Two stories
dominated political news this week in the United States, which I was
able to watch from the inside as I made a family visit, and from the
inside their effects seemed to be interpreted in a curiously backward
logic, which speaks to way politics is played in America.
On Tuesday, not far
from where I was staying, a 28 year old woman, Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, scored an amazing upset in the Democratic party
primary for New York’s 14th Congressional district,
defeating Joe Crowley, a 20-year incumbent who was considered the
front-runner to replace Nancy Pelosi as minority leader in the House, and who, at 56, was at least 20 years younger than the three Dems higher than him in the party hierarchy.
The next day,
81-year old Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme
Court, effective at the end of July. Though he seemed to be tacking
well to the conservative side in recent years, Kennedy was still considered
the ‘swing vote’ between right and left on the nine-member court.
His resignation gives President Donald Trump the chance to appoint another
young die-hard rightist, in the mould of Neil Gorsuch, whose impact
after being nominated last year has already been great.
The Kennedy
resignation seems timed to allow Trump to make an appointment before
the upcoming mid-term elections in November. Senate majority leader
Mitch McConnell, who when President Barack Obama tried to fill the
seat opened by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, flat-out refused
to provide the Senate’s ‘advice and consent’ as prescribed by
the Constitution, thus holding the seat open until Trump could select
Gorsuch, immediately announced he would this time fast-track the
process. Commentators opined that the rush would be to avoid
Republicans losing their majorities in an anti-Trump landslide in the
mid-terms. Many of the them pointed to the Ocasio win as a sign the
country was turning left.
That analysis missed
the biggest point about Ocasio's win, the difference between national and local
politics, particularly in today’s America. Because on the national
level, Democrats would need a massive swing away from Republicans,
estimated by pollsters at between eight and ten per cent nationally,
to merely eke out a slight majority in the House of Representatives.
This is due to the dual effects of systematic gerrymandering and intense
voter repression, whose roots can be traced to the Republican focus
on local politics in the 2010 midterm elections. By making huge gains
in state legislatures, the party was able to dominate the redrawing
of Congressional districts in the wake of the 2010 US census. By
drawing districts that lumped likely Democrat voters together, they
ensured their majority in the House, even when they polled fewer
votes nationwide in Congressional elections.
Meanwhile, those
same state legislatures were busy passing laws requiring government-issue
photo ID in order to vote, and concocting schemes to defeat
non-existent voter fraud by setting up registration checks designed
to fail people who rented, moved, or simply wouldn’t check what
looked like junk mail. With Justice Kennedy voting with the other four
right-wing judges to allow virtually unlimited political spending,
those who could vote were increasingly influenced by local
advertising closely coordinated with national aims.
After ignoring the
Ocasio campaign (the New York Times, which after al is her local paper, never ran a
single article about her, though she did get mentions in election
round ups), the national media jumped onto her victory to illustrate
their own narratives, tied to national politics.
Ocasio had worked
for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Presidential primaries, so pundits
either characterised her win as the beginning of a revolution for the
Democrats, proving a rleativelt radical agenda could energise their
voters or else as another futile gesture which would fail on the
national stage because moderation is what they see as the only means
of defeating Trump. Neither view was accurate, because it overlooked
the local story.
Joe Crowley was a
powerful man in Congress, a successful fund-raiser (he had outspent
Ocasio by a 10-1 factor even before the final two weeks of
campaigning) for the Democratic national committee, and for himself and his lobbyist brother. He came up
through local politics in his New York City borough, Queens, which also produced Donald Trump. He was known locally as ‘The King Of Queens, but his congressional district aslso
included parts of another New York borough, The Bronx, and after 20
years in Congress, he was perceived as not representing the interests
of that part of his constituency.
Ocasio capitalised
on that perception. She produced a virtually homemade campaign video (you can link to it here) which went viral with over 300,000 hits in its first day. It emphasied her own roots in the
community and Crowley’s distance from the voters in his home near
Washington. She articulated policies which may have seemed
Sandersesque to the national media, but resonated with a community of
working class people, many of them immigrants. Arguing for free university education in the city may
seem radical today, but it was the reality in New York for
decades before Reaganomics changed our perspective of the world.
Beneficiaries of the city colleges included former Supreme Court
justice Felix Frankfurter, author Frank McCourt, designer Ralph
Lauren, polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk, General Colin Powell,
novelist Mario Puzo, artist Barnett Newman and many more, often
themselves the children of immigrants. What was seen as necessary
then is seen as radical now.
The circumstances of
Ocasio’s victory cannot be replicated across America. She won a
primary where fewer than 30,000 voters turned out against a
complacent candidate who, for all his power was very much vulnerable. She
herself will likely be more vulnerable than Crowley in a
heavily-Democratic district where she may not be able to enthuse
Crowley supporters. Her campaign was
based on providing a strongly articulated platform that was a real
alternative to big-spending politics as much as to Republican
policies or indeed Trumpism.
primary where fewer than 30,000 voters turned out against a
complacent candidate who, for all his power was very much vulnerable. She
herself will likely be more vulnerable than Crowley in a
heavily-Democratic district where she may not be able to enthuse
Crowley supporters. Her campaign was
based on providing a strongly articulated platform that was a real
alternative to big-spending politics as much as to Republican
policies or indeed Trumpism.
Nationally, the
Democratic party has been content to present itself as a kinder,
gentler alternative to the Republicans. This is a significant
difference, and it can appeal to a wider audience when articulated
effectively. But underneath its appeal is the famous dictum
attributed to Bill Clinton when asked where the left would go if his
‘third way’ was not enough of an alternative. ‘Where else are
they going to go?’ There will not be a horde of Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortezes arguing with passion and courage a progressive
programme and attracting those voters in the centre besieged with
heavy media spending portraying them as radicals, nor will there be
minority and immigrant voters battling simply to get registered and
be allowed to vote.
Following Crowley's defeat, Trump tweeted that he lost because he hadn't been respectful enough to his president. Missing the point is endemic in the American Beltway establishment, reinterepting every hiccup in their punditry's estimation in a way that will reinforce their previous convictions. Their picture of the centre fails to recognise how far to the right it has been shifted in the past four decades. The lesson of Ocasio-Cortez is not that a determined, energetic and attractive young self-proclaimed socialist is necessary to shift that paradigm within which 'liberal' is perceived as a smear. 
But it requires what Ocasio called the courage to stand up for the values which even a hesitant electorate can see are necessary to combat not just Trump but the modern, Koch Brothers Tea Party Christian Fundamentalist Republican Party, should it survive Trump, rather than empower him to some Erdogan-like President for Life status. Even though a look through history shows that most Supreme Court justices are Republicans when appointed, in the past many of them became bastions of liberal democratic values. Earl Warren had been Republican governor of California when Japanese were intered in concentration camps. Hugo Black had once belong to the KKK. And so on. The odds of Trump appointing anyone who might be considered a 'swing vote' by even the most accomodating mainstream pundit, or who had any human proclivity to slide that way, are very small indeed.
But it requires what Ocasio called the courage to stand up for the values which even a hesitant electorate can see are necessary to combat not just Trump but the modern, Koch Brothers Tea Party Christian Fundamentalist Republican Party, should it survive Trump, rather than empower him to some Erdogan-like President for Life status. Even though a look through history shows that most Supreme Court justices are Republicans when appointed, in the past many of them became bastions of liberal democratic values. Earl Warren had been Republican governor of California when Japanese were intered in concentration camps. Hugo Black had once belong to the KKK. And so on. The odds of Trump appointing anyone who might be considered a 'swing vote' by even the most accomodating mainstream pundit, or who had any human proclivity to slide that way, are very small indeed.
The mid-term
elections in November will be above all a test of the nation’s
acceptance of Trumpism. But it will also take place in the shadow of
the nation’s quiet acquiescence to a sea-change in the political
landscape. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a ripple in the waters. But the appointment of another Gorsuch, or worse, to the Supreme Court, could be the start of a right-wing tidal wave.
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