The Heterodoxy Mirage open.substack.com/pub/waleedsh...

The Senate exists for the same reason that the ACA doesn't have a public option: it was negotiated to placate the necessary votes. Slave states were nervous about being beholden to public will so we massively over-elevated state representation. www.law.cornell.edu/constitution...

I don't know what the Senate is going to do. But if they do in fact fold in exchange for nothing, they will be living up to past performance. To expect the Senate to carry out the will of the American people is to misunderstand why it was created in the first place.

On MSNBC talking about what Tuesday’s election results reveal about Trump, the Democratic Party, and Zohran Mamdani’s coalition.

Every generation of New York politics has had its immigrant realignment. The Irish built Tammany, Jewish socialists built labor, Italians powered La Guardia--and now Mamdani is building something new out of bodegas, cabstands, and delivery apps. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/the-long-a...

Our victory on Tuesday was historic, but the campaign for an affordable NYC is just beginning. Our Time will organize to win and defend the affordability agenda that resonated with voters and brought out more than 100,000 volunteers. Sign up today and we’ll share much more soon! (link in bio)

A century ago, Fiorello La Guardia built a new majority from immigrants and renters. Today, Zohran Mamdani is trying to do the same in a city where Gaza and groceries belong to the same story. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/zohran-nyc...

[email protected] brings together Obama’s sense of ‘us’ and Bernie’s honesty about a ‘them’ who profit when we’re divided. In a city where the whole world lives side by side, the closeness of so much difference reminds us how much we share and how empty the politics of fear really are.

"Leaked Pentagon memo details plan to train over 20,000 national guard members across the US to carry out Trump’s order on subduing civil unrest." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

ALEX THOMPSON, Axios: "Do you consider yourself a Zionist?" BERNIE SANDERS: "No, not within the terms of what Zionism means, no."

Zohran Mamdani does not operate by the same logic as the Democratic Party establishment. Waleed Shahid explains five key aspects of how Mamdani has broken through.

2016: too class-first, Bernie Bros not woke enough 2020: too disruptive, voters want normalcy 2025: too woke, not practical to get the bros The establishment's arguments change, but the function doesn’t: keep the party’s insurgent, left-populist energy from defining its future.

Socrates tells Plato a story: a god brings the gift of writing to Egypt, promising it will make people wise. The king shakes his head. It will only give them the appearance of wisdom as memory without understanding is knowledge without thought. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/platos-war...

I wrote about the Mamdani Method: five lessons to anchor a Democratic Party liberalism adrift at sea. Just as abolition, labor, and civil rights once gave parties their compass, Mamdani and the left-populist wing may help Democrats find theirs again. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/the-mamdan...

#NoKings --> waleedshahid.substack.com/p/before-zoh...

If you're ready to put an end to the same status quo leadership that has governed us for decades & brought us our current crises, then join our movement to elect Justin J. Pearson to Congress: secure.actblue.com/donate/jp100...

We're so proud to announce our latest candidate this cycle: @justinjpearson.bsky.social in #TN09! As Memphis is terrorized by Trump's masked agents & poisoned by Elon Musk's xAI plant, they need leaders that will actually fight back, protect them & deliver the prosperity they were promised.

NEW: David Adler, 33-year-old U.S. citizen with the Gaza Sumud Flotilla, says Israeli minister Ben Gvir personally separated two Jewish members from the rest of the flotilla for a photo-op and with the Israeli flag while his aides taunted them.

One thing missing in this whole debate is that frontline Democrats ran largely as moderates in 2024--ads filled with cops and sheriffs, border crackdowns, oil drilling, and bipartisan stamps of approval. If it were a cure-all, the map would look different by now.

Civilitycraft is our modern witchcraft: we conjure bad manners to explain democratic breakdown, the way failed crops were once blamed on witches. But politics isn’t haunted by rudeness: it’s broken by rules and power. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/our-crisis...

Kamala Harris explaining in her book why not a single Palestinian or Arab American was allowed to speak at the DNC.

In the last six weeks, the Tenant Union Federation launched seven (7) majority tenant unions, across five (5) states, representing 1000 units of housing owned by Capital Realty Group, a New York-based corporate landlord. The first portfolio organizing of its kind... www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Start a group against “the groups” while Trump works to outlaw the groups and democracy begs for stronger groups. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/realignmen...

2017, Hungary: Bill Seeks to Stifle Independent Groups www.hrw.org/news/2017/06...

Everyone knows I’m a big Marvel Comics nerd, but it’s time to cancel my Disney Plus subscription.

Getting more sinister by the minute www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...

What We Look At When We Look At a Baby www.waleed-shahid.com/p/what-we-lo...

It is true that there isn’t a left-wing equivalent to Kirk and Turning Point on American campuses, either in the reach of their network or the scale of their budget.

To mourn Kirk’s horrific killing as a wound to democracy is right. To recast him as democracy’s patron saint is dangerous delusion.

Superb article in @jacobinmag.bsky.social by @waleedshahid.bsky.social about Uncommitted, the Palestinian cause, and the future of the Denocratic Party. With some real optimism and a way forward. jacobin.com/2025/08/unco...

"The lesson isn’t that today’s left has too many causes. It’s that Democrats haven’t done the senior-partner job of choosing a unifying program and turning movement energy into governing power." - @waleedshahid.bsky.social, explaining what @mattyglesias.bsky.social gets wrong

NEW: In 2024, the DNC refused to platform a Palestinian American. Today, Gaza is unavoidable in Democratic politics. I dug into Uncommitted's experience rallying anti-war voters + confronting elites' entrenched deference to Israel – and what the party could learn: www.huffpost.com/entry/democr...

@waleedshahid.bsky.social: “History shows that independent political and fundraising operations often do more to change a party’s direction than the party’s own infrastructure" www.cnn.com/2025/08/26/p...

nobody: me and @mattyglesias.bsky.social: 🚨You won’t BELIEVE the 1850s debates over political factions and coalitions. i regret to inform you, this is the least clickable beef in internet history. bring your own footnotes. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/what-ygles...

We need to talk about Clue #4 of the #ZcavengerHunt. I wrote about how @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social wouldn’t be the first DSA member elected mayor of New York. He wouldn’t even be the second socialist to hold the job. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/zohrans-sc...

I highly recommend this piece from @waleedshahid.bsky.social looking at what happened to Brandon Johnson in Chicago and the lessons that Zohran Mamdani and his supporters should take from it: www.waleed-shahid.com/p/what-mamda...

One of the Dem party's top thinkers, someone whose words carry enormous weight to shape strategy, believes the uncommitted movement is composed of "idealistic young dupes" and "contributed in small but real ways to Trump winning." The actual, heartbreaking story from @waleedshahid.bsky.social -

Inside Uncommitted: A year after the DNC, I reflect on what it meant for Democrats to bar Palestinian Americans from the convention stage and what the campaign revealed about fractures, power, and the future of the anti-war movement and the Democratic Party. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/inside-unc...

🤬🤬🤬 The media is blowing it but if you’re not mad enough about that, you can also blame the Dems, basically none of whom are even bothering to speak up against this. Primary everyone.

NEW: Trump’s DC “crime crackdown” distraction worked as planned: in 72 hrs, media mentions of Epstein revelations fell 71% and BBB coverage dropped 29%, replaced by wall-to-wall footage of troops in the streets and repetition of Trump's message. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/the-distra...

Ari Aster’s Eddington: Joaquin Phoenix’s Sheriff is America in the 2020s. Overloaded, sick, panicked, drowning in crisis and noise, his attention scattered, instincts warped.

1850s Republicans fought over similar questions Democrats and progressives face now. Radicals set the ideological horizon, moderates built the majority. They fought each other, but together they also won. New piece on the usable past: www.waleed-shahid.com/p/progressiv...

As @waleedshahid.bsky.social explores in depth, the real story of progressive electoral performance is far more nuanced than "moderation wins." Worth reading his analysis alongside ours:

Trump’s stunt in weaponizing D.C.’s security forces is succeeding in working some of the refs at Morning Joe. The scandals and corruption fade, the spectacle wins.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, hosts performed Trump’s script, trading fear stories about D.C. nights. It was liberal surrender to authoritarian choreography: amplifying panic to make his distraction and seizure of the city seem inevitable, even reasonable.

Trump’s takeover of D.C.’s police is part of a city-by-city plan to distract from his corruption and paint Democratic cities as chaos and himself as the fix. The 1850s abolitionists offer lessons for resisting federal power targeting local self-rule. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/one-city-a...

Fix gerrymandering with proportional representation. Matty Y is absolutely, unequivocally right. (We should expand the house as part of this, which makes it more acceptable to incumbents and is good on its merits.)

Imagine a German saying they're proud of the Nazi part of their history.

On progressive, populist, social democratic, socialist electoral strategy. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/primary-co...

Coming soon: 🐣