Fools
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!!
New York’s Third Congressional District, as George Bush would say, won’t get fooled again. In 2022 they elected a fraud, Republican George Santos. He lied about his upbringing, his education, his employment, his religion. He even lied about his mother. And voters in the Third could have, should have, known. But in out “post-truth” world, he still got elected. It wasn’t that folks didn’t care; they just didn’t believe what the North Shore Leader was saying. We live in the age of Trump, where it’s “OK” to call facts, fiction, or fiction, fact.
So the Third definitely won the contest for the “Most Embarrassing Representative” (a hard fight in a Congress with Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene). And finally, reluctantly, even the MAGA House Republicans realized that George had to go. He was expelled from the House, triggering a special election.
Moderate Democrat Tom Suozzi won by eight percentage points. He won in a District that went for Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020, and Republican Lee Zeldin for Governor in 2022 (and elected Santos). Sure, Suozzi had a leg up. He held the same seat before Santos, resigning to run for Governor. But the composition of this “bell-weather” District hasn’t changed, a middle-class suburb of New York City. Tom Suozzi hasn’t changed either. And that’s the point.
Moderation
He’s a moderate, much like Joe Biden. In a political (and Democratic) world that is so often polarized; the Bernie Sanders, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez progressives versus MAGA world Republicans “conservatives”, Suozzi isn’t pinned on one side or the other. And that’s a lesson Democrats need to learn.
We know the story of Joe Biden winning the Presidency in 2020, but what we often lose in the fog of the Covid pandemic, is how Joe Biden won the primaries. The first caucus in Iowa chose Pete Buttigieg. The first primary in New Hampshire chose Bernie Sanders, who also won Nevada. Going into the South Carolina primary, Joe Biden was charitably in fifth place, behind those two, Klobuchar, and the rest.
The Democratic Party of South Carolina is heavily African-American, but it’s also moderate. They aren’t wedded to an ideology; they just want a government that can make things better for people, and get things done. South Carolina Democrats are pragmatic; led by Congressman James Clyburn. And Clyburn made it clear – they needed to vote for Joe Biden in the primary.
They did, giving Biden’s campaign the oxygen it needed to make it through to Super Tuesday. And even in that Covid marred election (it was the week the world shut down) Biden was able to win decisively. The 2020 race for the Democratic nomination was over. To “steal” a thought from an article by former Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, some Progressives think Biden won because Covid stopped the world. But that’s not what really happened. Biden won because Democrats wanted a moderate who could defeat Donald Trump. And he did.
Get Over It
I am a Progressive, a Liberal Democrat. But I recognize, maybe because I’m a Blue drop in a Red sea here in Licking County, that there are many on both sides looking for moderation, not polarization. That’s how Biden won, and that’s how he can win again.
And another point to make here; that’s not what pollsters believe. We keep seeing polls showing Biden versus Trump, with Trump winning (all within the margin of error). Just like we saw the polls last week, showing Suozzi close to his Republican opponent. But today’s modern polling is designed to take the smallest sample possible, and fit it into a “model” of what the pollster thinks America is. And if they see the “model” as so polarized that there is no room for moderation, then a moderate candidate gets pushed aside in the results. It’s not about counting opinions, it’s taking opinions to fit into their mold.
No Rest
That doesn’t mean that Democrats don’t need to work their butts off to get Biden elected. And it doesn’t mean that Trump can’t “thread the needle” and still somehow end up in the Presidency again. We are at a moment of existential crisis, and there’s no rest for the weary. We can sleep after the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
But what Long Island told us yesterday is exactly the point. The extremists in the Democratic Party need to “get on board”, and recognize that Biden represents much more than just “half a loaf”. Biden, in the past four years, found ways to get things done to make our country better. We (progressives) didn’t get everything we wanted, and we lost in the Supreme Court, a problem that will take years to overcome. But the next four years with Biden means more “progress” for “progressives”.
But it sure is better than four more years of Donald Trump. We might not recognize Amerika at the end of his Presidency.
