Stop trying to make Alberta separatism happen
Also: New York Democrats decide *real* socialism has never been tried, until now.
Me: “With Republicans gone completely off the rails, now more than ever America need a Democratic party that resists extremism.”
Democrats: “Make NYC Caracas, Venezuela again!”
Mamdani’s campaign for the New York City mayor position is centered on an ambitious and progressive policy platform aimed at redistributing wealth, expanding public services, and transforming urban life.
One of his flagship proposals is to make all city buses free by 2027. Mamdani has pointed to the success of pilot programmes where fare-free buses led to higher ridership and fewer assaults on drivers.
Housing is another pillar of Mamdani’s platform, where he proposes a rent freeze on all rent-stabilised apartments and plans to establish a Social Housing Development Agency that would build publicly-owned, permanently affordable housing. He has called for stronger tenant protections and has proposed rolling back rent hikes in city-owned properties.
Mamdani has also proposed opening one municipally owned grocery store in each borough, where communities underserved by commercial chains can access affordable, healthy food options. He has pledged to expand free school-meal programmes to include city colleges, and to offer universal childcare and early education programs.
To pay for it all, Mamdani has pitched major tax reforms: Raising the corporate tax rate from 7.25 percent to 11.5 percent, and imposing a 2 percent surcharge on individuals earning more than $1m per year. According to his campaign, these measures could generate up to $9.4bn annually.
On public safety, Mamdani proposed shifting resources away from the New York Police Department towards a new Department of Community Safety, which would house mental health professionals, crisis responders and outreach workers.
Oh well, at least he should be good for race relations and standing up to the scourge of antisemitism LOL kill me
Mamdani also refused to distance himself from the slogan “Globalize the Intifada”, a phrase that many Jewish leaders and conservative commentators have criticised as inflammatory and accused of being anti-Semitic.
Responding to questions about the slogan, Mamdani said on a June 2025 episode of The Bulwark podcast: “As a Muslim man who grew up post‑9/11, I’m all too familiar (with) the way in which Arabic words can be twisted, can be distorted, can be used to justify any kind of meaning.” He added that the slogan was rather about solidarity with oppressed people globally – not a call to violence.
Another example of how scary foreign words can be twisted: “Fuhrer” just means “leader” in German, and yet (((some people))) act like there’s something all unnerving and sinister about it.
In contrast to some other major American cities, NYC is a place where a Republican actually can be elected mayor, though I’m not sure the Guardian Angels guy who got his butt whooped in 2021 is the best person for the job.
But if Mamdani wins, it will be a triumph for his fired-up base: white progressives who whine about how New York became too “corporate” and “sanitized” under Giuliani and Bloomberg and pine for the gritty NYC of the seventies and eighties, but who also live far enough away from “less desirable” neighborhoods so they probably won’t get shot. (And if they do get shot, hopefully the crisis outreach worker dispatched to the scene will make the shooter feel really, really bad about what he’s done.)
On one hand, I must give credit where credit is due: 17 percent of the vote in a provincial by-election is actually pretty good for a brand new political party. Poor Maxime Bernier would kill for 17 percent of the vote anywhere in Canada. (And if he already has done so I wouldn’t be surprised.)
On the other hand…this was in the most conservative riding in Alberta, and by extension most likely the most right-wing district in the whole country, so the Republican Party of Alberta (seriously, that’s the name) should have at least beaten the New Democrats.
The Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills district actually did elect a separatist member of the legislature in 1982, when relations between the province and the original Trudeau government were going about as well as The War of the Roses. (The movie or the actual war? Either answer is applicable.) That turned out to be the high-water mark for the Western Canada Concept, and I wouldn’t bet any Shiba Inu coins on the Alberta Republicans doing much better.
That branding certainly doesn’t help, even in Alberta. Ideologically, the most conservative-minded regions of Canada are somewhere around John Kasich. They should have followed my suggestion and gone with a name with less baggage, like “Khmer Alberta” or “Justin Tucker.”
The past ten years have taught me never to predict the future with confidence, so it’s possible Alberta could hold a referendum on independence next year. And then another one a few years afterward. And then another, and another, and another until the desired result is achieved. That’s the Quebec- and Scottish-nationalist strategy, anyway.1
Either way, you know who wants to make sure the threat of Alberta separatism becomes a thing? Literally everyone.
Right-wing Alberta premier Danielle Smith, knowing full well that the best way for a provincial premier to become popular is to fight with Ottawa, wants to use it as leverage. The federal Liberals, masters of playing wedge politics while accusing these nasty Conservatives of playing wedge politics, will never shy away from a chance to play off the nasty radical oil-stained right-wing West in contrast to the progressive, generous East. (“Screw the West, we’ll take the rest,” said Liberal bigwig Keith Davey in response to the Albertan “Eastern bastards” bumper sticker shown above.)
If you’re on the right, the threat of Alberta agitating for independence is a righteous battle for self-determination and Confederation’s cash cow province, financing the country’s generous welfare state with its oil wealth while Ontario and Quebec ignores its concerns when not deliberately trying to sabotage its resource industry in the name of net-zero, demanding more say in how the country is run. Or else.
If you’re on the left, the threat of Alberta agitating for independence is exactly what you’d expect from these whiny, entitled, rednecks who think they’re so great just because their part of the country happened to be the one with liquefied dead dinosaurs underneath, and who deep down want to be gun-toting, ignorant, racist Americans whereas the good parts of Canada - the ones East of Manitoba - are where the true essence of what it means to be Canadian is defined.
Classic in-group/out-group politics, in other words, and exacerbated by an electoral system which benefits regional parties like the Western-dominated Reform Party (which eventually became the de facto senior partner in today’s Conservative Party of Canada) and the separatist Bloc Quebecois.
Come to think of it, ask any Canadian which province he dislikes more, Alberta or Quebec, and I bet I could predict his political affiliation and his opinion on nearly every hot-button issue, regardless of whether said issue has anything to do with Alberta or Quebec or even Canada at all.
That’s just how tribalism seems to work, whether or not it makes any sense.
The unspoken assumption amongst everyone, separatist or federalist, seems to be that once Quebec or Scotland or Catalonia or Delaware or wherever has voted for independence, the issue is settled forever and there’s absolutely no possibility of another referendum to rejoin the old country. But that’s for another post.