Wednesday, everyone I know was either celebrating Zephyr Teachout;s landslide victory in NY-19 or trying to figure what went wrong in NY-24, where Eric Kingson came in second of three Democratic primary candidates-- or both. Dave Weigel's analysis of what went wrong in Syracuse speaks to the problem with Bernie's revolution. It was pretty similar to what happened to Berniecrat Dave McTeague in OR-05 when Bernie won every county in the district but McTeague lost to head Blue Dog Kurt Schrader 72.6-27.4%-- and on the same day!
Turnout: Still terrible. When he stumped in Syracuse, Sanders told voters that "just 7,000 or 8,000 votes" would be enough to nominate Eric Kingson. It sounded achievable. The 24th district is composed of Cayuga, Onondaga and Wayne counties, and part of Oswego County, and in April, Sanders won 18,057 votes in Onondaga alone.On Tuesday, Eric Kingson won just 3,780 votes across the entire district. Just 7,000-- or even 6,000-- would have won him the race. Most eligible voters simply didn't care enough to vote in a June primary, which would have been the second of four votes for them this year. (Seriously. There are local office primaries in September, then the presidential election in November.) Sanders is having an easier time finding harmony with Democrats on the issues than he is reminding voters than they can turn out and pick who they want to represent them.
A worthless Democratic hack, Colleen Deacon, won with 5,749 votes. If she wins in November, she'll almost certainly lose in 2018, when she offers Democrat voters no reason to turn up at the polls for her.But there was another New York primary that, shockingly, the media hasn't had much to say about-- progressive icon Jerry Nadler's reelection campaign in NY-10, the Upper West Side, Soho, Chelsea, the Village, the Financial District and the very reactionary Borough Park section of Brooklyn. In fact, the far right Hassidics who run Borough Park recruited a candidate to run against Nadler when he voted for the Iran nuclear deal. It looked like if they could order their zombie followers to go out and vote against Nadler-- in what was predicted to be a low-turn-out election, they could pull off an upset. (They even persuaded racist former comedian Jackie Mason to cut a robocall for their candidate.) Instead it was the second highest turn-out primary in the state on Tuesday and Mason and the zombies were nowhere to be seen. Nadler beat the son-of-a-millionaire recruit, Mikhail Oliver Rosenberg, a naive gay anti-peace Zionist in a landslide even bigger than Teachout's!
• Jerry Nadler- 25,527 (88.78%)• Mikhail Oliver Rosenberg- 2,949 (10.26%)
Last year the super-hawks and war mongers who are always trying to foment war with Iran had pledged to defeat Nadler and other progressives who voted for Obama's deal. None of these neocons admitted defeat after their candidate's eye-popping ass-whooping and their allies at the New York Daily News and Washington Times didn't report the landslide at all, just that their hero, Mikhail, didn't win.A friend put Nadler's victory in context: "his margin of victory was 33% greater than Putin's margin of victory in his last election. Think about that. Nadler won by a margin of 79%. Putin could only muster a measly 46%." He added that "This is what happens when progressives stand up for progressive positions against powerful special interests. Voters reward them. And this case, diplomacy wins and we all get to avoid a disastrous war of choice with Iran." Don't expect to hear from Mikhail Oliver Rosenberg again... so, enjoy: