Editors at National Review Online are pleased to see a member of Congress’ infamous “Squad” lose her re-election bid.
On Tuesday night, the voters in Missouri’s overwhelmingly Democratic first congressional district threw Congresswoman Cori Bush out on her ear. She joins outgoing Representative Jamal Bowman in ignominy as the second member of the so-called Squad to be ousted by their Democratic constituents. Bowman amply earned the reproach his own voters meted out in June, but Bush managed to somehow outdo him.
Even before they assumed office after their first elections in 2020, Bush and Bowman both made spectacles of themselves. In one of their first acts, they declared their intention as representatives-elect to protest against their own party outside Democratic National Committee headquarters, seeking to compel it to adopt a more revolutionary platform. “When we don’t act, people who look like me die,” Bush insisted.
This cry-bully performance soon became a feature of Bush’s activism. “It’s simple,” she wrote. “We want to cancel student and medical debt.” In ddition, Bush insisted, “cash bail is ransom” and must be done away with — but only after we “abolish private prisons” and “decarcerate” their general populations. “Defund the police,” Bush would later declare. “It’s not a slogan. It’s a mandate for keeping our people alive.” And if the Democratic Party failed to act on her demands, she threatened that a withering campaign of emotional blackmail would follow.
That describes the approach Bush took in her effort to compel Joe Biden to abrogate the rights of America’s property owners in 2021. Bush camped out on the steps of the Capitol building to popularize her campaign for a permanent eviction moratorium — even in defiance of the courts. You see, Bush had been herself evicted — more than once, in fact. If Congress failed to act on her demands, she implied (through tears) that the progressive activists she represented would soon come for their careers.
