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Waleed Shahid

@waleedshahid.bsky.social
25K followers 2.6K following 274 posts

Currently @mayor.nyc.gov. Very Senior Democratic Strategist. Former Spokesperson, Justice Democrats. Formerly @ Bernie Sanders, AOC, Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, YNWA.

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Reposted by Waleed Shahid
Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
So what this describes is ethnic cleansing www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/w...

But behind the scenes, Israeli officials have conveyed a more targeted message.

In private calls to local leaders across southern Lebanon, Israeli military officials have assured several Christian and Druse communities that they could remain in the evacuation zone. They have pressed them, however, to force out any Lebanese from neighboring Shiite Muslim communities who have sought refuge among them as Israeli bombardment flatten Shiite towns, according to local Christian, Druse and Shiite leaders who spoke to The New York Times. The Shiites make up the majority of southern Lebanon.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
I wanted to share an update with you all. I’ve decided to take on an important role in the new @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social administration as Deputy Communications Director of Economic Justice.
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max nesterak @maxnesterak.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
It’s -9 degrees. Downtown Minneapolis is packed for the anti-ICE rally and the crowd keeps growing
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Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
NEWS: The Social Security Administration has referred two DOGE employees for Hatch Act violations after discovering contacts with a political group seeking SSA data to overturn election results. www.politico.com/news/2026/01...
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Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
fantastic piece. chilling.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
What if the apocalypse didn’t hate us? What if it just wanted to help? Pluribus ends with a village deemed obsolete and an atom bomb delivered on request. Gilligan’s calmest horror about uniformity and AI. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/pluribus-f...
waleed-shahid.com
Pluribus Finale, or The World’s Most Helpful Apocalypse
Gilligan's hive mind doesn’t conquer you. It politely completes your onboarding.
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Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
This was excellent. Lots of insights from political science, political theory, and history. And incorporates events at home and abroad.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
Why does liberalism feel stuck managing decline instead of building a future? www.waleed-shahid.com/p/why-is-lib...
waleed-shahid.com
Why Is Liberalism Adrift?
From social democracy to the Democratic Party liberalism: how parties learn to speak the language of constraint -- and what it costs them.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
theatlantic.com
The Return of the Antebellum Constitution
The Supreme Court and the president are undermining the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
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Daniel Denvir @danieldenvir.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
New Dig ep and we are libbing out hard with @ericblanc.bsky.social, @leahgreenberg.bsky.social, and @waleedshahid.bsky.social. The lib resistance made a sharp left turn since Trump returned: voting Zohran, fighting ICE, and looking favorably upon socialism. www.thedigradio.com/podcast/welc...
thedigradio.com
Welcome to the Resistance w/ Eric Blanc, Leah Greenberg, Waleed Shahid
Featuring Eric Blanc, Leah Greenberg, and Waleed Shahid on the liberal resistance’s sharp left turn since Trump returned to the White House. Libs are voting Zohran at the ballot box, fighting ICE in t...
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
New: We should treat civil rights leaders as the Founding Fathers and Mothers of a new republic. Today’s liberalism debates (over identity, the state, and capitalism) are their unfinished quarrels. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/snccs-ghos...
waleed-shahid.com
SNCC’s Ghosts, the Fourth Republic, and the Crisis of Liberalism
Liberalism versus nationalism, social democracy versus identity politics: the Fourth Republic’s buried quarrels and the search for a new American order.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Fascinating chart from @gelliottmorris.com: the pivot to “affordability” in Democratic messaging follows Zohran Mamdani’s NYC primary victory in June. I dig into what that means for party realignment here. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/how-one-pr...
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Fascinating chart from @gelliottmorris: the pivot to “affordability” in Democratic messaging follows Zohran Mamdani’s NYC primary victory in June. I dig into what that means for party realignment here. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/how-one-pr...
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Ian Bassin @ianbassin.bsky.social · 07/12/2025
This is a really excellent explanation of liberalism’s shortcomings, why it also remains essential, how the quest for justice lost its way, and how we can get back to a synthesis of justice and liberalism, from @waleedshahid.bsky.social www.waleed-shahid.com/p/the-henhou...
waleed-shahid.com
The Henhouse Liberalism Built
A response to Matthew Yglesias. What he calls “postliberalism” is often liberalism’s own elite, anemic offspring.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
In response to Matt Yglesias piece: If you zoom out, today’s so-called “postliberal” politics looks less like a break with liberalism than the predictable product of it. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/the-henhou...
waleed-shahid.com
The Henhouse Liberalism Built
A response to Matthew Yglesias. What he calls “postliberalism” is often liberalism’s own elite, anemic offspring.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Most Americans think the system is broken and that Democrats overpromise and underdeliver. So 2028 won’t be a rerun of the 2020 ideas primary. It’ll be about your theory of power: the Senate, gerrymandering, and the media ecosystem we have to govern in. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/the-2028-i...
waleed-shahid.com
The 2028 “Ideas Primary” Probably Won’t Be About Ideas
It will be about theories of power...and vibes.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
Wrote about Pluribus, Vince Gilligan’s new series, and why its alien hive mind feels disturbingly close to our AI yes-bots: always affirming, incapable of refusal, drowning us in “help.” waleedshahid.substack.com/p/pluribus-a...
waleedshahid.substack.com
Pluribus and the Sycophantic AI Hive
Vince Gilligan's show turns an alien hive mind into the ultimate yes-bot: endlessly supportive, catastrophically accommodating.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
Wrote a little essay about the strange, tender moment when friends visit your newborn and someone asks, “Do you want to hold her?” It turns out that question is a bit of a Rorschach test in coupledom. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/you-can-ho...
waleed-shahid.com
You Can Hold Her Now
What happens when our friends meet our baby (and themselves) for the first time.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
The Heterodoxy Mirage open.substack.com/pub/waleedsh...
open.substack.com
The Heterodoxy Mirage
A yearning for a bygone era that substitutes nostalgia for power.
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Sean Casten @seancasten.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
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...
law.cornell.edu
The Great Compromise of the Constitutional Convention
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Sean Casten @seancasten.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
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.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
On MSNBC talking about what Tuesday’s election results reveal about Trump, the Democratic Party, and Zohran Mamdani’s coalition.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
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...
waleed-shahid.com
The Long Arc of Immigrant Power in New York
What Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech shares with the Irish ward bosses and Jewish socialists who built the city’s first immigrant-powered coalitions.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
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...
waleed-shahid.com
Zohran, NYC's Old New Majority, and 2026
Plus four lessons on Democratic populism.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
.@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social 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.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
"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...
theguardian.com
Revealed: Pentagon orders states’ national guards to form ‘quick reaction forces’ for ‘crowd control’
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
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
ALEX THOMPSON, Axios: "Do you consider yourself a Zionist?" BERNIE SANDERS: "No, not within the terms of what Zionism means, no."
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Jacobin @jacobinmag.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
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.
jacobin.com
Zohran Mamdani’s 5 Lessons for the Democrats
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.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
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.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
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...
waleed-shahid.com
Plato’s Warning About AI
Plato feared that writing would dull the mind. AI risks finishing the job.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
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...
waleed-shahid.com
The Mamdani Method
Five lessons to anchor a Democratic Party adrift at sea
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
#NoKings --> waleedshahid.substack.com/p/before-zoh...
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Justice Democrats @justicedemocrats.com · 08/10/2025
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...
secure.actblue.com
Donate to Justice Democrats
Show your support with a contribution.
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Justice Democrats @justicedemocrats.com · 08/10/2025
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.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
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.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
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.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
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...
waleed-shahid.com
Our Crisis Isn’t a Failure of Manners
On Ezra Klein, Charlie Kirk, and the civility trap.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Kamala Harris explaining in her book why not a single Palestinian or Arab American was allowed to speak at the DNC.
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Tara Raghuveer @taraghuveer.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
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...
bloomberg.com
Tenants Seek to Unionize One Private Equity Firm's Entire Housing Portfolio
By organizing renters across Capital Realty Group’s affordable housing complexes, the Tenant Union Federation hopes to bring sectoral bargaining to negotiations with large landlords.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
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...
waleed-shahid.com
Realignment Isn’t A Playlist
On Searchlight, why Democrats can’t simply curate their way to power and what it takes to forge an era of democratic renewal.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
2017, Hungary: Bill Seeks to Stifle Independent Groups www.hrw.org/news/2017/06...
hrw.org
Hungary: Bill Seeks to Stifle Independent Groups
A bill targeting nongovernmental organizations would force some groups that receive funding from outside Hungary to register as “foreign funded” and subject them to excessive sanctions and obligations...
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
Everyone knows I’m a big Marvel Comics nerd, but it’s time to cancel my Disney Plus subscription.
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
Getting more sinister by the minute www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
What We Look At When We Look At a Baby www.waleed-shahid.com/p/what-we-lo...
waleed-shahid.com
What We Look At When We Look At a Baby
A newborn in the house, and I can’t stop watching people watch the baby.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
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.
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Waleed Shahid @waleedshahid.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
To mourn Kirk’s horrific killing as a wound to democracy is right. To recast him as democracy’s patron saint is dangerous delusion.
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David Weinfeld @davidweinfeld.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
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...
jacobin.com
The Uncommitted Movement, a Year Later
One year after the Democratic National Convention refused to allow a Palestinian American onstage, it’s clear that the Democrats have paid a steep price in ignoring voters opposed to Israel’s brutal h...
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Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
"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
waleed-shahid.com
What Yglesias Gets Wrong About the 1850s
Republicans forged purpose out of disparate interests and factional conflict.
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Akbar Shahid Ahmed @akbarshahidahmed.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
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...
huffpost.com
Democrats Wrote Off This Group In 2024. But They’re Ready To ‘Fight Again’
Leaders in the "Uncommitted" movement told HuffPost they sense a turning point, citing signals like Zohran Mamdani's primary win.
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