New York threatens to be responsible for the Democrats losing the House

by time news

Zeldin supporters lament that the Republican candidate for governor of New York lost to Hochul. / Andrew Kelly/REUTERS

The internal wars almost caused the historic bastion to go to the Republican side by losing four representatives in the State

If, when all the votes are counted, the Democrats lose the Lower House, as expected, they will have to hold their co-religionists to account in the main bastion of the country, New York. The Republican Party needed five seats to win Nancy Pelosi’s mace and has taken four from New York state – three on Long Island and one in the Hudson Valley.

While the whole world looked towards the rural and conservative corners of the country, the feared red tide inundated some of the most unexpected areas. It was like when Hurricane Sandy submerged New York City, caught by surprise because it had never been hit like this by a weather phenomenon. In victory everything is joy, but in defeat blame is shared, and the New York Democrats are doing it within their own party.

It is not just Republicans who will be drowned in internecine wars in the coming months, deciding whether Donald Trump was a liability, abortion has cost them the election, or how to deal now with the empowered far right. In the Big Apple, Democratic deputy Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has already called for the resignation of the party’s president, Jay Jacob. The Democratic formation is the one that has lost Congress, not the Republican that has won it, she believes. “What has happened in New York is a flagrant aberration,” she told ‘The Intercept’ this Thursday, shortly after President Joe Biden celebrated the results at a press conference as “a good day for democracy.” .

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The most famous congresswoman on the left claims to have a seat in the front row to see what is happening in her party. “New York has been gutted from within,” she accused on Twitter. “It’s been a year since I asked for Jacob’s resignation and I continue to do so.”

The 33-year-old deputy believes her party has been more concerned with stifling the left than supporting it in its campaigns. Instead of presenting a united voice in the face of police violence and citizen insecurity, establishment candidates poured millions of dollars into campaigns opposing Black Lives Matter slogans and countering the proposal to “defund the Police.” » Procuring large items to the security forces.

They inadvertently reinforced the narrative of the Republicans, who blamed them for the increase in crime and went into the rag to defend themselves by falling into the spiral of gloomy ads with horror music and violent scenes that have incessantly hit voters in recent weeks.

“The way in which those campaigns have been carried out is very different from how the winners have been carried out in this country,” accused the congresswoman. “And I think the role of the state party has strong implications at the national level. If the Democrats do not retain the House, the responsibility falls squarely on the state of New York, “she warned.

The division of the electorate condemns the US to ungovernability

Proof that the blue wall was failing against the red tide is that Governor Kathy Hochul came to see her re-election in trouble. All the party heavyweights rushed to her defense. Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Vice President Kamala Harris and even the president himself, Joe Biden. The party apparatus pulled on the unions to massively mobilize the vote, which ended up giving him victory over the Republican congressman from Long Island, Lee Zeldin, by only four points.

Still, the turnout of New Yorkers registered to vote in the city of skyscrapers was just 36%, compared to 44% in the previous midterm elections. On the contrary, in the rest of the state it was very similar to 2018, which means that the most rural inhabitants voted scared to correct something that does not happen in their habitat, but in the city, or in television commercials.

Not a single volunteer

If Hochul wasn’t short of party heavyweights, in Brooklyn, state Rep. Iwen Chu, campaigning in English and Mandarin, said she hadn’t gotten a single volunteer from the county Democratic Party to knock on her constituents’ doors. At the forefront of that decision was Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, a former adviser to Bill Clinton who calls himself a centrist and who during the primaries had the support of the Police Benevolent Association to beat, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising, his opponent, a progressive named Alexandra Biaggi, whom he called a “radical anti-police extremist.”

His allies in uniform turned against him in the general election, handing Republican Mike Lawler the victory. It is the first time in thirty years that the chairman of the Democratic Party’s Congressional Campaign Committee has lost his own seat, when his job was precisely to provide the means for candidates to win their races.

Maloney also took advantage of his position to change districts in the redistricting brought about by the new census. In doing so, he expelled from the area his African-American co-religionist, Mondaire Jones, who had grown up in public housing in the area and was especially well-liked, outraging voters.

Congressman Malonie conceded defeat on Wednesday. “The correct thing is to admit that my rival has won,” he said. It is not the mea culpa that Ocasio-Cortez expects, nor will it be enough to explain in the next two years how to unite the different ideological factions in the face of the 2024 presidential elections.

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