27 June 2018 — Rewritten at 2009 mdt
Joe Crowley loses to Alex Cortez in racially charged campaign
Rewritten. Rep. Joe Crowley, the fourth ranking Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and a 10-term member of Congress, lost the Democratic primary for his seat by a 3:2 margin yesterday — and lost it to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old local organizer and Democratic Socialist. Only 13 percent of registered Democrats voted.
Crowley, a beefy Irishman who cuddled up to Wall Street, and lived in Washington, D.C., probably lost because his district’s demographics changed radically. At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall has the numbers.
Cortez, reports Martin Longman at the Washington Monthly, ran a gratuitous identity politics campaign:
If there is any part of this victory that concerns me, it’s that Crowley’s race was used rather explicitly as a reason why he shouldn’t continue to represent the district. If someone were to use that logic to, for example, explain why former NAACP director Ben Jealous shouldn’t be elected as governor of Maryland, I think it would be rightfully condemned. More than that, though, it sends a message to the broader country that I think is more powerful and alienating than Ocasio-Cortez’s ideological leanings. The case for Ocasio-Cortez was made independently of Crowley’s race and making that an issue was gratuitous and unfortunate.
Trumpism feeds off a sense of white racial solidarity, anxiety and grievance, so when Democrats send a message that whites are not welcome or acceptable, it increases the power of his movement.
Crowley’s defeat is significant because it leaves no apparent successor to 78-year-old Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, should Democrats win back the chamber, and because it’s another indication that the Democratic Party is doubling down on identity politics, believing more firmly than ever that the interests of an identity group can be represented only by a member of that group. The tribalization of our democracy is accelerating.
Pelosi, and equally superannuated Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn, need to resign from their Democratic leadership positions. They’re selfish, imperious, oldsters who are abdicating their obligation to develop and cede to a new generation of leadership.