Soon There Will Be No Quarter For New York's Turncoat Democrats

[TexasTowelie]

Scott Stringer, the city comptroller who dreams of becoming mayor, was asked about the Independent Democratic Conference at a recent town hall on the Upper West Side. “I believe that people who are elected as Democrats should be caucusing with Democrats,” Stringer said, according to a video posted by an activist. “The way we do things is, there’s a Democratic way and a Republican way and let’s make no mistake, in the Trump Republican era, we need Democrats to stand for Democratic principles and ideas.”

It was the type of question that probably wouldn’t have been posed to Stringer before Donald Trump was elected president in November, back when the local political scene was left to the diehards and the various interest groups scrapping for their budget crumbs. To discuss the IDC with even the most educated and politically engaged New Yorkers was to elicit a blank stare or a tentative query for more information. Wasn’t IDC just text-speak for “I don’t care”?

Stringer’s answer drew cheers from the crowd and a “hear, hear” from the activist who recorded the video and posted it to Twitter. Anti-IDC groups like Rise and Resist and No IDC NY have organized protests against the breakaway conference’s eight members and taken to social media to denounce them at every turn. As New York’s Democratic political class mostly enabled or ignored the IDC’s alliance with conservative Republicans in the senate, activists galvanized by Trump’s terrifying rise to power turned their eyes to their own backyard, where they found many things that didn’t quite smell right.

If New York was such a Democratic state, a supposed bulwark against Trump, why did eight Democrats choose to partake in a power-sharing agreement with Republicans? Why was Governor Andrew Cuomo supporting this? Why did it take until 2017 for New York to join 48 other states and stop trying 16- and 17-year-olds as adults?

Read more: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/soon-theyll-be-no-quarter-for-nys-turncoat-democrats-9874236

[DinahMoeHum]

1. My Indivisible group is working with the NoIDC folks. . .

. . .to primary the eight "Dirty Birdies" (as I call them) out of office in 2018 and replace them with real progressive Democrats.

For now, though, in 2017, we are in preliminary stages as we are concentrating our efforts in the local races (county, city, town, village, school boards, library boards)

http://www.noidcny.org/#