Pushing the Extremes

Candidates on the far left and the far right faced primaries on Tuesday

Images courtesy of Yahoo News

There were two closely watched primaries yesterday that, to many observers, represented the extremes of both political parties. And they had very different outcomes.

In New York, Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman, an outspoken critic of Israel and a firebrand of the progressive left, lost the battle to retain his seat to his more centrist challenger, George Latimer. Bowman is known for his bombastic and often profane utterances as well as his aggressive confrontations with opponents. His loss came as a blow to progressives, who had mounted a concerted, last-ditch effort to overcome Bowman’s bad poll numbers. 

But in Colorado, GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert, having made a late switch to a more conservative district, prevailed in her primary. The loudmouthed radical remains a stalwart MAGA ally of ex-president Trump, who had endorsed her, and she handily defeated her contenders after they split the vote and failed to rally the anti-Boebert forces. The heavily Republican CO-4 district will nearly certainly return her to Congress. (Deep breath.)

Opinion columnists have been quick to draw some broad conclusions from these races, e.g., that extremists of the MAGA right like Boebert remain ascendant, and that the progressive left has been dealt a mortal blow. While these two outcomes do add some support for such takes, it would be premature to generalize either race out too far to the larger political environment. That’s because both candidates arrived on Election Day with significant personal baggage, and both went before the voters under unusual circumstances.

Bowman the showman

Long before the war in Gaza began to split Democrats, with Rep. Bowman becoming one of the loudest critics of U.S. policy toward Israel, Bowman had made a name for himself, and not always in a good way. As noted by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, who is no fan of Bowman and compares him unflatteringly to Donald Trump,

On the House floor, he heckles speakers. In and around the Capitol, he likes to shout taunts at Republicans (“freaking cowards!”), then engage in screaming matches with those who take his bait.

His behavior is unfortunate, because Bowman’s left-leaning economic priorities deserve a real champion who can advance them seriously, not one who seems to relish the spotlight.

While his antics may have played well on social media, where outrage and public stunts are regularly amplified algorithmically, it rubbed many of his constituents the wrong way. Back in more staid Westchester County, New York, the sense that Bowman was out of touch and out of line grew. And outside of the “Squad” of progressive House members of color, of which Bowman is a member, his congressional colleagues also tended to keep their distance, with “establishment” Democrats like Hillary Clinton even endorsing his opponent Latimer over him in the primary.

There was also the “incident” around the fire alarm. Bowman was caught on video pulling a fire alarm in a congressional building just as a critical vote on the House floor was happening. Democrats were trying to stall for time to read a GOP House bill to avert a government shutdown. Bowman claimed he pulled the alarm by accident, but the circumstances were suspicious. He pled guilty and paid a $1,000 fine while issuing an apology to the Capitol Police.

An ill-considered move like that might be forgiven under such fraught circumstances, but Bowman continued to draw outsized attention with his actions and rhetoric. In the primary, he accused his opponent of being a racist while cursing pro-Israel groups with expletives, and the contest soon became one of the ugliest, and certainly the most expensive, in history.

Bowman became the target of AIPAC, a powerful pro-Israel lobby, which spent $15 million in negative ads. (AIPAC also spent millions against him in 2020, when Bowman unseated a pro-Israel incumbent.) AIPAC’s ads steered far clear of the question of Gaza but instead focused on Bowman’s “disloyal” votes against the bipartisan debt ceiling bill and Joe Biden’s signature bipartisan infrastructure deal. Bowman stated that he had voted “no” on the latter because it did not include liberal social spending priorities such as increased funding for child care.

That position, while arguably principled, was not politically strategic. And the same could be said for many of his more recent positions on Israel. 

Westchester County has one of the nation’s densest populations of Jewish residents. Despite this, Bowman struck a position on Gaza and Israel that may have endeared him to younger minority constituents but cost him core support from older Jewish voters. As the Washington Post reported,

Bowman, who has long been critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, angered some Jewish constituents when, in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacre, he called for a cease-fire and accused Israel of genocide. He was one of only nine Democrats to vote against a resolution weeks later avowing support for Israel and condemning Hamas because he said it didn’t mention Palestinians’ hardships.

Setting aside the deeper question of whether Bowman was in the right to take this stance, it was widely understood that such actions would inevitably lose him voters in Westchester County.

As polls showed him losing the race to Latimer, Bowman faced a choice: He could tack to the center, which might have been politically wise given the redrawing of his district to include more moderate voters, or he could remain defiant.

Bowman chose the latter, even bellowing at a recent rally, “We are gonna show fucking AIPAC the power of the motherfucking South Bronx.” This was both inflammatory and a bit confusing because Bowman’s district does not actually include the South Bronx, even though that was where he held his rally. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), whose district does include the South Bronx, called the moment an “unhinged tirade” that was “unbecoming of a Member of Congress.”

In the end, Bowman relied on turnout from his base of progressive supporters and national figures such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to drive enthusiasm at his rallies. It didn’t work at the ballot box. His opponent’s more “drama-free” style of campaigning led to a lopsided defeat, with Latimer leading Bowman by 17 points as of this morning with 84 percent of the vote counted.

Boe-boe no bye-bye

A relatively unknown Democrat named Adam Frisch nearly took out Rep. Boebert out two years ago in the 2022 midterms. It was the closest House race in the country, with under 600 votes separating the two candidates in a deeply Trumpy district.

That signaled big trouble for Boebert. And Democrats could smell blood. Frisch announced he would be running again in 2024 for Boebert’s seat, and the idea that she could be defeated with just a bit more turnout might have spelled her doom.

Then, on top of that, there was the “incident.” As you might recall, Boebert behaved very badly in public at a theater in Denver. As New York Magazine colorfully described the series of acts by this enfant terrible,

It already didn’t look great for Lauren Boebert when she got kicked out of a Denver theater for being disruptive during a performance of the Beetlejuice musical — or when video emerged of the voluble Republican congresswoman being escorted out of the theater. But that was hardly the end of this saga. A second video showed Boebert vaping in front of a pregnant woman, who claimed that the lawmaker refused to stop doing so when asked. The story really went nuclear when a third surveillance video leaked, showing that Boebert and her date were getting awfully comfortable with each other during the show.

The video showed Boebert engaging in heavy groping of her date at the theater, with children around them, exposing her own hypocrisy as a “Christian” woman of faith and morals.

Nor did her role as a wife and a mother hold up well this year. Her ex-husband was arrested earlier on suspicion of misdemeanor assault, criminal mischief, prohibited use of a firearm, obstructing a peace officer, trespassing, and disorderly conduct in connection with two incidents. And her eldest son Tyler, 18, was arrested in connection with a “recent string of vehicle trespass and property thefts” in their town.

Boeberg knew that the multiple scandals would not play well in her home district and could drive voter turnout against her once more, handing Frisch a victory in November. She caught a lucky break, however, when Rep. Ken Buck, a conservative who is also a frequent critic of Trump, announced he would not seek reelection and resigned his seat earlier this year. 

Buck represented Colorado’s Fourth District, which covers the eastern plains of the state and is more solidly Republican. Boebert, sensing calamity in CO-3 should she remain, moved to CO-4 to run for Buck’s vacant seat.

Tellingly, unlike Bowman’s misbehavior and bellicosity, none of Boebert’s considerable negatives were viewed that way by the plurality of GOP primary voters who checked her box. And despite—or perhaps because of—her poor behavior, she received a coveted endorsement from Donald Trump. Opposition to Boebert failed to coalesce behind a single challenger, and as of this morning, Boebert has 43 percent of the vote, and her nearest opponent has only 13 percent.

But her victory, painful as it is to see, reveals a deeper problem for the GOP. In a more contested district like her former CO-3, even one that went solidly Republican in 2020, Boebert might well have gone down to defeat. The only reason she survives today is because she had a lateral move handed to her. Voters in more purple districts don’t seem as willing to put up with MAGA extremists who constantly behave badly. 

Sensing the mood in the district Boebert had just fled, national Republicans worked hard to ensure that Frisch’s opponent would not be the most extreme choice, despite reported efforts by Frisch to elevate the Trumpiest one to the top. As a result, the GOP voters chose a more establishment candidate to run against Frisch in November.

Some broader thoughts

Bowman and Boebert represent the “horseshoe” of politics that pundits are writing a lot about recently and voters are starting to recognize. Extremism, bullying, and foul language or behavior, along with the candidates who deploy them, are being rejected by the center, even while extremism edges the two ends closer.

There is of course a vast difference between the goals of the parties’ extremes. The far right wants to end our democracy, restrict the rights and freedoms of women and minorities, and rule through a Christo-fascist new American order. The far left wants a quick end to the war in Gaza and prioritization of healthcare, education and green energy. The two sides are not the same.

But bend the horseshoe far enough, and the tactics of the extremists begin to turn moderate voters off in equal measure, with the substance of what they seek completely lost in the noise. Our civil discourse is clearly better off without the Boeberts and the Bowmans of the world. But as Tuesday’s results show, one party is still willing to push them out of power, while the other not only welcomes their misdeeds and is held willingly hostage by their largest extreme faction, but also remains fully prepared to nominate the worst among them as its presidential candidate.

It will be up to the center, once again, to reject extremism and return us to more drama-free politics. Joe Biden may be boring, and he may be old, but he represents calm, measured and competent government. It is this that the electorate must understand and choose this November.