Out With The Old— In With The New? Yes... But, Let's Be Sure We're Not Buying A Pig In a Poke

A new Data for Progress poll of New York Democratic primary voters is pretty encouraging— unless you’re a corrupt establishment Dem. Way at the bottom of the list is Rahm Emanuel, for example— in the toilet with Chuck Schumer, Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul. Progressive icons Bernie, Elizabeth Warren and AOC are the most.

Better yet, when New York Dems are asked who they would back in a Senate primary between Schumer and AOC (mind you, though, 3 years from now), it wasn’t even close. Primary voters prefer AOC 55% to 36%, with just 9% undecided, a powerful rejection of Schumer and his tactics.

Democratic voters around the country are getting fed up with careerist stooges who are treating the Trump catastrophe as just more of the same that needs to be measured and calculated in terms of their own career trajectories. Just this week we saw Jake Rakov, a young former aide to establishment careerist Brad Sherman, announce a primary challenge to Sherman 70 year old Sherman, a dull accountant who was first elected to the House in 1997. Other than practically representing Israel’s Likud in Washington, Sherman hasn’t gotten anything done in his decades on Capitol Hill. His lifetime Progressive Punch score is a low “C,” not that kind of score we should expect from someone in a D+20 district where Trump won less than 30% of the vote.

Andre Carson’s shelf-life hasn’t expired— he’s just 50 and he’s served “only” 9 terms— but he just drew a younger probable primary challenger as well, George Hornedo, age 34. Hornedo told Mica Soellner that Carson isn’t active enough at a time like this. Also attacking the Democratic leadership for doing a “piss poor” job of standing up to Trump, mirroring similar rhetoric from other Democratic primary challengers who announced campaigns against  Sherman and Jan Schakowski. Soellner seems to have forgotten Pelosi’s challenger, Saikat Chakrabarti.

“Having a warm body in an empty suit is one thing if we were in a blue state and had this strong congressional delegation with other good Democrats in there, but that’s not the case here in Indiana. Right now, [Hakeem Jeffries] is acting like a manager of the caucus, as opposed to a leader of the caucus. I’m not sure exactly what he’s waiting on, but I’d love to see a little bit more blood lust.”

Important— if we’re going to go all in on replacing a Democrat, let’s make sure the replacement is unquestionably better. That’s why, so far, the only one endorsed by Blue America is Chakrabarti. Please consider contributing to his campaign here. We’ll be talking with the other candidates in greater depth. When AOC took on Joe Crowley, there was no doubt at all that she would make a much better member. Sometimes, though, I meet new candidates who mean well and are good on ideology but can barely organize a room of people and may or may not be able to tie their shoes.