Staten Island

There are 10 American cities with a population of a million or more. Each one is a Democratic Party bastion. But the battle for the control of Congress this year is likely to be decided in the suburbs of these cities. And with the Trumpanzee cratering among suburban voters, in theory the Democrats should find suburban swing congressional districts very rich ground. So these are the 10 biggest U.S.

Staten Island Republican Michael Grimm was charged with 20 criminal counts-- instead of 200-- and permitted to plead guilty to just one, resign from Congress and serve a couple of easy months in a Club Fed prison.

The litany of criminal behavior that marked the life of Staten Island's Mafia ex-congressman, Michael Grimm, was never going to be something that became public in court. Like Al Capone, when he had finally pushed his criminal enterprises to the breaking point, the Feds put him away on a tax evasion charge.

The DCCC has one skill-- losing congressional racesLast February we explained that the "new" Luján-run DCCC threw in the towel on the Staten Island congressional race even faster than the DCCC usually gives up. NY-11 is Michael Grimm's old seat, which has a growing Democratic edge. In 2008 Obama lost to McCain, 51-48%, but four years later Obama beat Romney 52-47%, a pretty significant swing.

This time Justin's hardy Tottenville explorers will get inside Conference House.

In 2012, when Michael Grimm was reelected to Congress by beating weak Democratic centrist Mark Murphy-- 94,102 (53%) to 82,401 (46%)-- most of the votes (for each candidate) came from Staten Island, not from the Brooklyn portions of the 11th CD. Of 176,503 total votes cast districtwide, 130,295 came from State Island. Only 46,208 Brooklynites voted, and even though Murphy won in Brooklyn (albeit barely) it was inconsequential.

It boggled my mind that the Beltway media adamantly refused to give Michael Grimm's criminal career any serious coverage for years, even while one of the most respected investigative journalists in the country, the NYTimes' William Rashbaum, was already blowing the whistle on him. It wasn't until he threatened to throw a reporter off a balcony that reporters started imagining Grimm might actually be a criminal type.

The theme in our recent coverage of the Mikey Suits Grimm case has been that Grimm's case leaves more unanswered questions than it answers, questions almost entirely ignored by the FBI, by Congress and by the media.

2 drivers of the GOP racist agenda: Steve King and Steve ScaliseWith all the talk about GOP Whip Steve Scalise's consorting with neo-Nazis and KKK racists, you'd think Republican presidential contenders would be careful about addressing meetings called by the David Duke figures among them.

"We," said Jon Stewart, getting more serious last month than one usually expects, "are definitely not living in a post-racial society." What he didn't say-- and couldn't have known as the time-- is that the D.A.