Red New York Bucks the Trend

OK, I was wrong. Here’s why.

The GOP did not take over, and the national red wave did not occur.

But in New York State, it did.

Had New York’s trends translated to the entire nation, the Republicans would have swept both houses of Congress with a big majority.

As seen in the two maps above, Dem Senate candidate John Fetterman’s victory in Pennsylvania was reflected all over the state where he consistently outperformed Biden’s vote in 2020. His regular-guy persona, his active campaign in every county, and his unapologetically sharp policy stances bore fruit. He overcame what looked like a fatal health issue to send off Dr Oz by a surprisingly handy margin.

Fetterman, however, was an anomaly. He campaigned as a left-leaning populist against the Democratic machine, which universally backed his primary opponent, one of those bland, Bob Forehead types that the corporate party so loves. As Krystal Ball noted in her show, Fetterman was the most left-wing candidate in the entire national field and, contra mainstream opinion, didn’t suffer for it. He cut down on the GOP’s rural margins and won back some of the white working class, and his stroke-induced struggles may even have made him look even more real. “Fallible humanity trumps a silver tongue, celebrity, or fancy credentials” (Ball).

Fetterman refused to creep into the center in obeisance to the Beltway wisdom in his primary or the general. He slammed corporate gouging and painted Oz as an elitist dweeb. He also benefited from some re-shored jobs trickling back into the old Rust Belt, suggesting that people may sometimes actually vote their interests, despite the disdain of the punditocracy.

By stark contrast, New York Governor Kathy Hochul looks like, and is, a cookie-cutter centrist party operative who stayed mum about Andrew Cuomo’s failings during her years as his loyal lieutenant. She took over when he was forced out and ran on being a nice lady who isn’t against you getting an abortion.

Meanwhile, the city of New York is obsessed with crime and last year elected an ex-cop as mayor who echoes GOP talking points. Given that there is virtually no pushback on what to do about crime (get tougher, hire more cops, throw everyone in jail and keep them there), the Republicans dominate the discussion. Turnout was way down in the boroughs, and the usual Republican tilt upstate was overwhelming.

Hochul isn’t personally all that much to blame. She’s just a product of a sclerotic Democratic party that has as little as possible to do with small-d democracy. Its notorious Brooklyn gang does a great imitation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Party, crushing any attempt to actually organize Brooklynites while pinning medals on its paid toadies and sycophants.

The national party’s bagman, sleazoid congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, is also from New York. Maloney invaded a progressive’s district after redistricting and elbowed him out because Maloney thought that seat was safer, then swanned around Europe raising cash while getting his ass handed to him in the actual voting. Bye, Sean!

Redistricting hurt the state Dems, for which they themselves are to blame (though not solely). The state tried to stop the blatant gerrymandering that benefits the party in power by assigning the task to an allegedly bipartisan commission, but that didn’t work because the state’s politicians have no interest in a fair fight. The districts got redrawn by a judge, which made them surprisingly, and unusually, competitive. Since Democrats were unmotivated, turnout tanked, and the Republicans cleaned up.

In short, New York State, despite a huge Democrat advantage in registration, almost single-handedly shepherded the Republicans into control of the House by allowing them to flip four seats. If anyone thinks accountability for this debacle will follow, they don’t understand New York.

Empty plate

 

The torrent of political ads flooding the airwaves in the last hours before Tuesday’s vote places in high relief the issues that our political class thinks should decide the outcome. Here in New York state, they boil down to very few:

 

·         Crime, which is the fault of squishy liberals who hate the police and love felons;

·         Abortion, which male predators want to outlaw so that women return to the kitchen barefoot and pregnant;

·         Gas, which is too damn high;

·         Trump, who is Evil and a dictator.

 

Missing from this list:

 

·         The deaths of 800,000 people from Covid during the Biden presidency: One doesn’t have to think it’s his fault to wonder why this actual threat to our citizens’ wellbeing is a non-issue. Two murders on the subway apparently scare people far more than several tens of thousands of cadavers in ICUs.

·         The prospect of a shooting war with a nuclear power even as U.S. military personnel arrive in Ukraine to “monitor” arms deliveries, which have been going on for months.

 

Old dudes like me can remember the arrival of “advisors” to South Vietnam as a precursor to the dispatch of a half million troops. Gingerly suggesting that a door to negotiations be opened is so taboo that two dozen Democrats were beaten into backtracking when they dared to breathe the word. Once again, we are allowed to be afraid of a nutcase coming at us with a knife on the street but not of ICBMs turning New York City into a smoldering parking lot.

 

For whom does one vote to express opposition to debtors’ prison? For whom does one vote to endorse diplomacy over war? For whom does one vote to block the consolidation of oligarchic control of our economy and the rule of money in politics or the spreading of state-techno censorship? The “democracy” that our neocon cabal insists on exporting throughout the world does not offer such choices on the 2022 ballot. 

 

Prediction is a mug’s game, but let’s play anyway: a very solid GOP victory, sweeping them into power in both houses of Congress along with some unexpected prizes that no one would have expected a month ago (e.g., NY governorship). A delegation visiting Sleepy Joe at the White House to discuss a retirement package before year’s end—not meaning Social Security.