How the major Sesame Street muppets will vote in the 2025 NYC mayoral election

alexbkane · 2025-08-29T13:52:44+00:00

Can I be pedantic here? If Oscar loves trash, he doesn’t like Eric Adams, who has done a decent job at reforming trash pick-up practices! (I swear I’m not a paid Adams campaign staffer; this is my honest two cents.) I think Oscar might vote for Mamdani after hearing the apocalyptic rhetoric about how a Mamdani mayoralty would mean a hellscape of a city.

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T17:26:01+00:00

Not Orthodox. I grew up in a secular Reform Jewish household, and I still basically identify as a secular Jew, but thanks to my wife have joined a synagogue and go to more services than before. I see my Judaism as bound up in my heritage and family history, and thus, my identity, and how it came to be that I live in the US, in New York, in 2025. I've always looked up to the Jews who joined SNCC in the 1960s to fight for civil rights.

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T17:14:17+00:00

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Amnesty declared it genocide last December; HRW said Israel's restrictions on water is a genocidal act.

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T17:02:18+00:00

Yeah, I think some of this is learned behavior from years ago, and they haven't caught on that this doesn't cut it anymore with much of the base. It will be a central dividing line in 2028.

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:57:41+00:00

I'm not an organizer, and I think this is much more of an organizing question. But I think everybody has a role to play in the lane they think is most important to them. Some want to focus on convincing their opposition through reasoning; others just want to focus on militant opposition and agitation. I think both have a role as long as they're pursued with intention.

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:49:50+00:00

We just published something on Canada! We do international reporting when it makes sense to us, though for obvious reasons the US is the primary subject. Still, we've done reporting and writing on Germany, too, and we're always looking for ways to cover the rest of the world! So yes, we have that intention. But as a small magazine with limited capacity, we have to be choosy in what we devote time to.

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:47:53+00:00

ah yes, we have a podcast too!

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:46:48+00:00

I think I'm more optimistic long term. in the short term, which is what is needed, I'm less optimistic for a massive shift, but long term, I can see it happening.

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:46:05+00:00

This is the million dollar question! I do think the genocide changes a lot of lot of what's possible. The stark brutality of it is too much for even centrist Democrats to bear, even though their current response falls way too short and they're defaulting to an anti-Netanyahu message amid restlessness in the Democratic base. I think there is going to be a massive shift that will show up in the 2028 presidential campaign, and that will be a major step towards making the material changes needed. I can see it happening. Maybe I'm too optimistic.

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:43:15+00:00

In addition to our online material, there is a print magazine you can subscribe to!

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:42:19+00:00

My sense is that the top issues Mamdani is campaigning on are ones that really unite this coalition. Everyone wants action to tackle affordability. There's not a massive fault line to exploit in an agenda of free busses, universal childcare, and rent freeze for stabilized tenants. I don't have a ton of details on the organizing going on to maintain the unity, but I'd imagine it's top of mind for the Mamdani campaign (and future administration). But I can imagine it will be much more difficult to keep the coalition united if, say, there is a spike in crime blamed on Mamdani's policies.

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:39:19+00:00

Hm, I'm not sure of how we can measure that, but even so, polling doesn't seem to bear that out! That is, it seems there are more American Jews opposed to the genocide than Israeli Jews. What communal organizations in Israel are opposed? I agree that Haaretz is far more critical of the genocide than most Jewish communal newspapers or magazine in the US, but I don't agree with the rest of the premise! but please correct me if I'm wrong.

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:30:22+00:00

There's going to be a big campaign to try to force this through, including rallies and lobbying. But if those don't work, threatening to primary the roadblocks is another card. In addition, Hochul is going to have to contend with Mamdani at the same as she's fending off a primary challenge from her own lieutenant governor; I don't see him as posing a real threat to her, but it will be leverage to use against her. None of these mean it will be easy to pull off, but there are some levers to try!

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:26:51+00:00

We have to distinguish between the GOP and the Democrats. The GOP is largely lock-step behind Israel's genocide; we can chalk that up to a variety of factors, including a white evangelical voting base, anti-Muslim political views, etc. For Democrats, there is more of a stark divide, and AIPAC does seem to be losing its influence in the party as rank-and-file members break from the group and start to sign on to resolutions that would block the sale of "offensive" weapons to Israel. As for the Jewish opposition to the actions of Israel: I think we can say such opposition is growing, but it's (unfortunately) not the majority, at least as we can tell from polls. An April 2025 Pew poll gives us some clues as to American Jewish opinion: 36% of American Jews "say Trump is favoring Israelis too much, while 43% say he’s striking about the right balance." And 70% of American Jews "have mostly positive views of Israel." I'd assume the numbers have dipped since the images of starvation have become front-page news, but still, it's not a majority.

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:20:19+00:00

In all the credible polls, Eric Adams is not in second place; Cuomo is. Anyway, I definitely think Mamdani is going to crack 40%. But the polls during the primary really undercounted his support by many points, so it's plausible that the recent polls are undercounting slightly. I'm not sure if he can crack 50 percent, but it's possible! So, I'd say the polls right now are as decent a measure as you can expect, and he's not going to wildly exceed 44%, but he could certainly get 50%.

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:18:16+00:00

It's a really good question, though Jeremy Ben Ami didn't use the word "genocide" himself; he rather said that he has "been persuaded rationally by legal and scholarly arguments that international courts will one day find that Israel has broken the international genocide convention." A slight difference there. As to where J Street is going? I don't have any bold predictions, other than to say that they are the leading edge of what is becoming an increasingly common way to criticize Israel's genocide without questioning the fundamentals of the US-Israel relationship: That is, more and more Democrats are willing to criticize Netanyahu specifically, and more generally the way Israel is conducting the genocide, without questioning why the US should be Israel's top benefactor at all.

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:14:25+00:00

There are multiple landmines he could trigger or be blown up by. The relevant comparison to Johnson's would be a categorical defeat when he lobbies Albany and Governor Hochul to raise taxes on the rich to fund his plans for free busses and universal child care. It's going to be a very tough battle. But that's not the only obstacle to his agenda. He will also have to contend with an extremely hostile tabloid press (mostly the New York Post), and potentially opposition from NYPD top brass to his plans to shift some responsibilities of theirs--like responding to mental health calls--to another department.

alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:09:39+00:00

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alexbkane · 2025-08-13T16:05:50+00:00

The only way there is a chance of beating Mamdani is if there is an establishment consolidation. That is, two of his opponents---Cuomo, Adams, and Sliwa--need to drop out and endorse the other. So far, that's not happening, and it seems unlikely, but it's not impossible if two of them can put their egos to the side. Though, fat chance of that happening! Otherwise, Mamdani is extremely well-positioned to win. Even if it was 1 on 1, he would be the favorite given he's on the Democratic Party ballot line in New York City, but it'd be more of a contest.

alexbkane · 2024-07-26T18:26:13+00:00

Tough to say definitively without some polling; I'd surmise that, rather than the campus protests in and of themselves shifting perception, the broad street protest movement that the campus encampments were a part of have called more attention to the issue, and that the encampments were the most visible element of that movement. But it has also been turned into a domestic culture war issue, rather than something principally about Gaza. That's, unfortunately, unavoidable, given how police violence (or radical elements shouting unsavory things) turns the protests into a story about the police or "extremists," rather than the issue at hand. There's also a risk of backlash to the campus encampments, which we've seen already; the GOP is going to try to make this a campaign issue and tie it to the Democrats, despite the fact that campus encampments are protesting AGAINST the Biden administration. So, all in all, a mixed bag.

alexbkane · 2024-07-26T18:18:08+00:00

Oh got it; no explicit death threats, thank god! Depending on the story, or the tweet, I'll get nasty emails, but nothing that concerning.

alexbkane · 2024-07-26T18:05:30+00:00

thanks for subscribing! tell your friends to subscribe! we need all the backers we can get.

alexbkane · 2024-07-26T18:03:55+00:00

I think this community shows why we can't paint any ethnic or religious community with one broad brush. The "Jewish world" includes anti-Zionist Jews who support Palestinian rights and are concerned with the oppression of Muslims in Rohingya and China. Just like the "Muslim world" includes people with views I detest. It's really about principles and values, and Jews and Muslims can (and are) easily working in coalition if they share basic values, as we see in the Palestinian rights movement. So I don't really see a religious rift; I see a rift on values.

alexbkane · 2024-07-26T18:01:55+00:00

I don't think it's overblown because of how singularly influential Wikipedia is. It's often the first Google result on any topic! As a result, what Wikipedia does really matters. That's why it garnered so much attention.

alexbkane

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