Thread by @JewishWonk

Some sober thinking for New York Jews and those sympathetic to us on a Mamdani win, a thread.

1) Mamdani won in a historically high turnout election. He won 50.4% of that vote and 49.6% of votes cast were not for him.

He beat a sex pest he had already beaten in the Democratic primary and a crazy cat guy who knew he was not viable.

This dynamic is unlikely to repeat.

Many voters think solely in terms of the who won or lost binary, but the margin of victory matters. Ambitious politicians who did not run in the mayoral race are paying attention to the margin of victory. Barely eeking out a majority is not a strong deterrent.

2) Mamdani's campaign is over. The next job is actually governing, making choices, prioritizing some issues, not delivering on others.

That will, in the best case scenario for him, still peel away some voters from his coalition.

On housing, the ballot proposals appear to have passed. This, along with the city of yes initiative, will start to alleviate the housing shortage in New York. On their own I do not believe they will solve the problem of insufficient housing entirely.

To Jews Mamdani ran an alienating and bad faith campaign on our safety in New York and Israel issues. But to most people who voted for him the cost of living issues resonated more.

Mamdani's plans for housing, taxes, free bussing, etc... involve legislation passing in Albany, where he had no success passing things as a member of the state assembly

More broadly, there isn't real low hanging fruit on taxes or gov spending. New York already does a lot of both

Where Mamdani does have more influence is in upzoning (letting private developers build more) and taking on the other large factors in why building anything in New York is so expensive: entrenched unions.

I don't expect him to pull either of those levers.

3) Many New York Jews are angered and alienated that Democrats would nominate someone so hostile to our needs. I share that anger, but it's worth asking: how many of you voted in that primary? I did and I did not see nearly as many kippot in line as I did in the general.

The primary is where we fight. Our smaller numbers have bigger impact there. A win there makes a win in the fall more likely as the candidate has a D next to their name will get party endorsements and favorable media coverage for months ahead of the general.

That means not indulging your anger towards Democrats but making a tactical calculation to register as one and actually show up to vote in the primary for a candidate who cares that Jews are the number 1 victim of hate crimes and the number is rising every year.

4) I see a great deal of catastrophizing about Mamdani winning. I believe we will have problems, but I believe they will be more subtle than the histrionics I see.

We saw the rhetorical aspect of it in this election. Mamdani constantly demonizes Israel but says the safety of New York Jews is important to him. It's a good rhetorical tool for seeming reasonable to people who don't understand that anti-Israel incitement gets Jews beat here.

When Mamdani's most fanatical anti-Israel supporters call for "flooding Crown Heights" as they did earlier this year, will Mamdani proactively deploy the police against his base? I doubt it. He will do it reactively and opt to sound reasonable about how hate has no home here

To people who are not Jewish, the connection will simply never be made between this politics and our safety. He will *sound* reasonable. Which means we have to adopt more sophisticated tactics.

There is a governor of New York who is more sympathetic to our needs. She has her own re-election campaign next year. New York mayors and governors routinely have tense relationships, but Mamdani needs Hochul to help him with his legislative agenda. She can act as a constraint.

When Mamdani fails to be proactive about our security needs, the governor is who we can turn to.

The same governor who did security theater by deploying the national guard to the subway can do that for Jewish neighborhoods Mamdani is not proactively protecting.

All of which is to say Mamdani faces real constraints from the system, from his voters, from other politicians he needs to work with, and from those of us who do not trust him and are prepared to act when he fails to meet our needs.

We lost. It happens. You can cry about it or you can do something about it. I strongly urge you to do something about it. I will.

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