cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/38975337
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Mr. Dionne is a contributing Opinion writer.
Oct. 16, 2025Beyond the specifics, history teaches that progressive mayors prosper when they understand why voters put them in office. Sheri Berman, a Barnard College political scientist and a widely respected scholar of social democracy, offers a brisk two-part formula. “Successful left-wing mayors,” she told me, “focused on (a.) problems in their cities, and (b.) problems where they had the power to do something.”
For history buffs, Mr. Mamdani has done the service of rekindling an interest in a largely forgotten American tradition, the “sewer socialists” who ran a significant list of cities in the last century. The most durable among them was Daniel Hoan, the socialist mayor of Milwaukee from 1916 to 1940. You don’t get re-elected that often by being a failure.
Very confused why this is getting downvoted so heavily. Sewer socialism is a pre-existing term and is not a negative descriptor. This opinion piece in particular is pointing out that Mamdani is seemingly aiming to be another in a long lineage of successful socialist mayors who made it their mission to focus on the day-to-day infrastructure of a city, even the dirty kind like sewers, as a way to measurably improve the lives of their constituents.
My assumption is that people are downvoting this without actually reading the article, as generally .world seems to heavily favor Mamdani, unless I’m missing something?
Gotta admit I downvoted based on that but read the article and upvoted. At first glance it looks like just another MSM attack