It is humbly submitted here that had Avlon versus LaLota happened in any November subsequent to 2024, Sag Harbor’s historian and author, former CNN commentator and anchor, participant in South Fork 5Ks, and 2023 Pierson commencement speaker would have won.
In times of national moral crisis, it makes sense to turn to a man who can quote from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.
That may be an academic argument, so let’s get down to brass tacks. Chuck Schumer’s a problem. And so is the gerontocracy.
The Senate minority leader turned 75 last month. Even if you don’t believe that fast-on-his-feet, hip, telegenic, media-savvy Mayor-elect Mamdani, age 34, is the new face of the Democratic Party, you must admit the son of a Brooklyn exterminator is not with the zeitgeist, from the hair plugs to the granny glasses to the schlubby delivery and demeanor.
Full disclosure: It’s possible I’ve been pushed over the edge by his repeated eviscerations at the hands of Jon (“The Daily Show”) Stewart, who seems particularly set off by our senior senator. (It’s also possible that Stewart can’t stand their increasing resemblance.)
Beyond outward appearances, though, the real final straw may have been the spectacle of the backroom dealmaking to end the government shutdown, and the sinking recognition of the weakness at the top of the loyal opposition.
Schumer’s a Biden figure. Biden, who dodderingly short-circuited both the big D and little d democratic processes in bailing out of the last presidential race just in time for no convention and leaving us with Kamala Harris, when any one of a number of governors off the Dems’ deep bench — Beshear, Newsom, Pritzker — would have won.
Sigh, yes, three straight white men. You have to play with the electorate you’re dealt, and there were problems with this one even before the intellectually diminishing effects of smartphones and social media. Who can forget 2000, for instance, when the presidential primaries could have led to a high-minded, high-character general election debate between Bill Bradley and John McCain, and instead we got Bush v. Gore.
I’ve certainly been wrong before, having pegged former Fourth District Representative Kathleen Rice as a rising star — from a big Irish-Catholic family in Garden City, former federal prosecutor and Nassau County D.A., good on the stump, tough debater, ginger-haired and attractive (hey, it’s politics). Not only that, she won office in 2014 by beating Bruce Blakeman, now the reactionary Nassau County executive about to run for governor.
After 2022, however, she opted for “the private sector,” in the Reagan-era phrasing. Constant fund-raising demands, hyperpartisanship, they take a toll.
And yet the Senate does have the more leisurely six-year electoral pace going for it, does it not? Think it over, John Avlon. Nov. 7, 2028. It’ll be here before you know it.