Derec
Contributor
So eloquent.
So eloquent.
How is being supported by a Muslim SuperPAC make someone a traitor? Is Dan Goldman also a traitor for being supported by AIPAC?It's pretty hypocritical to decry AIPAC but support a Palestinian/Islamic SuperPAC.AIPAC supported NY-13 Adriano Espaillat, and Darializa Chevalier made a big issue out of that support, but DC was also supported by some big PAC's, like Justice Democrats and "American Priorities", reportedly supported by anti-AIPAC Muslim business leaders.
He too is fine with being supported by the Muslim SuperPAC. What a traitor.AIPAC also supported NY-10 Dan Goldman, something that Brad Lander attacked him for.
Candidates which are collectively a great argument as to why partisan primaries are a bad idea, especially closed primaries and those that allow plurality rather than requiring a majority.Something I'm catching up on: Three Traps for Zohran - also relevant for similar candidates.
Unfortunately later attempts to stop DSA candidates have proven less successful.First discussing India Walton, who primaried Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown in 2021, only to be defeated by him doing a write-in campaign with the help of big donors and the Republican Party. "Back in 2021, the establishment strategy against her was to invent an endless series of supposed scandals and force her to address those instead of her actual policy agenda, thus robbing her of momentum." Like
Note Marcetic's bias - he is writing for the commie rag Jacobin.Branko Marcetic (via Alex Slopic (via lpetrich)) said:(Byron) Brown successfully turned the election debate to the petty personal mistakes of Walton, a woman who became a working mother as a teen, before becoming a nurse: she was charged with $295 worth of food stamp fraud in 2003; she owed $749 in back taxes in 2004; she was stopped for driving with a suspended license; she visited her cousin before he went to jail; she failed to show up for a court summons sent to the wrong address; she wrote a rude Facebook post; and her car was towed just last month over unpaid parking tickets.
It's not sexist, and having unprotected sex when not wanting a baby shows a lack of judgment. A male politician getting someone pregnant as a teen would be fair game too, so don't even try with the "distinct note of sexism" nonsense.Alex Slopic (via lpetrich) said:There was a distinct note of sexism in the focus on politically irrelevant facts like her becoming a mother as a teenager,
Well, they are both extremist ideologies. The chair's point is that just because somebody wins the Democratic primary does not mean other Democrats should feel obligated to endorse that person with no regard to who that person is.And that wasn’t the worst of it. At one point, the chair of the New York Democratic Party explained his refusal to endorse Walton by comparing her to a Ku Klux Klan leader, saying “[if] he wins the Democratic line, I have to endorse David Duke? I don’t think so.” To him, apparently, a socialist and a white supremacist would be equally unacceptable.
Unfortunately, it did not.
In a recent interview with Briahna Joy Gray, Walton says one of her biggest regrets is that she was too conciliatory: “I felt as if I needed to bend, and capitulate, and moderate, and become a part of the party that never wanted me in the first place, and I wish that I had stayed the course.”
Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite. No slander here.It was the same with Jeremy Corbyn, who tried his best to make peace with the people who slandered him as an antisemite, always apologizing for this or that.
And it is to Democratic Party's great shame that it lets these people get away with it. Avila Chevalier for example attended a pro-Hamas demo right after the 10/7 atrocities.Which he has been. More recently, both Graham Platner and Darializa Avila Chevalier have survived some of the more extreme statements and actions in their pasts.

I still don't know what Chicagoans were thinking electing him.But there’s a difference between getting elected and achieving your goals, and the mayorship of a major U.S. city can easily become a toxic job where the incumbent is blamed for everything wrong in town. Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson has been finding that out.
But it wasn't a "different story". Unlike Comrade Cardamom, Obama did not run on socialism, he did not call for "seizing the means of production", or on being a Muslim who hates Israel. He ran on hope, and "there are no blue states and red states, just the United States". He ran on an "all of the above" energy policy and actually appointed physicists for SecEnergy, not another career politician with a JD (like Biden's pick). I.e. unlike Mamdani and his DSA Ilk, Obama ran as a uniter, not a divider. As a uniter, compromise and moderation are not dirty words.Then former US President Barack Obama. Like Zohran Mamdani, he has an odd name, and both ZM and BO were labeled Communists and radical Islamists. His campaigners also recruited an impressive number of campaign volunteers. After he was elected, it was a different story.
Well, he did sell off the "all of the above" energy policy principle when he blocked DAPL to appease anti-pipeline rioters in North Dakota. But I doubt that this is what Skopic had in mind.But he sold off every principle he ever claimed to have, one by one.
Did he run on prosecuting them? And presidents do not prosecute anyway. That's DOJ's job. The president can appoint the attorney general, but then there, Trump notwithstanding, should be a degree of independence.The bankers responsible for the 2008 crash were never prosecuted;
What's wrong with the secret ballot?card check never happened;
I think he did run on it, but of course, it's not as easy to actually unravel Gitmo as it is to promise it on campaign trail.Gitmo was never closed;
The weapons also flowed to Hamas, Hezbollah et al unabated, mostly from Iran. So why should not Israel get the weapons needed to defend itself from these terrorists?the bullets and bombs to Israel flowed unabated,
Seems like a tactical mistake. Why exactly was that?and the Obama volunteer force was quietly dismantled, never to be used again.
Oh, the horror!This is the greatest risk for Mamdani: not that New York’s financial and political elite will defeat him, but that they’ll seduce him to their way of thinking, and slowly, by degrees, make him just another normal Democrat.
People like Skopic see compromise as a dirty word, and pretend that in the real world there are not real trade-offs.That in time, he may betray his supporters and himself. The offer would be presented subtly, in the name of “compromise” and “bipartisanship” and “trade-offs.”
Wrong. Avila Chevalier and her Ilk are the war-crime cheerleaders. She led that cheer at the pro-Hamas rally in NYC on 10/8/2023 for example. And this is the kind of thing she cheered:Along with Obama, the transformation of John Fetterman from jovial champion of organized labor to sadistic war-crime cheerleader comes to mind.
Now not even AOC is extreme enough for the DSA. Of course, their idea of "ceasefire" is for Hamas to murder and abduct Israelis with impunity, but for Israel to not defend itself and go after Hamas. After all, their calls for "ceasefire now" came before the bodies of 10/7 victims were cold.Even AOC allowed herself to be taken in by the Biden-Harris administration, and to be made the mouthpiece for their lies about “working tirelessly for a ceasefire.”
So he is categorically anti-police, and even Mamdani is not extreme enough on things like policing, globalizing the Intifada or hating billionaires to his liking. What a soyjak!Alex Skopic (via me) said:In his effort to get elected, Mamdani has softened his language about the police considerably, from saying that “There is no negotiating with an institution this wicked & corrupt” in 2020 to saying that “I will work with the police because I believe the police have a critical role to play in creating public safety” in 2025. He was right the first time.
It's the superPAC that supports the likes of Adam Hamawy, the disciple of the Blind Sheikh (who was responsible for the original WTC bombing) and Avila Chevalier, who participated in a rally celebrating the 10/7 attacks on Israel.How is being supported by a Muslim SuperPAC make someone a traitor?
No. There is nothing about AIPAC that is anti-American, and as a Jew, it's normal to want Israel and US to remain friends and allies.Is Dan Goldman also a traitor for being supported by AIPAC?
I disagree, at least regarding the Palestinian Priorities (as it should have been named) superPAC.I don’t think support from either PAC makes someone a traitor.
I see. "Traitor" to you means being against what you believe is American or Israeli interests in this context, not trying to overthrow the US gov't.It's the superPAC that supports the likes of Adam Hamawy, the disciple of the Blind Sheikh (who was responsible for the original WTC bombing) and Avila Chevalier, who participated in a rally celebrating the 10/7 attacks on Israel.How is being supported by a Muslim SuperPAC make someone a traitor?
Brad "Blockwart" Lander is Jewish, and letting himself be supported by the superPAC that supports Islamists and antisemites is like a Jew collaborating with the Nazis.
No. There is nothing about AIPAC that is anti-American, and as a Jew, it's normal to want Israel and US to remain friends and allies.Is Dan Goldman also a traitor for being supported by AIPAC?
I is clear from context that I did not mean it is the strict legal sense of the word.I see. "Traitor" to you means being against what you believe is American or Israeli interests in this context, not trying to overthrow the US gov't.
Is that what you think is happening here? Is Lander collaborating with the Anti-Israel DSA to postpone the deaths of his neighbors at the hands of DSA thugs?BTW, do you think that Jews who did collaborate with the Nazis because they thought they were minimizing or postponing the deaths of their neighbors were traitors?
Both AE and DAC have Dominican Republic ancestry, and the DR and Haiti are on Hispaniola, a Caribbean island.Avila Chevalier has been brigaded with anti-Haitian racism in the final weeks of the campaign, as anonymous Espaillat fans have also inundated Avila Chevalier’s social media posts with comments accusing her of being Haitian.
At a press conference on Monday, Mamdani denounced the racist comments directed at Avila Chevalier. “One thing I do want to make clear that I find unacceptable in our city is the attempt to use the term ‘Haitian’ as a slur,” he said. “The trafficking in anti-Black sentiment and narratives that we have seen specifically in NY-13 when it comes to Darializa Avila Chevalier is something that I cannot stand here and say is in line with the values of our city.”
Avila Chevalier also addressed the racist attacks in a statement. “In the final days of this campaign, I have been hit with attacks that use ‘Haitian’ as a slur,” she said. “A coordinated wave of Islamophobia. Lies about my identity, my faith, and my family. … The smear campaign against me is not politics. That’s racism dressed up and unleashed by my opponent because he has nothing else left.”
NY-13 race exposes anti-Haitian bias in Dominican politics - "As Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemns “Haitian” being used as a slur, an Upper Manhattan race exposes old racial tensions rooted in Hispaniola, the island Dominicans and Haitians share"In another example, Pelegrin Castillo, a former public official in the Dominican Republic, warned earlier this month on social media that Dominicans who are registered to vote should “stay highly alert” because Mr. Mamdani was focused on “downplaying the political influence” of Dominicans by running Ms. Avila Chevalier against Mr. Espaillat in an effort to “reconfigure” the district and give Haitians more power.
Like fellow leftists, Avila Chevalier has campaigned on universal healthcare, stronger protections for renters, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and banning big Pacs from elections. She repeatedly accused Espaillat, a Dominican immigrant who was formerly undocumented, a five-term congressman, and the chair of the congressional Hispanic caucus, of having achieved little for his district and being beholden to wealthy donors, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), which in May reportedly poured $650,000 into a Super Pac opposing Avila Chevalier.
She made “babies, not bombs” the signature pledge of her campaign.
New York’s 13th district is home to mostly working-class Black and Hispanic communities, and includes Washington Heights, the neighborhood where Espaillat grew up, and that boasts the largest Dominican population outside the Dominican Republic. But the district has grown younger and more diverse in recent years.
Thank you for the clarification.I is clear from context that I did not mean it is the strict legal sense of the word.I see. "Traitor" to you means being against what you believe is American or Israeli interests in this context, not trying to overthrow the US gov't.
It is rude to respond to a question with a question. Try answering my question. And are ultra orthodox Jews who oppose Israel on religious grounds also traitors?Derec said:Is that what you think is happening here? Is Lander collaborating with the Anti-Israel DSA to postpone the deaths of his neighbors at the hands of DSA thugs?BTW, do you think that Jews who did collaborate with the Nazis because they thought they were minimizing or postponing the deaths of their neighbors were traitors?
In the sense I have been using the word for Lander, yes.And are ultra orthodox Jews who oppose Israel on religious grounds also traitors?
She is even worse than that. She advocated for a litany of far-left extremist postions.Like fellow leftists, Avila Chevalier has campaigned on universal healthcare, stronger protections for renters, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),
And yet she is taking money from the "Palestinian Priorities" SuperPAC. What a hypocrite!and banning big Pacs from elections.
"Babies" here means more Palestinian babies, >5 per woman, that led to unsustainable population explosion in Gaza well beyond the carrying capacity of the Strip.She made “babies, not bombs” the signature pledge of her campaign.
andAttorney Melat Kiros lost her job in 2023 after she wrote a post on Medium criticizing law firms, including her own, for opposing pro-Palestine protests and “chilling future lawyers’ employment prospects for criticism of the Israeli government’s actions and its legitimacy.” Now, she’s running for Congress to replace a nearly three-decade incumbent in Denver and calling to end U.S. military aid to Israel.
Why did she run?In an interview with The Intercept, Kiros, who is 28, said watching Bowman and Bush lose their races and President Donald Trump take back the White House fueled despair among people her age. “But ultimately there are things that we can do, common-sense policies that we can pass — like Medicare for All, housing first, universal child care — that we just need people in Congress that actually represent us and not their wealthy donors to fight for,” she said.
Kiros has also been motivated by what she described as a “coercive market” that has chilled speech against genocide in Gaza. She decided to write the post that ultimately led to her firing after her experience protesting another genocide in her hometown of Tigray, Ethiopia. After she lost her job, she took on policy work in a Ph.D. program, which eventually motivated her to run for Congress.
“I got messages from hundreds of attorneys afterwards saying that they wish they could speak up too, but that they couldn’t afford to lose their job, that they couldn’t afford to lose their health insurance,” Kiros said. She doesn’t think there’s true freedom of expression exists “when you can’t speak out on basic human rights without it risking your job.”
DdG?In her campaign against Rep. Diana DeGette, who was elected the year before she was born, Kiros is arguing the incumbent has grown more disconnected from her constituents over her 28 years in Congress — and embodies the Democratic Party’s failures to deliver in the face of a right-wing assault on civil liberties and the corporate and elite capture of bipartisan politics.
“DeGette is a symptom of a political system that rewards complacency, not courage,” Justice Democrats wrote in its endorsement of Kiros.
In a statement to The Intercept, DeGette’s campaign spokesperson called her a “proven fighter,” highlighting that she was an original co-sponsor of Medicare for All and had secured millions of dollars in federal funding for her constituents in Denver.
“Diana has stood up to CEO’s, politicians, even presidents who stand in the way of a better future for the American people,” wrote spokesperson Jennie Peek-Dunstone. “She’s chewed out oil executives on the House floor about soaring gas prices. She’s wiped the floor with RFK Jr. on multiple occasions and led a House delegation right to his office to seek answers for his backwards policies. And currently, she’s part of the House Democrats Litigation Working Group, where she’s coordinating legal strategies to push back against the Trump administration.
Hasan Piker organized a phonebanking campaign for the New York primaries, reaching to IIRC 90,000 people.Hasan Piker got another phonebanking thing done. Emma Vigeland did 3 interviews with Melat Kiros and has been promoting her for months and also promoted canvassing and phonebanking for her.
Neither AOC nor NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed Melat Kiros and she still won. And by a sizable margin.
with responseGreat news! Bummed Hickenlooper won, though (by a lot it seems).
NYT reported an apparent upset in the democratic Governors primary. Does anyone know much about Weiser?
He is the AG so he has cred with voters for fighting the trump admin w/ lawsuits and the like. He’s miles better than Bennet but isn’t DSA by any means. More of a normie dem but not comically corrupt and beholden to corporate interests like Hickenlooper, Bennet, Polis, etc. so in other words, he’ll hopefully be a welcome change!
PW 56.9%, MB 43.1%Senator Michael Bennet and Phil Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general, are facing off in the Democratic primary to determine who will represent the party in the race to succeed Governor Jared Polis, who is term-limited. Democrats have held the seat since 2007.
I really wish the sane mainstream candidates were to consolidate behind one of them because of the undemocratic plurality voting.August 4: Michigan's Senate seat: incumbent Gary Peters is retiring, and the Democratic candidates for this seat are Abdul El-Sayed, Mallory McMorrow, and Haley Stevens. Medicare-for-All progressive AeS vs. HS, something of an AIPACnik, with MmM somewhere in between.
Another nutjob who is campaigning with pro-Hamas Piker.August 4: Cori Bush is challenging Wesley Bell for MO-01, someone who unseated her 4 years ago.
Hong is the DSA candidate who went on Piker's stream.August 11: Francesca Hong is running for Governor of WI.
But they have been very quiet about their relationship.Meet New York City’s newest political power couple: Darializa Avila Chevalier and Ramzi Kassem. They’re proud Muslims living in Harlem who are pro-Palestinian, anti-ICE and friendly with Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
That may explain Mayor Mamdani endorsing her.“Ramzi Kassem and I met outside an ICE detention facility, both working to free someone unjustly held,” she said in a statement. “Over the years, as we collaborated on different projects, our professional acquaintance became a friendship, which grew into a romantic relationship. I'm deeply grateful for such a loving, supportive partner – he's been a refuge these past few years. Like most couples, we value our privacy, and ask that it be respected.”
...
Both Avila Chevalier and Kassem are now firmly within Mamdani’s orbit. Avila Chevalier worked as a volunteer field lead for his 2025 mayoral campaign and received his endorsement for her congressional campaign at the end of May. Kassem speaks regularly with the mayor in his official capacity as chief counsel.
But more recently, she told CNN, “I have grown considerably in the years since these tweets, and I am focused on our community and our community’s future.”Avila Chevalier, a sociology PhD student whose victory sent shockwaves throughout the Democratic establishment, has been under fire for a since-deleted Twitter account, previously reported by CNN, that included phrases such as “seize the means of production,” along with calls to abolish police, prisons and borders. Other controversial tweets include one that said Black and Arab men are both “Fetishizing ugly colonizer women” and another that described wiping her dirty hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin.
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She also attended a controversial October 8, 2023, pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square — one day after Hamas’ attack on Israel — that featured speeches and rhetoric praising the attack.
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The account’s bio read in 2020, “how communist of you.” Archived posts and retweets during this timeframe included a recommendation that Karl Marx’s Capital was an “essential must-read,” a complaint that public libraries did not carry enough Marxist literature by Lenin and other revolutionary writers, and a retweet from a Communist-identifying account lamenting that bookstore “banned books” displays did not include The Complete Works of J. V. Stalin.
MmM ideologically positioned herself halfway between HS and AeS, but she did not get a lot of support.Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow announced Sunday that she is suspending her campaign for U.S. Senate, leaving Rep. Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed to battle for the Democratic nomination for the seat being vacated by Sen. Gary Peters.
The announcement clears the way for the two remaining candidates — Stevens, a four-term representative aligned with the Democratic establishment, and El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official who recently nabbed an endorsement from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — with just under a month to go until the state’s Democratic primary.
Talk about big money.The biggest factor in the race, one senior campaign official said, has been the onslaught of outside spending — roughly $32 million across five groups — to support Stevens and establish her as the most viable mainstream candidate. The official added that $10 million in paid media had been spent before McMorrow had her first ad on the air.
I wrote this a few days ago:McMorrow suspends campaign for Michigan Senate seat - POLITICO - "The announcement leaves Rep. Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed heading for an August primary some see as the next test of progressive power in the Democratic Party."
Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow announced Sunday that she is suspending her campaign for U.S. Senate, leaving Rep. Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed to battle for the Democratic nomination for the seat being vacated by Sen. Gary Peters.
I guess McMorrow listened to me.I really wish the sane mainstream candidates were to consolidate behind one of them because of the undemocratic plurality voting.
Abdul is working with the Islamist antisemite Hasan Piker btw, which disqualifies him in my book.
As if Abdul is not taking a lot of money himself. But he is taking from sources like this:The biggest factor in the race, one senior campaign official said, has been the onslaught of outside spending — roughly $32 million across five groups — to support Stevens and establish her as the most viable mainstream candidate. The official added that $10 million in paid media had been spent before McMorrow had her first ad on the air.