East Aurora Advertiser

Editorial: Labels, the Squad, and Buffalo’s Waterfront


Newsrooms find labels useful. Propagandists create and exploit them. The military creates universal, derogatory labels for enemy soldiers. The Gang of Four; the Axis of Evil.

Now there’s “the Squad,” four Democrats, women of color, who have found their way into the headlines with their efforts to push the Democrat Party to the left (another label, we suppose) and their vocal criticism of President Trump.

While the self-labeling may have given them, and their views, more visibility than had they not adopted the label, it has also provided Mr. Trump with a new opportunity to focus media attention on himself and off more moderate Democrats seeking to run against him. Or the Robert Muller testimony. Or anything else. The self-proclaimed Squad has become “the universal enemy” for Mr. Trump. The pejorative use of the Squad label is now likely to outweigh, at least for the more mainstream Dems, any political benefit. And it has turned propaganda-ugly with a poster circulated then disavowed by some Illinois Republicans.

While the Squad may be stuff for political wonks, it appears some of their followers want to reach out from Brooklyn to unseat Democrat Congressman Brian Higgins. The Buffalo News has reported that a group associated with Squad-member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been looking for someone to challenge Higgins in a primary. In our view, that’s when the “all politics are local” rule comes into play.

Higgins doesn’t deserve to be targeted by the “social justice” Democrats. Much of the revival of the City of Buffalo can be attributed to Higgins’ work to actually turn the waterfront into an asset rather than a liability, thus igniting a series of investments in the city and its new-found reputation as a place to live. Higgins recognized that volumes of plans and studies for the revitalization of the waterfront had gone nowhere over the decades. He saw that the grand plan approach didn’t work. He quietly went about accomplishing a plan one step at a time, and importantly found the funding and navigated agency turf wars.

Maybe Higgins isn’t dropping f-bombs while calling for the impeachment of the President, but he shouldn’t be caught in the slash and burn efforts of some of his party’s factions. He’s not in our district, so we don’t have a vote. If we did, it clearly world be to support him, despite differences we may have on some national issues.

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