We Back Replacing Democraps But Not Primarying Good Dems For The Sake Of Identity Politics

There aren't many primaries left this cycle-- Massachusetts today, Delaware Thursday, New Hampshire a week from today, Rhode Island a week from tomorrow and Louisiana on election day in November (don't ask). Dave Weigel covered this month's primaries for the Washington Post, but from their very peculiar angle: 'Any old blue just won’t do': Insurgents seek to topple more Democratic veterans in September primaries.

A little background. Only two outside PACs did any independent spending in the New York primary in which Alexandria Ocasio Cortez ousted powerful, entrenched Machine hack Joe Crowley. One was the Sierra Club, which, of course, backed Crowley. (Their mission is great but, politically, that's who they are.) The only other PAC spending in that race was Blue America-- and we backed Ocasio. Our hatred of Crowley was more than a decade old but Ocasio convinced me that she and her team had what it took to do what no one believed possible: beat Crowley, which she did 56.75% to 43.25%.

Crowley deserved-- richly-- his defeat. It wasn't just a matter of a better Democrat defeating a good Democrat. That primary was an excellent Democrat defeating a complete piece of shit, a major danger to his constituents and to the country. The Sierra Club didn't see that... and neither did almost any of the constituent parts of the Democratic Party coalition. The entire establishment backed Crowley-- included groups (like the Working Families Party) who should have known better. Groups that generally do whatever the Democratic Party bosses tell them to do-- the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, Gabby Gifford's conservative-backing anti-gun group, NARAL, Planned Parenthood... You get the picture.

Weigel reported that "Ayanna Pressley’s rationale for unseating a 20-year incumbent was simple, starting with what Rep. Michael E. Capuano has done right. Yes, the Democratic congressman had voted the right way nearly all of the time. Sure, he’d resisted President Trump. 'A progressive voting record in the most progressive seat in the country is not enough,' Pressley said recently at a small canvass launch that quickly took over most of a coffee shop. 'This district deserves bold, activist leadership! The only way we can beat the hate coming out from Washington is not with a vote-- it’s with a movement!' Pressley, a 44-year-old Boston City Council member with a long political résumé, was long expected to make a play for higher office. Her race against Capuano, a well-liked liberal and leading antiwar voice in his party, has created an expensive and divisive race in a seat Republicans have not contested since 1998."

MA-07, which includes most of Boston, part of Cambridge and all of Somerville, Chelsea, Randolph and Everett, is not "the most progressive seat in the country," as she claims. The PVI is D+34, the most progressive district in Massachusetts for sure. But ... California 12 has a PVI of D+37, California 13 is D+40, California 34 and 44 each has a D+35, California 37 is D+37. Other districts that tie MA-07's D+34 include Florida 24, Georgia 05 and New York 09. Other that beat Capuano's district:

• IL-07- D+38
• NJ-10- D+36
• NY-05- D+37
• NY-07- D+38
• NY-08- D+36
• NY-13- D+43
• NY-15- D+44 (the actual most progressive seat in the country)
• PA-03- D+41
• DC- D+43

Some of these super-blue districts actually desperately need primaries to remove incumbents who are far less progressive than the districts. CA-12 is Nancy Pelosi's district. She used to be as progressive as the district... a long time ago. Frederica Wilson is a garden variety Democrat is a super-blue seat. Danny Davis isn't as progressive as his Chicago district. Donald Payne is less progressive than his Newark/Jersey City district. Gregory Meeks is the worst Democrat in a super-blue seat-- conservative and corrupt. Hakeem Jeffries should stop thinking about higher office and step up his game to better serve his current constituents in Brooklyn. But if you want to follow Pressley's reasoning, Democrats who might have to watch their backs would include some of the best of the best, like Barbara Lee in Oakland and Jerry Nadler in NYC.

Capuano told Weigel that "Some people want to snap their fingers and get whatever they want. So do I. But I haven’t had that experience any place in my life."

In four of September’s five primary states-- Massachusetts, Delaware, Rhode Island and New York [stae, not federal]-- efforts are underway to dismantle the party establishment, starting with long-tenured politicians who first took power when compromises with the right were more routine. Democrats who are used to locking up endorsements and rolling into November are being challenged on decades-old votes, or their slowness to embrace reform, or why they haven’t been more visible in the Trump era. The same dynamic is playing out in open seats, where candidates are often debating who can provide the brightest, loudest contrast to Republicans.

“Anyone who represents this district is going to vote the right way on what gets to the floor,” said Andre Green, 37, a Somerville city councilor who is backing Pressley. “I want leaders who will change what actually gets to the floor.”

The Pressley-Capuano race, like most of September’s primaries, is taking place in an environment where Republicans have opted not to compete.

...In New York, primaries for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and the state Senate have become referendums on the leadership of Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D).

While actor Cynthia Nixon’s challenge to Cuomo has lagged in polls, activists have forced serious contests in a half-dozen Senate races. And in the race for attorney general, law professor and activist Zephyr Teachout, a 2014 Cuomo primary opponent, has risen from fringe status to the front of a four-way race. While Republicans have picked candidates for both offices, they’ve raised around $1 million apiece, less than each of the leading Democrats.

In Rhode Island, where Democrats hold every statewide office, both Gov. Gina Raimondo and Lt. Gov. Dan McKee [both corrupt and conservative] are facing credible challengers from their left-- former secretary of state Matt Brown and 28-year-old state legislator Aaron Regunberg. As in New York, the challengers have asked why a state that votes overwhelmingly for Democrats cannot pass the sort of reforms-- starting with automatic voter registration-- that some other blue states have passed easily.

“I’ve fought to pass protections for working families in our state, like higher wages, like paid sick days,” Regunberg said in a debate recently. “My opponent sided with corporate lobbyists.”

And in Delaware, where Democrats only narrowly control the legislature, statewide races have been reshaped by liberal politics. A primary for attorney general has turned on a debate over whether to end “mass incarceration,” while the primary for U.S. Senate has found challenger Kerri Evelyn Harris asking whether incumbent Thomas R. Carper [a conservative Democrat] has answered to business interests instead of voters.

“Any old blue just won’t do,” Harris said during her sole debate with Carper.

National Republicans have not targeted the Delaware race, and none of the Republicans running for Carper’s seat has raised more than $350,000-- less than one-tenth of what the party spent in 2000, when Carper knocked off an incumbent to win.

...Democratic activists, however, have piled into races where incumbents have not faced serious competition in a decade, if ever. [Right-of-center Dems] Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-MA) and Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-MA) are being challenged, respectively, by Muslim civil rights attorney Tahirah Amatul-Wadud and transgender video game designer Brianna Wu. And longtime Secretary of the Commonwealth Bill Galvin, who heads the state’s elections system, is being challenged by Josh Zakim, a Boston legislator half his age.

“We need to be willing to challenge people, even in our own party, when they’re wrong,” Zakim said in an interview after a town hall at a Somerville brewpub. “When I got into this race, he was against automatic registration. Now he’s for it. What does that tell you?”

Democrats crowing about left-wing bona fides have also crowded into the race for the newly open 3rd Congressional District, which stretches between the outskirts of Boston and the state’s border with New Hampshire.

The five front-running candidates-- 10 will appear on the ballot-- agree that Medicare should become a universal program, that the minimum wage should be raised to $15 an hour, and that college should be tuition-free. None of the contenders is, like retiring Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-MA), related to a former U.S. senator. None of the front-runners is a straight, white man.

That has led to a fight about something candidates cannot change-- namely, whose biography would position them as the fiercest liberal advocate. Dan Koh, a former chief of staff to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, has piled up $3 million for his first-ever political campaign. The son of a Korean father and a Lebanese mother-- “the most random combination in the world,” he told supporters at one rally-- Koh has argued that his roots and his record in a liberal city hall qualify him to run.

“If Donald Trump had his way, I literally wouldn’t exist,” Koh said in an interview, adding that he worked to help Boston fight climate change even as Trump spurned such efforts. “Sure, people want to hear you stand up to Trump, but they want to know how you’ve done it.”

Koh’s rivals refuse to concede the biography wars. Juana Matias, a first-term state legislator, points out that she immigrated to the United States when she was 5 years old. “I don’t need to talk to anyone about these issues; I’m living them as I speak,” she said.

State Sen. Barbara L’Italien reminds voters of her legislative service and adds that she is the only candidate to call for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Rufus Gifford, a wealthy former ambassador to Denmark, tells audiences that he has a unique perspective on how universal health care and tough climate laws can work, but acknowledges that some voters are yearning for candidates who can reate to their life experiences.

“My story, growing up as a young gay kid, feeling isolated in communities like this-- that told me that I wanted to devote my life to service,” Gifford said after a house party in a wealthy neighborhood of Concord.

Despite Capuano’s best efforts, his primary also has been defined by identity, and not by his voting record. In his latest televised showdown with Pressley, Capuano looked on in amazement as the challenger said he should have blocked an effort to mollify antiabortion Democrats to get their votes for Obamacare-- and said she would have opposed the law unless that was fixed.

“I have a hard time with that,” said Capuano. “We won it by one vote, and you wouldn’t have voted for it, because it’s not perfect?”

Capuano, who points out that he has a more liberal voting record than Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), has gotten some reinforcements on the left. Antiwar groups have endorsed him because of his effort to end the war in Afghanistan, and because Pressley was unclear on whether she would undo the post-9/11 authorization of war that’s been used to justify 17 years of intervention.

...Pressley, with a record in local government of her own, has argued that voters could trade one congressman who votes the right way for one who would inspire and organize them. The difference was clear in a few comments Capuano made about race, said Pressley, who is black. In a 2017 town hall, Capuano said that he disliked how “Democrats had balkanized themselves,” and that former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick had “turned off half of America” by kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.

The incident was a boon for Pressley, who has outpaced other Democratic challengers with endorsements from local politicians and from Boston’s major newspapers.

Last month, as Pressley marched in the city’s Caribbean parade, Mimi Jones, 70, waved from the sidelines. Pressley, she said, would get her vote over Capuano.

“I like him, I’ve voted him, he’s done a good job,” said Jones. “But we need some changes, and we need some people who look like I do.”

Blue America has endorsed Aaron Regunberg because he has an excellent record and his entrenched primary opponent is a corrupt conservative. That was easy. We endorsed Zephyr Teachout because she's much, much better than any of her opponents. I don't believe in primarying elected officials who have done a good job just because someone else is from a different identity group; in fact, I hate that. (Note: We would have happily endorsed Brianna Wu against Stephen Lynch, but she never quite got it together to return any messages. I hope she wins today, but I wouldn't bet on it. Competent campaigns matter too, not just being better than a crappy opponent.)

Pressley's great... but so is Capuano