Heavyweights like Biden, Harris or the Clinton couple end up in a traditionally progressive state given the high risk of losing it
You know the Democrats are in trouble when you see Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Kamala Harris campaigning for governor of New York State. Two days before the election, the party’s heavyweights should be in the pivotal areas to support the senators and congressmen trying to grab seats from the opposition, but this year they are playing defensive. Very defensive.
New York is a solid blue state that has never run for president since Ronald Reagan won in 1988. The city of skyscrapers is progressive, with a few red spots on its track, such as the Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods of Brooklyn or Staten Island, former summer residence of the mafia, favorite of police officers and firefighters. Still, the state, stretching into Canada, is starting to look more like Ohio than the Big Apple in its seam with Pennsylvania and Lake Erie’s border with Michigan. Thanks to that nationwide and conservative vote, Republican George Pataky managed to seize the government from a beloved man like Mario Cuomo in 1994. It did this thanks to the specter of crime and delinquency that plagued New York City and terrified the suburbs, though the danger therein was more a matter of perception than reality. That’s the strategy the mayor, Eric Adams, served last year to beat his Democratic rivals in the primaries in a city where Biden party supporters outnumber Republicans 7 to 1.
So what is Biden doing this Sunday to give a rally outside New York? Same as Bill Clinton on Friday in Brooklyn or his wife and Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday in Manhattan. They are reinforcing an important state with a blue wall, in which Republicans have opened serious cracks in recent weeks. “If the Democrats vote, we win,” Governor Kathy Hochul told CNN on Friday, who had a 16-point lead two weeks ago and just four in the latest poll.
His rival, Lee Zeldin, knows how to turn crime into blood, according to the manual that won Mayor Adams, Pataky and former Councilman Rudy Giuliani. The party’s heavyweights have rushed to the governor’s aid because if it were bad to lose the House and perhaps the Senate, the defeat in New York would be humiliating.
There was Adams doing fine yesterday in the Brooklyn studios, where former President Clinton tucked Hochul. The mayor has had discordant remarks with the governor in recent days and it was time to make clear the unity of the party at a time when everything is in danger of collapsing. His past as a police officer was a good card to land the victory that Hochul needs if the Democrats are to continue the experiment of power in New York.
Cool commercials depicting scenes of mob violence and bloody crimes, enlivened with heart-pounding music, are repeated on the television screens at every intermission. Among Republicans, crime is the number one voting concern, followed by inflation, which are common to all political signs. But the message has got through to the Democrats that democracy must be protected in these elections. And that is the message that the barons of the party are conveying to them.
“Who disagrees with reducing violence?” Hillary Clinton wondered aloud during the “Powerful Women” meeting she held Thursday at Barnard College with Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Hochul. But the Republicans don’t care about your safety. What they want is for you to stay scared so that you’re going against your own interests,” he said.
There’s no question that the pandemic’s New York is dirtier and more insecure than Michael Bloomberg’s. The presence of homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks and the graffiti murals that spread after the Black Lives Matter riots have heightened the perception of insecurity left by the headlines of Times Square shootings or subway stabbings, but statistics give indicates that Homics have dropped this year in the city by 14% and shootings by 13%. What has risen is violent crime, especially robbery, and especially alerts from the police when a citizen calls to ask what they can do to bolster a case of minor crime, such as the theft of a postal package or bicycle. “Vote for several representatives,” Detective Michael Franco of the Manhattan Police Department, 9th Precinct, advised without hesitation during a call from this neighbor. “With this, they go in through one door and out through the other.”
So-called law enforcement officials enthusiastically embraced Donald Trump’s 2016 candidacy and his heavy-handed pledge. Cops congratulated each other on the streets of Manhattan on the night of their win and took photos with supporters in red Make America Great hats. They turned their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio at funerals for fallen comrades in office and are now actively campaigning to replace the Democratic prosecutor, whom they accuse of invalidating their work.
The massive protests that led to the police killing of George Floyd two years ago entailed a pseudo-seat strike. “No one will risk their life to charge them later and even put them in jail,” an agent confided to this Washington correspondent.
It’s too late to change perceptions. The cards are laid. More than 35 million people have already voted. It remains only to mobilize the voices of the convinced, to ensure that no one takes anything for granted and to remind them that voting matters.
Source: La Verdad
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