The Left and Competent Politicians

Whether a politician is actually competent or not is not something that always shows up at the same time. This question transcends the political spectrum. You hope it appears early and someone who seemed to have potential fails in the primary. But it doesn’t always work that way. General elections are weird these days because there are so few competitive districts/states. So you can have a complete fool like Tommy Tuberville just continue to weave his magic on the U.S. Senate floor because it’s Alabama. Maybe a Republican who is less of a clown primaries him but it’s hard to see a Democrat winning that race. When incompetence does take place after a general election in a competitive district–take Max Rose for instance, who won a hard race in Staten Island and then proved to be a showboater who tried to distance himself from Democrats in a way that did not help him at all, you can lose the race. Sometimes though, the incompetence doesn’t show up until the investigations do.

The difference between the left and liberals/moderates/not-totally-insane-conservatives here is that the left is more likely to see individual politicians as crusades and almost saviors. This comes from the position of feeling the nation is a disaster and change must happen yesterday and every election must be fought that way. That can work, especially in quite leftist districts and we’ve seen some of these politicians succeed. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez remains a quite important figure who has figured out that you have to work with mainstream Democrats, at least to some extent, and that you can do so without losing your soul.

So I don’t know if Cori Bush is more openly corrupt or just utterly incompetent. I don’t know if she saw politics as a way to enrich herself and her campaign donations as an ATM for personal usage. I do know that federal corruption investigations are not taken lightly, especially when Donald Trump is not president. It makes me sad to find out about this. I assume this is the end of her political career and that she will be primaried out. I do know that she pretty clear does not belong in Congress. I also know that it is really important for the left to not fall in love with political figures. They will disappoint. Just because they articulate good positions does not mean they are actually good at politics. It’s also unclear to what extent Bush has been better or more effective or even more leftist on the things congresscritters can make a difference at than a standard Democrat from that St. Louis district. We do need good progressives, yes. It’s important in leftist districts to elect leftists. But we also have to elect competent people and trying to suss out that competence early on is a good idea.