When your vote total is so low it’s in the “other” category of candidates, you know you didn’t do very well.
So it was for Kaniela Ing on Saturday, who ran in the Democratic primary in Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District. Ing collected a whopping 7,531 votes or 6.3 percent, against 47,482, or 40 percent, for winner Ed Case.
Between Case and Ing were Doug Chin, with 30,283, or 25.5 percent, and Donna Kim, with 21,554, or 18.2 percent.
Then there was the “other” category, where Ing was the decisive winner. He clobbered the two candidates who came in behind him, and he owes his smashing performance, no doubt, to the endorsement of fellow socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the media star who has, it appears, the kiss of death.
Ing Was a Long Shot
Admittedly, Ing was a long shot to win the primary against Case, who had represented Hawaii’s 2nd and 23rd Districts in Congress before failing some time ago in a run for the first.
Case, a fiscal conservative known to side with the GOP on tax matters, and who even voted for a bill to defund PBS, NPR, and Planned Parenthood, also served in Hawaii’s House of Representatives. He is the brother of America Online founder Steve Case.
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A member of the Aloha State’s House, Ing is also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America — thus, the endorsement from Ocasio-Cortez, who has been jetting around the country endorsing candidates … and apparently snuffing out what little chance they had to get a vote or two.
“Two weeks before my race, I was polling 35 points down,” Ocasio-Cortez bragged at a campaign event for the eventual loser. “And we changed that in two weeks because we were talking to people who hadn’t been excited about the political process before.”
Yeah, well, it didn’t turn out that way for Ing. At 6.3 percent, he barely had enough votes to stage a luau.
Other Losers
Unhappily for the new Left, an endorsement from Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t seem to help its candidates, despite all the positive press for the socialist from New York’s District 14.
After Ocasio-Cortez defeated longtime incumbent Joe Crowley for the Democratic nomination, media stardom quickly followed, not least appearances on all the right television gab shows, such as Stephen Colbert’s Late Show and Chuck Todd’s Meet The Press. Then came a packed schedule of appearances on behalf of leftist candidates.
Problem: Three of five lost.
Beyond that, as The New American reported, Hollywood leftist political elites have ignored the attractive if intellectually-challenged leftist. Her big splash there was a meeting at a Unitarian Church.
Pelosi Bellyaches
Ocasio-Cortez is one of the young leftists driving the Democratic Party further left than it already is.
Youngsters such as Ocasio-Cortez are pushing the elderly whites who run the party, such as former vice president Joe Biden, Senator Diane Feinstein, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to step aside for younger “people of color.”
In addition to Ocasio-Cortez, as TNA has reported, joining that drive to oust the geriatric white Democrats are U.S. Representative Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and California State Senator Kevin de León, who won the state party’s endorsement for the U.S. Senate over incumbent Feinstein despite losing the state’s open primary. Up-and-comers who might well push the old white folks aside are Senator Kamala Harris, also of California, and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey.
Sanchez recently said it’s time for Pelosi, 78, to step aside for younger blood, which might have Pelosi a little worried.
Even rank-and-file Democrats are ready for a change.
Now, Pelosi is accusing NBC of trying to stop her from becoming speaker again if Democrats retake the House in November.
Last week, the leftist network published a list of 51 nominees or candidates who oppose Pelosi for speaker.
“I know NBC has been on a jag as one of their priorities to undermine my prospects as speaker,” she complained to Jonathan Capehart of MSNBC.
Maybe, but NBC won’t be Pelosi’s problem. Sanchez and her colleagues in the House will be.
Of course, the almost-octogenarian won’t have to worry about it unless the Democrats capture the House in November. That’s far from a foregone conclusion given what Ocasio-Cortez and her ideological sympathizers, including those attacking cops and reporters in the streets, are doing to the party.
