Waleed Shahid
@waleedshahid.bsky.social
Currently @mayor.nyc.gov. Very Senior Democratic Strategist. Former Spokesperson, Justice Democrats. Formerly @ Bernie Sanders, AOC, Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, YNWA.
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.
It’s -9 degrees. Downtown Minneapolis is packed for the anti-ICE rally and the crowd keeps growing
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...
fantastic piece. chilling.
Waleed Shahid@waleedshahid.bsky.social · 9mo agoWhat 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...
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...
Pluribus Finale, or The World’s Most Helpful Apocalypse
Gilligan's hive mind doesn’t conquer you. It politely completes your onboarding.
waleed-shahid.com
This was excellent. Lots of insights from political science, political theory, and history. And incorporates events at home and abroad.
Waleed Shahid@waleedshahid.bsky.social · 9mo agoWhy does liberalism feel stuck managing decline instead of building a future? www.waleed-shahid.com/p/why-is-lib...
Why does liberalism feel stuck managing decline instead of building a future? www.waleed-shahid.com/p/why-is-lib...
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.
waleed-shahid.com
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...
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...
thedigradio.com
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...
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.
waleed-shahid.com
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...
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...
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...
The Henhouse Liberalism Built
A response to Matthew Yglesias. What he calls “postliberalism” is often liberalism’s own elite, anemic offspring.
waleed-shahid.com
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...
The Henhouse Liberalism Built
A response to Matthew Yglesias. What he calls “postliberalism” is often liberalism’s own elite, anemic offspring.
waleed-shahid.com
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...
The 2028 “Ideas Primary” Probably Won’t Be About Ideas
It will be about theories of power...and vibes.
waleed-shahid.com
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...
Pluribus and the Sycophantic AI Hive
Vince Gilligan's show turns an alien hive mind into the ultimate yes-bot: endlessly supportive, catastrophically accommodating.
waleedshahid.substack.com
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...
You Can Hold Her Now
What happens when our friends meet our baby (and themselves) for the first time.
waleed-shahid.com
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...
The Great Compromise of the Constitutional Convention
law.cornell.edu
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...
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.
waleed-shahid.com
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...
Zohran, NYC's Old New Majority, and 2026
Plus four lessons on Democratic populism.
waleed-shahid.com
.@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.
"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...
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
theguardian.com
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.
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.
jacobin.com
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.