Primary Day in NY

 

It seems that the West Side (in the person of Judiciary Committee chair, Rep. Jerry Nadler) has decisively defeated the East Side (in the person of Oversight Committee Chair, Rep. Carolyn Maloney) in the new 12th congressional district. Until this year, Nadler has represented the 10th congressional district, which has now narrowly nominated Dan Goldman, familiar from having been one of the lawyers in the impeachment case against President Trump. (Nadler could perhaps have avoided the unpleasant fight with Maloney had he been willing to compete for the open 10th-district seat, but he commendably wanted to continue to represent the area where he actually lives.)

Party primaries which these pit 30-year veteran incumbents against each other were a by-product of chaotic congressional redistricting - but no less harmful for that. In this case, of course, the two incumbents represented more or less the same establishment faction within the party - as opposed to the third candidate, Suraj Patel,  who called himself an "Obama Democrat, which presumably is code language for an "ageist" attack on his more senior incumbents. (Patel may have seen himself as a more extreme progressive than the two more senior incumbents, but Obama was extremely progressive only in the fevered imagination of those on the political Right.)

Even more problematic than Patel's ageism, however, was Maloney's resort to sexism, her absurd line about not sending a man to do a woman's job. Well, the voters have spoken. It's not a woman's job or a man's job or an older person's job or a younger person's job. It's just a Democrat's job!

Now, none of this is of much significance for the November elections. This is a "safe" district. Thus the election will not impact the party division in the House. (NY's loss of a seat may matter, but that is a different problem.) They final outcome of which party will congress is a much more important matter than which of these worthy and experience incumbents will be retired.

Most congressional districts are now "safe" districts, which is one of the decisive factors contributing to political polarization both in congress and in the country. In "safe" districts, primaries typically decide the election, but primaries typically have lower turnout, and it is typically the more intense party "base" voters who tend to outnumber more moderate voters in such primaries. When there are no "swing" voters to appeal to electorally, the incentive is to elect representatives who are more extreme, more interested in expressive politics (e.g., an AOC as opposed to the more mainstream, establishment Democrat she defeated in her 2018 primary.)

The one actual election to be fought yesterday, however, was in a "swing" district, a special election in the 19th congressional district in the Hudson Valley, noted for having swung Obama to Trump to Biden. There, Democrat Pat Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro. What that says about November remains to be seen, but it is certainly an encouraging shot in the arm for Democrats everywhere.