Democrats lean way to the left
Is Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley’s win in Tuesday’s Massachusetts Democratic primary as big as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s upset in New York City? No. It’s bigger.
This time, the 10-term incumbent Democrat saw it coming. Rep. Mike Capuano (in the role played in New York City by Rep. Joe Crowley) had an advantage Crowley didn’t. He could see the political forces at work. The Crowley campaign was blindsided by Ocasio-Cortez, a candidate with no elected office experience who had been bartending just months before becoming the congresswoman-elect.
Not Mike Capuano. Here in Boston, the airwaves were full of TV ads for the incumbent. And those ads were full of “100 percent” ratings from Planned Parenthood and the NAACP, and endorsements from progressive politicians of color like former Massachusetts governor (and possible 2020 presidential candidate) Deval Patrick.
And Capuano didn’t just raise more money than Pressley. He spent it — between July 1 and Aug. 15 alone, Capuano spent nearly $1 million on his campaign.
And he worked hard on the campaign trail, too; doorknocking, appearing at every community event and gathering, making a direct case to the liberal voters in his district for keeping him, his liberal voting record and his seniority in Congress.
On paper, it was working. Not a single public poll showed him losing. In fact, most showed him with a solid lead.
And yet Tuesday night he lost by 17 points. The district once represented by John F. Kennedy and Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill will now be represented by the first African-American woman to ever represent Massachusetts in Congress. (Massachusetts sent Republican Ed Brooke, the first-ever popularly elected black U.S. Senator, to Congress in 1966.)
Why? Is it because of differences on issues? Both candidates conceded they would vote virtually the same way — one notable exception being Pressley’s support for the #AbolishICE movement. Instead, Pressley made a direct appeal to identity politics.
“It is about voting the right way, but that’s not enough,” Pressley said during the campaign. “The people closest to the pain should be closest to the power.”
While people continue to compare Pressley to OcasioCortez (who tweeted out “Congratulations to my sister in service, @AyannaPressley,” Tuesday night), there’s another candidate who belongs in the mix: Progressive Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum, who won the Democratic nomination for governor in a race where, like Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez, he never led in the polls and was wildly outspent by the rest of the field. In a campaign where nearly $100 million was spent, Gillum spent less than $7 million.
In all of these races, there were better-known, betterfunded candidates who could claim to be nearly as liberal as their challengers. In Boston, for example, Capuano didn’t just have the endorsement of the AFL-CIO and the teachers unions, he had the support of the Congressional Black Caucus PAC — in a race against an AfricanAmerican woman.
It might upset some of these candidates to hear it, but in their own way OcasioCortez, Pressley and Gillum are the Donald Trumps of their party. They’re running, not for an ideology or specific policy, but against an establishment their supporters feel hasn’t been aggressive enough on their behalf. The “McCain Moment” — praising bipartisanship, working from the middle and reaching across the aisle — passed in Massachusetts with no impact at all. Liberal voters voted away from the middle and against bipartisanship.
Like Trump supporters, Pressley voters are spoiling for a fight.
On Labor Day, Sen. Bernie Sanders gave a speech in New Hampshire (gee, wonder what he was doing there?) in which he made the point that “three years ago, coming before you and the people of this state, I said, we need to move toward a Medicare-for-all single-payer program. Seemed like a radical idea then. Oh my God, single payer, Medicare for all, radical idea.”
Today, it’s supported by a majority of Democrats and has become a litmus test for potential presidential candidates, according to the liberal magazine New Republic.
Reduced to its essence, Mike Capuano’s campaign theme was “Why can’t we all just get along?” Pressley’s was “To hell with that, let’s burn it down!”
Like I said, Boston progressives are a lot more like Trump than they want to admit.