scott Stringer - and a bunch of people who have never held elected office before. It may be the thinnest Democratic primary in modern history.
Going to do a Substack on this but it strikes me there are two factors at play: the terrible state NYC is in, due to COVID-19 and the subsequent economic crisis, and the nationalization of our politics, which has made relative do-nothing perches like Congress much more attractive
Consider 1977. NYC was in the depths of a terrible fiscal crisis. Still, *every* prominent Democrat in the five boroughs was desperate to defeat Abe Beame. Ed Koch couldn't wait to get out of Congress. Mario Cuomo, Bella Abzug, Percy Sutton, Herman Badillo all ran.
In 2021, why run for mayor when you can get more retweets and national TV appearances hanging out in Congress, taking credit for cool stuff and dodging blame for bad stuff? No one gets mad at you when the school budgets are cut, garbage isn't picked up, a cop kills someone.

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More from @RossBarkan

Ross Barkan Profile picture
Dec 13, 2022
You become right-coded once you break from any consensus, which is very stupid. Taibbi criticizes the left often, but he's fundamentally a liberal on virtually every social and economic question of note. His free speeh absolutism would've made him a leftist into the 2000s.
The media is dumb about ideology. Bari Weiss can be called a conservative writer. She's an Israel hawk, skeptical of heavy government spending. Taibbi is none of those things. He's a liberal w/ a Bernie affinity who often criticizes the mainstream left on free speech grounds
Matt Taibbi wrote an entire book on how Donald Trump is an asshole. Honestly, the book wasn't my favorite - a collection of 2016 stuff, got repetitive at times - but it's not something a right-wing writer would do...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insane_Cl….
Read 4 tweets
Ross Barkan Profile picture
Dec 12, 2022
I'm in the middle of writing a story on Asian American voters moving to the right in New York. Ron Kim, one of the most progressive members of the state legislature, had some fascinating things to say.
Kim is unique in that he has genuine left view but is not enamored with large nonprofits and labor unions, which govern most talking points of Democratic pols. There are a lot of great nonprofits and unions but they aren't infallible. Many NY Dems treat them like the church.
The two most interesting pols running right now may exist on opposite coasts. @RoKhanna in CA and @rontkim in NY.
Read 4 tweets
Ross Barkan Profile picture
Dec 3, 2022
Taibbi has a lot of explaining to do on why he wrote out a whole story on Twitter - seems to be it was some deal with Musk, but TBD - but the ferocity of liberals toward his work and career continues to astound me. Many of these people probably haven't read him in the last decade
A writer I respect a while back denounced Taibbi somewhat furiously on Twitter, pointing to a Substack piece he'd written. I *assumed* the writer had read the piece and it turned out, no, the denouncement was based on a headline. A single headline.
I asked the writer if he planned to read the piece and the response was like 'lol no I'm not subscribing to Taibbi!!!" and, well, isn't that the perfect intellectual situation we're in now? Imagine paying to read something you might not agree with always
Read 4 tweets
Ross Barkan Profile picture
Nov 10, 2022
The red wave in NY, for a variety of reasons, didn't come for the State Senate. The special master drew favorable maps for them and they survived the Long Island losses. There will be, at the minimum, a 40-member majority. This is big for the left.
There are two ways Democrats in Albany can go. They can look at the disaster on Long Island and attempt some weakening of criminal justice reforms - or they can simply give conservatives and moderates the finger. They got 40 seats. Why bother?
Consider NY Senate Democrats are now able to build what looks like a durable majority *without* Long Island. For progressives, this was the dream. City Democrats + liberals in the Hudson Valley to freeze out LI moderates.
Read 5 tweets
Ross Barkan Profile picture
Nov 9, 2022
One odd reality of Tuesday night is that New York may have experienced a red wave but not the rest of America. In NY, Republicans took almost every single toss up House seats and came closer to winning the governor's race than in purple states like Michigan.
It's funny to think my feelings of a red wave building were probably skewed by living in deep-blue New York. A red wave absolutely built here. It just didn't crest as high in many other states.
My first pass on Hochul's win for @CrainsNewYork. My stuff from me to come!

crainsnewyork.com/politics/polit…
Read 4 tweets
Ross Barkan Profile picture
Nov 9, 2022
It's notable Zeldin is already at 45%, with Suffolk County yet to report. He has already performed better than any Republican candidate in NY in two decades. Had he not been a hardcore Trumper - or a moderate run instead - Hochul may have lost.
The alarm around Hochul was real, as well as the Zeldin energy. It's plausible he ends the night in the high 40s. It just was not enough in a very Democratic state.
It seems Zeldin just didn't carry Nassau County by enough. He's winning there 54-46%. Overall, statewide, he is about to hit 46% against Hochul.
Read 4 tweets

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