The New York Democratic primary is tomorrow Tuesday, April 19th.
According to polling, our voters will shellac Bernie Sanders. I’m here to tell you why they should do so, and why – no matter where you are – the decisions of New York voters might be of interest to you.
New York – the Empire State – is slowly being eclipsed by faster-growing entities in the Sunbelt, Texas and Florida among them, but one thing remains: this state is a microcosm of the Union at large.
Beyond the glittering canyons of Manhattan lie vast suburbs and the broad expanse of Upstate New York, rural and de-industrialized with all the agony this entails.
Unlike Iowa or New Hampshire, just to pull two names out of a Yankees cap, New York is diverse. Roughly one in three New Yorkers is a person of color. In the Five Boroughs of New York City we speak roughly one hundred and fifty different languages. One in five residents of the City is a first-generation immigrant.
You might think of New York as a blue state, and at the presidential level, we are. But at the state legislative level, the local GOP maintains a tenuous control of the State Senate.
Which brings us to the first reason why Bernie Sanders has to lose New York: his pronounced disinterest in down-ballot races. As long as he’s hoovering up campaign cash as he is while simply hoarding it, the state races suffer. This is not tolerable. A Progressive movement starts at the bottom, or it is no movement, merely a fundraising scheme.
Second, Bernie Sanders and guns, more accurately, the Senator’s demonstrated indifference to gun violence. New York has some of the strongest gun control laws in the nation. They are even stronger in New York City.
Senator Sanders meanwhile voted five times against the Brady Bill, the Handgun Violence Prevention Act, and signed on to probably the most odious piece of pro-gun legislation ever to pass the U.S. Congress: the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which shields gun manufacturers from any tort liability, uniquely in American industry.
The Act was passed, coincidentally, to derail a lawsuit brought by the City of New York that was described as the “best chance” to rein in traffic in illegal guns.
The depraved NRA sycophancy of this record does not deserve an electoral reward, not here.
Next, breaking up the big banks – something the Senator seems unsure precisely how to do, but is nonetheless insistent on. To be sure, it’s a free country, that’s his right. The U.S. Constitution places no limits on formulaic cant. But it’s worth pointing out that financial services are the backbone of New York City’s economy and provide roughly 250,000 jobs directly; all the other things that get made or created in Gotham are secondary to it, dependent on it, and as goes the City, so goes the state.
The least New Yorkers can expect and do expect, if someone wants to take a sledgehammer to The Street, is that they have put some remedial thought into where the blows should fall and what comes after. Senator Sanders has failed that test.
Lastly, diversity. We’ve all heard the disparaging remarks from the campaign and its broader orbit, near-dogwhistles, of which votes count and where. We’ve heard about “vagina voters”, “low-information voters” and whatever other condescending claptrap is the mot du jour. We’ve all seen the gargantuan rallies, most recently yesterday here in Brooklyn; a sea of white faces with a sprinkling of Black and brown here and there.
That’s not good enough for the Empire State. We by and large consider our diversity key to what makes us who we are. New York isn’t just a dazzlingly diverse state in its ethnic composition; it is also the birthplace of abolitionism, of the womens’ rights movement, the LGBT rights movement and the still-beating heart of the labor movement.
Another example? The largest Jewish city on the planet isn’t Tel Aviv or Jerusalem; it is New York City. New York is proud mother to many exiles. The City proves daily that mankind can live together in peace under law. We don’t need #FeeltheBern claptrap to find our place in this world.
To discount our diversity or any diversity at all as so much chaff, distractions from what truly matters is to many of us not just a slap in the face of our friends and neighbors, but an attack on ourselves individually and as New Yorkers. An attack on what we stand for, what makes us who we are. No. Enough of that.
I’ll vote for Bernie Sanders if by some malign miracle he secures the Democratic nomination. Tomorrow, I’ll vote to make sure that contingency never arises. I’ll vote to ensure he loses New York, my home, in a landslide.
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If you’re voting in the City, find your polling place here, or…
If you’re voting outside it, find your polling place here.
Good luck and Godspeed.