For People Worried About Antisemitism

Bad News – The Candidates Suck

The primary to select the democratic candidate for New York’s 12th Congressional District (NY-12) in the November election is on June 23, and mail-in voting has begun. This primary is the real election, since the republican candidate being chosen the same day has no chance of winning in November. The democratic stronghold of NY-12 is the most Jewish district in the United States, and among the most ethnically diverse. It is brimming with liberal democrats. It is one of the wealthiest districts, the most hard working, and also has its fair share of retirees, families, middle class and poor. It teems with some of the most educated people on the globe. It is an amazing district in so many ways, a tourism mecca filled with the world’s finest culture, museums, business, fashion, shopping, food and sports. For a district this amazing, possibly the most remarkable thing about it is the utter mediocrity of the slate of democratic candidates seeking to represent it in Congress.

Perhaps it should not be that surprising, given the unexceptional performance of the current, retiring representative, Jerrold Nadler. Rep. Nadler is one of the most recognizable figures in Congress — just not, it turns out, to most of the people who elected him. Probably fewer than 100 people in the district could identify a single legislative achievement to his name in his 175 years in Congress. Like most of Washington, his grandstanding is unimaginative and tiresome. He’s a democrat loyalist in the extreme – he endorsed democratic socialist darling Zohran Mamdani for Mayor of New York. He supported President Obama’s failed strategy of Iran appeasement in the JCPOA. He is virulently anti-Trump (though more property bears Trump’s name in Nadler’s district than anywhere else in the world) and regardless of what you think of the impeachment efforts, Nadler’s performance during the impeachment trials was an embarrassment. He’s decidedly weak on Israel and does not speak about or even seem to care about the rise of antisemitism in his party. Sadly, the leading candidates to replace Rep. Nadler are no better, and more of the same mediocrity is practically assured, as the following look at the leading candidates........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)