Moderate Democrats are crowing that the resounding 17-point defeat of Rep. Jamaal Bowman shows the center is holding and rising.
If only.
While voters in a heavily Jewish district managed to defeat Bowman, a flagrant antisemite, his Squad mate Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other lefties, such as Queens Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, won their Democratic Party primaries Tuesday.
And Working Families Party honcho Ana Maria Archila rightly tweeted: “The left wasn’t defeated. We grew our ranks.”
Yes, two Democratic Socialist-backed candidates in Brooklyn and The Bronx went down to defeat, but as Archila crowed, three other lefties will be increasing the WFP’s ranks in Albany.
And thereby making it harder for moderates to block really bad housing, criminal-justice and tax policies.
Unless, that is, Republicans this fall take legislative seats from the Democrats as a whole.
They should, because moderate Dems have repeatedly shown themselves unable (or unwilling) to install a whit of fiscal responsibility in the Legislature, to oppose the ongoing destruction of the state’s public schools or even to get real changes to the terrible “criminal-justice reforms” of recent years.
Heck, the Albany County Democratic establishment joined with the WFP to oust incumbent District Attorney David Soares in favor of soft-on-crime defense attorney Lee Kindlon in Tuesday’s primary.
Plus, of course, New York Democrats to a man and woman also empower every one of President Biden’s disastrous policies — even if a few outliers express some upset, as Long Island’s Rep. Tom Suozzi does, over the border madness.
Indeed: As the Big Apple reels under the weight of Biden’s ruinous open borders, Mayor Adams again this week declared himself the “Joe Biden of Brooklyn.”
Heaven help New York.
The left remains a rising force within the Democratic Party here; its “moderates” are the same crew who’ve failed to stop that rise, for all the antisemitism that comes with it.
Don’t be fooled, voters.
If you want to stop the radicals, you have to oppose them and their enablers, and the only way to do that is to vote for every possible Republican on the November ballot.