It was too good to be true. A Democrat who was as dumb as Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, as incendiary as Alan Grayson, as anti-Semitic as Al Sharpton, and as radical as Van Jones. Charles Barron would have been a great addition to the House of Representatives, giving pundits and bloggers on the right an overflow of eminently quotable, outrageously bizarre remarks of which to make fun and sport.
In short, Barron would have been a permanent cure for writer’s block.
Alas, it was not to be. The man who once expressed a desire to “slap the closest white person,” who pledged never to salute the American flag, who called Qaddafi “my hero,” and who likened Gaza to a “concentration death camp” lost the primary in the 8th New York Congressional District.
But being a good sport, Charlie left us laughing:
For his part, Mr. Barron called his loss a victory.
“This is something bigger than politics,” he told supporters at a restaurant in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “It’s a movement of the people. And we proved that tonight.”
Mr. Barron also suggested that he was the victim of a conspiracy.
“They had the media. They called us names — the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the white media — because we were endorsed by the Amsterdam News and Black Star. We had the Wall Street corporate elite, the Democratic establishment, and the media all against us. But we put the state and nation on notice.”
Mr. Barron pronounced himself “the best candidate,” adding, “At the risk of sounding like a sore loser, there will be no congratulatory statement made because the other candidate ran a smear campaign [and] showed a lack of character.”
Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries trounced Barron 72-28. The winner of the Democratic primary in this heavily Democratic district is expected to cruise to victory in November.
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