There are political defeats and there are political defeats that come with data contradicting your explanation of the defeat, and Hakeem Jeffries’s response to the democratic socialist congressional sweep of New York and Colorado is the second kind, delivered with the confidence of a man who has not read The Intercept’s exit polling.
The four victorious democratic socialists this midterm cycle (Chris Rabb in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York’s 13th Congressional District; Claire Valdez in New York’s 7th Congressional District; and Melat Kiros in Denver, Colorado) won in major cities, which is accurate. Jeffries’s interpretation of this fact, per The Intercept, was that the victories were concentrated in “higher-income districts” with an “outsized focus on issues connected to the Middle East,” which is the House Minority Leader’s explanation for a wave of primary losses in his own party, delivered in language that treats his own party’s voters as an inconvenience.
The Intercept’s reporting, published Sunday, shows Jeffries’s explanation requires ignoring several things The Intercept confirmed. Avila Chevalier beat longtime incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, representing one of the most Hispanic districts in the country, among Black voters specifically, which is not what winning on the strength of “outsized focus on issues connected to the Middle East” in “higher-income districts” looks like in precinct data. Valdez dominated majority-Hispanic precincts in Brooklyn against Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who is himself Hispanic and whom the establishment backed. The coalition The Intercept describes is not a coastal white progressive coalition. It is, in the precincts, something more complicated than Jeffries’s framework allows.
The democratic socialist machine, per The Intercept, won by building alliances between DSA chapters, tenant organizers, labor unions, and mainstream progressive organizations, and marshaling shared resources against party establishment candidates who outspent them. In Los Angeles, the DSA chapter has won City Council seats in four consecutive cycles since 2020, in a city with the demographics Jeffries describes as incompatible with socialist politics. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, DSA-backed candidates have built a council majority. In Denver, Kiros was born months after the incumbent she defeated was first elected.
Jeffries’s framework requires that these wins be explicable as a niche phenomenon that does not threaten his leadership. The Intercept’s data requires that they be explicable as something else. Both frameworks are in active competition. Jeffries controls the House Democratic caucus. The socialist machine controls four more congressional seats than it did in May.
When the Minority Leader explains a wave of defeats as a coastal elite phenomenon and the precinct data shows wins among Black and Hispanic voters, which explanation describes what actually happened?
Sources
The Intercept: There’s a New Democratic Machine. It’s Unabashedly Socialist.
The Intercept: The Left Is Unstoppable, According to Republicans
Raw Story: MAGA reporter gets an earful from annoyed top Dem: ‘No idea what you’re talking about’
