Independent U.S. Senate candidate Brian Bengs tells his email followers that last night’s elections, in which Democrats swept votes across the country, prove that “Our Independent strategy is the winning formula.”
Bengs does not mention in his email that the Independent formula didn’t help Andrew Cuomo stop Zohran Mamdani from winning the mayor’s race in New York City. In his victory speech to his jubilant supporters, to all of his fellow New Yorkers, and to the world, Mayor-Elect Mamdani derived a different formula from his big win in the Big Apple. First, be hopeful:
There are many who thought this day would never come, who feared that we would be condemned only to a future of less, with every election consigning us simply to more of the same.
And there are others who see politics today as too cruel for the flame of hope to still burn. New York, we have answered those fears.
Tonight we have spoken in a clear voice. Hope is alive. Hope is a decision that tens of thousands of New Yorkers made day after day, volunteer shift after volunteer shift, despite attack ad after attack ad. More than a million of us stood in our churches, in gymnasiums, in community centers, as we filled in the ledger of democracy.
And while we cast our ballots alone, we chose hope together. Hope over tyranny. Hope over big money and small ideas. Hope over despair. We won because New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible. And we won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us. Now, it is something that we do [New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani, victory speech, 2025.11.04, transcribed by The Guardian].
And, without apology, be Democrats:
So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us. When we enter City Hall in 58 days, expectations will be high. We will meet them. A great New Yorker once said that while you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.
If that must be true, let the prose we write still rhyme, and let us build a shining city for all. And we must chart a new path, as bold as the one we have already traveled. After all, the conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate.
I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.
And yet, if tonight teaches us anything, it is that convention has held us back. We have bowed at the altar of caution, and we have paid a mighty price. Too many working people cannot recognize themselves in our party, and too many among us have turned to the right for answers to why they’ve been left behind.
We will leave mediocrity in our past. No longer will we have to open a history book for proof that Democrats can dare to be great [Mamdani, 2025.11.04].
Be like Zohran Mamdani. Don’t despair. Don’t apologize. Dare to be great. Dare to be who you are. And win elections.
Watch Mayor-Elect Mamdani’s full 23-minute speech—23 more minutes of stirring oratory than King Don has spoken in his entire political career—here:
Now the Trump admin is ordering 10% of flights halted. They are absoultely destroying the economy. And they complain about socialism and communism? I don’t like communism either but this administration sure is acting communistic.
What kind of democracy lets the central government obliterate livelihoods? I can’t handle 3 more years, and I don’t think anyone else can either. Congress get you’re act together.
Yes, Yes, and what kind of democracy lets the minority stop everything?
Sort of sarcastic, but I still think it’s a fair question.
MAGA is a minority.
Nailed it Ben, likely to go over Mr. Arndt’s melon though.
Ben, agreed, BUT they are a minority of committed voters. They become a political minority ONLY if the rest show up to keep them a minority at the polls.
What is a democratic socialist? I think I might be one. One or the other; maybe both; maybe more one than the other — or visa versa.
Agreed. MAGA is a powerful voting bloc. However, more people cast a ballot for someone other than Trump. Didn’t prevent him from winning, but they were numerically smaller. These latest elections demonstrate than even those who voted for Trump weren’t necessarily MAGA. There is no mandate to do most of what the administration wants to do.
Ben, and there is the rub: electing Trump was not voting in the policies he advocated; voting in Trump put that man in the office and empowered him to run amok. I may have more disdain for those swing/issue voters for being SO gullible as to think this billionaire con man would put their well being as a priority — this time. The MAGA cult at least knew and wanted what they got.
My brain short circuits trying to understand how anyone over the age of 25 voted for Trump and are now surprised at what he’s done.
Nobody is Independent; yer on the bus or yer off the bus. Mr. Bengs is a loose cannon with a spoileristic vendetta against a party that couldn’t afford to back him the past. WTF?
Oh, the racist, sexist,homophobes lost. Not surprising at all.