For the last 36 hours national media types have been selling the loss of House Rep. Joe Crowley, a Queens , NY Democrat in terms of progressivism and a bit of socialism….
That is only a small part of the story….
The major reason the guy lost the district he represented for 20 years to a 28 year old Latina , Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is the ground shifted from underneath him and he failed to acknowledge that….
Crowley was guilty of a basic political mistake….
“All politics IS Local”…..
He became so much of a creature of national party politics that he forgot to take care of his local homework…..
He had been warned that the diversity of his district WOULD be a factor in the primary…But Crowley did NOT take the warning seriously ( Sound a bit like Hillary Clinton?)…..
He failed to show up to debate Ocasio-Cortez….
He failed to come home and personally show compassion for the large black and brown population in his district that have been watch Trump and Republican’s move to exclude those people from an America they are living in….
It is NOT so much the progressive wing of the party that identifies with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren…
It IS the Democratic failure to show grit and teeth in fighting in those area’s that are threatened by the Republicans efforts to exclude them from America after they saw a Black /Mixed race President for 8 years…..
While Democrats in different parts of America will have to advance different message to get people to vote for them this November and 2 years from now?
They must on the whole tailor their message to the local and state voters….
The one size fits all from the national party and the media is simply NOT the way for the party to gain majorities in Congress or retake the Presidency….
And along with that?
Like Rep. Maxine Waters out in California?
Democrats NEED TO step up to the plate and show their guts and yes, anger at the beat down and assaults on everything that America IS and was moving towards under Barack Obama…..
“For 20 years our rents have been going up, health care has been getting more expensive and our incomes are staying the same,” Ocasio-Cortez said in the only debate she had with Crowley, on NY1. “Not all Democrats are the same and I am proud to be the only Democrat in this race that rejects all corporate money and champions and advances improved and expanded Medicare for all, a federal jobs guarantee, tuition-free public college and the abolition of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement].”
Even Ocasio-Cortez sounded a note of caution Tuesday, hours before she would surge to victory.
“I knew from the beginning that I was looking at the the biggest odds by launching this race but I feel like I have at least shortened those odds,” she told POLITICO Tuesday afternoon.
And Crowley, whose district stretches through parts of Queens and the Bronx and includes some of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the nation, seemed wholly unprepared for the challenge. He skipped one debate with Ocasio-Cortez, sending a surrogate in his stead.
The day before the primary, his office was not even certain when he would be in the district….