Democrats, Untie
You read that right. Untie the hand you keep fastened behind your backs come election time. The other side fights dirty. They lie. They exploit deep prejudices and fears. They break the law, they break the rules. They make stuff up.
This is your 2021 election take. The analysis of what happened last night in Erie County, New York does not lend itself to easy or quick or lighthearted takes. (I have nothing to offer about any other races anywhere else in the world).
The right in this country is still poisoned by Trump and has jettisoned any pretense of holding policy positions in favor of sloganeering, jingoism, and culture war bullshit. To the extent that Democrats have an enrollment advantage here, it isn’t indicative of a monolith. There are a lot of racist, right-wing, Trumper, WBEN listening “Democrats” out there who just need to see the word “socialist” or a slogan like “defund the police” or be incited by the WengerBauerleBellavia axis of disinformation to vote (R) (or (R) adjacent, like BB).
Yes, it is good that Hardwick won but it should not have even been in question, based on the utter lack of a campaign from his opponent.
(On this point, especial and specific denunciation goes out to that narcissistic toxic avatar of reverse-Midas-touches, Nate McMurray and his dopey henchpeople. If McMurray has proven one thing it is that he has taken the pulse of some the fuck other place and applied it to WNY, and gets it wrong time and time again. Call me when he gets elected to something without the help of a local fascist or when he doesn’t defame good candidates like Kevin Hardwick by regurgitating Republican or Eagan talking points whilst simultaneously trying further to burnish some novel leftist bona fides.)
Yes, it is good that Hoak won and finally that horrific creep who ran against him is out of public office. Hopefully in perpetuity.
But turn to Garcia and Brown. It seems as if you can never run too far right around here and be punished, but if one runs too far left you get destroyed.
Garcia’s ad linking Walton and Beaty as two black female socialist cop-firers was nothing less than racist. It was not a dogwhistle, it was blatant. Brown’s messaging against Walton was similar. She is an “other”. She is not one of us.
“Never count a Buffalonian out” yelled the guy from Jamaica, Queens at a woman born in Buffalo who’s lived and struggled here all her life.
Beaty will literally abolish the police, said Garcia, despite the fact that she is police and outranked him at any given moment.
As to Beaty, if she loses, she was defeated by good old-fashioned racism and misogyny. She is head and shoulders more qualified than any of her opponents.
As to Walton, I think she ran a clean and issues-driven, people-driven campaign and she deserves kudos for that. Unfortunately, that works much better in a primary (especially if your opponent sits it out) than it does in a general. Once you challenge the establishment (writ large – not any specific one) in any way – everyone from developers to city employees – you’re going to catch hell and your path is much steeper. Brown played up people’s fears against Walton and it worked. She was not well-funded when he decided to run this write-in, and she lost an opportunity to define herself before her opponent did it for her.
But here’s what I want to be really really deeply taken in by Democrats in this area. The issue isn’t whether Jeremy Zellner fucked something up or whether the DSA people should take things over. That – and the people who continue to exploit any available factionalism – is an epic distraction that, itself, fucks us up.
The Republicans and the right in this region prove time and time again that it’s ok to just lie, defame, and break rule after rule. And? They are a monolith. Use city cops in your ads? Sure! City workers using city stuff on city time to help BB? Go for it! Kim Beaty the cop wants to abolish the police? Run it!
Beaty went negative against Garcia and brought up some obtuse stuff about his company being shady. Walton and WFP did their best to remind people of accusations and evidence of BB’s relentless and longstanding corruption.
OK, but if Democrats did what Republicans routinely do, we would (and should) non-stop over and over show violent images of the Trumper Q-Anon army storming the Capitol on 1/6 and linking Garcia (and Brown and Mychajliw and Dixon etc. ad infinitum) to the people who would overturn our elections and democracy itself.
Same with Walton – BB wants Republican help? He should wear 1/6 and Paladino’s racist words and all of it.
If Democrats want to win we need to take the fucking gloves off and stop pussyfooting around what these people are. Stefan Mychajliw? He’s a nazi. John Garcia? He’s a racist. Byron Brown? He’s a corrupt puppet of deep-pocketed developers. They all of them get support from the likes of guys who routinely refer to black people as less than human. All of them are in a symbiotic relationship with the people who would destroy America itself – the insurrectionists and the cop-killers and the traitors.
Fucking say it.