New York primary shocker underscores Dem leftist swing
The stunning upset of a Democratic congressional leader in New York by a young Socialist newcomer was a shocker out of the blue, underscoring the leftward movement of the Democratic Party as evidenced in Georgia’s midterm gubernatorial campaign.
In New York’s 14th congressional district, the primary victory of 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over Rep. Joe Crowley, who had been viewed as successor to House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, “will reverberate across the party and the country,” said the New York Times.
The contest was “a proxy for the debate over establishment Democrats versus democratic socialism that has reared its head in the party since Sen. Bernie Sanders’s blockbuster 2016 candidacy,” observed Vox.
“This is a real wakeup call for Democrats,” asserted CNN’s senior political reporter, Nia Malika-Henderson, describing Ocasio-Cortez as one of the “restless young Democrats who could make Nancy Pelosi worried about her future.” Pelosi dismissed the suggestion that socialists were taking over the party. “It’s ascendant in that district perhaps,” she told reporters.
Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, organized for Bernie Sanders in his 2016 run for the Democratic presidential nomination, an experience that evidently prepared her to blindside Crowley, the first Democrat in the country to lose a primary this year. It was the biggest upset of a congressional incumbent since 2014 when Republican Eric Cantor of Virginia, then GOP House majority leader, was defeated in a stunning upset by Tea Party activist David Brat.
Crowley had a war chest topping $3 million while Ocasio-Cortez raised a mere $200,000. Ocasio-Cortez, a Latina, took more than 57 percent of the vote in the liberal, heavily black and Latino 14th district, although voter turnout was very low, about 13 percent of registered Democrats. Bernie Sanders garnered more than 41 percent of this district’s vote against Hillary Clinton.
The new nominee’s platform is a full-bore socialist wish list including Medicare-for-all with “full vision, dental and mental health care,” housing as “a right,” a federal jobs guarantee, tighter gun control and abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
The leftward shifting of the Democrats shows in Georgia’s gubernatorial race. Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams made history as the first black woman to win a major party nomination for governor. She took the primary in a landslide over former state Rep. Stacey Evans (who represented District 42, including Marietta and Smyrna) with 76.5 percent of the vote.
Abrams not only echoes the usual leftist Democrat positions but makes no bones about being a liberal. Her platform calls for raising taxes by reversing the tax cuts enacted in this year’s General Assembly and use that money to pay for expanding Medicaid. Abrams also calls for expanding child care, eliminating public support for private schools, tightening gun controls including repeal of the controversial “campus carry” legislation. She wants sameday voter registration and “automatic voter registration when voters interact with state agencies, public colleges, universities and technical colleges.” All these proposals fly in the face of the conservative-to-centrist trends in Georgia with Republicans holding all major statewide offices.
And in the general election, Abrams will face either Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle or Secretary of State Brian Kemp, now in a runoff for the Republican nomination with each trying to outdo the other as THE conservative candidate, long the ticket to winning in Georgia.
Yet instead of moving toward the middle, Abrams boasts of her endorsement by Bernie Sanders and unabashedly embraces the mantle of “liberal” and “progressive.” She said in a Fox 5 Atlanta interview: “I believe that progressive values are all of Georgia’s values.”
That defies reality. “Liberal” and “progressive” won’t win the governor’s race.