Jay Jacobs, Chair of the New York State Democratic Committee, sees Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez not only as a threat to the moderate majority in the Democratic party, but to the very future of the party which has yielded disappointing results in local elections in New York, like everywhere else across the US.
Adding insult to injury, the Congresswoman from the Bronx has been pointing the finger at fellow Democrats who have lost seats in the House as well as in local elections, suggesting it was their fear of progressive ideas that did them in. This made Jacobs furious, enough to go to media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s NY Post to let out his rage.
“AOC has no standing on how to run a general election in the suburbs and upstate. AOC is in a district that’s 6-1 Democrat and she couldn’t find a Republican in her district with binoculars,” Jacobs told The Post on Wednesda, and added a challenge: “I invite AOC to come to Long Island and stand for election in one of our districts. You’ll see different results,” Jacobs said.
Or as The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols put it the other day: “She got elected in a district where a ham sandwich with a D carved on it would be elected.”
Jacobs blames the “defund the police” agenda, combined with violence and looting, for Democratic losses in purple districts. He is also convinced that notions of socialism, loose law and order and racial riots created the trifecta that terrified suburban and upstate voters.
Democrats held 40 seats in the 63-seat senate, and needed only two more seats to achieve a two-thirds super-majority. They already have such a super-majority in the state assembly. Having both houses under total control would have changed their relationship with Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Jacobs described his aspirations on the eve of the Nov. 3 election to 18 News: “The governor and the assembly and the senate are going to work together collaboratively and cooperatively, I’m sure they will have their disagreements but I don’t see the senate and the assembly overriding gubernatorial veto’s I don’t think it’s going to work that way I think there’s going to be a lot of things hashed out well before it gets to anything like that,” he said.
Whether he was sincere or not – Jacobs is on very friendly terms with Cuomo – his party will retain the majority in both houses, but the super-majority… Who knows. The official results are not out yet, so it’s not clear whether the party’s state chairman’s wishes have come true. But we’ve all seen Democrats from California to the New York Island falling short of their own expectations, and not because they didn’t break far enough to the left. The opposite is probably true. And, according to The Post, in New York State, Republicans were leading Democratic incumbents and in traces for vacant seats on Long Island and Staten Island and a few more state senate races – but some 1.5 million absentee ballots are still being counted.
AOC told CNN on Wednesday: “I really believe we need to come together and not allow Republican narratives to tear us apart,” by which she cast the boss of the Democratic party in her state in the role of a Republican.
“It is irresponsible to pour gasoline on these delicate tensions in the party,” she said, even as she was opening a nice container full of gasoline and pouring it on the entire leadership of the Democratic party.