Despite the overblown attention actress Cynthia Nixon’s primary challenge received, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo easily won the Democratic nomination for a third term in Albany. A lesson to be learned perhaps is that the Old Guard is not going so gentle into that Democratic good night.
A more important lesson may be that the insurgents in the party ranks are actually less appealing on a broader level than the tired liberal warhorses that so turn off a vast percentage of the American population.
New But Not Improved
The timing was finally right for a true outsider to capture the White House in 2016 and Donald Trump made the most of the moment.
As strongly resonant as his message undeniably was to voters, an equally crucial reason for his win was the sheer disgust the American people felt with establishment politicians in both the Republican and Democratic ranks.
If Trump had hand-picked his opposition it couldn’t have been better than Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Hillary Clinton, along with all the other GOP party hack dwarfs who deluded themselves into thinking they could connect with the American people.
While the rise of Trump has injected a sorely needed burst of life into the stale, corrupt neocon corpse that was the Republican Party circa 2014, attempts at overthrowing an equally decrepit Democrat Establishment have not gone as well.
GOP insurgent Trump has connected with working Americans in a way no national politician has since first-term Ronald Reagan. Meanwhile, grassroots Democrats are running hard to the left of their corrupt establishment pols, making the “new, young” party rank and file seem more like a Cult of True Believers than an organized effort to reach out to real Americans.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have toppled an established Dem in a House primary, but it obviously had no carry over to the gubernatorial race in New York, where fellow far-leftist Nixon was resoundingly trounced by Cuomo despite a media framing that had her taking it to the two-term governor throughout the primary season.
Ocasio-Cortez capturing a New York City congressional district did nothing to help Nixon outside of the Big Apple, as leftist Dems fail to realize again and again that voters beyond the Starbucks at City Square matter, too.
Dinosaurs Not Extinct
Purity spiraling and identity politics can be a winning formula in a bubble, but in a statewide or nationwide election it is a recipe for defeat. Which puts Dems in the awkward position of having to conclude that their Old Guard offers more outreach beyond the Blue Bubble than the leftist newcomers do.
Does this bode well for Sen. Dianne Feinstein in California, seeking yet another term at age 85 amid revelations that she employed a Chinese communist spy on her personal staff for 20 years? Maybe you’ve noticed how Feinstein has been getting absolutely grilled by the “mainstream” media over this stunning development.
Here’s a sample, from a September 14 interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune. The newspaper brings up the Chinese spy:
Feinstein: Now, the way this stuff works… can we be off the record or I’ll just stop now?
Union-Tribune: Well for… for this I will allow it to go off the record and we’ll cut it from the audio and the transcript when we publish. Okay. Thank you. Back… back on the record.
Feinstein: Yeah. Okay.
Union-Tribune: Thank you. Back to Russia.
Unbelievable.
A September 6 Probolsky Research poll had Feinstein locked in a tighter race against state Sen. Kevin de Leon, a fellow Democrat than would have been expected after the four-term senator easily cruised to victory in the June primary.
A sign of how crazy leftist challengers to highly vulnerable establishment Dems can be, is seen in de Leon’s criticism of Feinstein for her pathetic Hail Mary attempt to smear Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh with sexual assault claims. No, de Leon wasn’t ripping Feinstein for even mentioning such an asinine and totally unfounded accusation of something that may have happened as a high school student.
He was lambasting her for sitting on the story for months before coming forward with the “disqualifying” information.
With “insurgents” like this, who needs another Hillary Clinton figure to run, if you’re a Republican?
Two Terrible Paths
Cynthia Nixon lost because she was a ridiculous candidate for voters outside the comfy leftist confines of New York City. And so a machine Democrat will likely get to hold on to his seat for another four years, further setting back efforts to overhaul a party in desperate need of fresh blood.
The Trump Phenomenon is rejuvenating a Republican Party that was dead on its feet. The far-left Democrat uprising is doing nothing of the sort. If it succeeds Dems will be more marginalized than ever. If it fails, the Blue side of the thoroughly corrupt Uniparty that the American people so soundly rejected gets to keep on going for a few more years.
It’s hard to tell which scenario is the more profound disaster for the Democratic Party.
Either way, the immediate future looks grim.
