I Think You Should Leave, Jamaal Bowman

I keep trying to write a serious piece about the (outrageous) annulment of the Romanian presidential elections, and I just can’t seem to get it done, folks. Every time I set myself to marshaling the arguments, thinking seriously about my rhetorical approach, and getting down to the work of typing, *whoosh!*, in comes flying another piece of memorably stupid domestic political comedy to distract me, like a wasp horning in on me through an open window, and I have to stop what I’m doing until I’ve squashed it properly. (Just when you finish thwacking an angrily buzzing Liz Warren that’s been flitting about the ceiling, you turn around and find an AOC slithering in under the patio door.)

That’s a pretty roundabout way of saying that my old friend Jamaal Bowman is in the news again, and we must stop now to take note of it, for it is probably the last time he ever will be. As longtime readers already well know, the soon-to-be-former congressman and “Squad” member from Westchester County, N.Y., was once an endless source of day-to-day comedy for me. Writing about him all throughout 2023 and 2024 was like working the speed bag in a boxing gym — endless reps that helped sharpen my comic timing and metaphorical chops.

I was almost sorry to see the conspiracy-theory-addled, fire-alarm-yanking lunatic lose his primary back in June — or at least I would have been had he not talked his way into his own electoral grave by revealing himself as an unredeemable antisemite after October 7. But without him around to reliably say or do something stupid in the halls of Congress, it felt a bit like the training wheels had suddenly been removed from my bicycle, and I’d have to find more serious matters to write about. (This is why I am professionally required to support RFK Jr.’s HHS nomination on “content” grounds alone: That man’s animal antics resurrected me creatively in August, and I’m counting on the chance he’ll do it again.)

So permit me the indulgence as I pour one last one out for my man Jamaal on this day, the day of his official farewell speech to Congress. He delivered it this morning in the House chamber, alongside fellow Squad reject Cori Bush, which felt fitting: Both representatives were turfed out of office by Democratic primary voters this cycle, and not for their pro-Hamas Squad antics so much as for forgetting they represented their voters in Congress, not their Squad friends.

Which is why it would take a heart of stone not to laugh at how not even all of Jamaal Bowman’s Squad friends bothered to attend. To call the farewell speech “lightly attended” would be an insult to the 2024 Oakland Athletics: Exactly three people — three and a half if you count the intern holding the placard as half a person, which all on Capitol Hill do — came to bid farewell to Bowman and Bush, all of them Squad members: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley. Other Squad members such as Ilhan Omar, Greg Casar, Summer Lee, and local Chicago lunatic Delia Ramirez were nowhere to be found, and I can hardly blame them: I wouldn’t want to hang out with the losers at the Loser Kids’ Table myself, either.

Keep in mind, I don’t know what Jamaal Bowman actually said in his farewell speech — I haven’t read or listened to it, and I don’t plan to. I feel like I owe him that minor kindness, at least, because I’m about to be so hideously cruel to him about the “exit interview” he sat down for with the cable news channel NY1, details of which were published this morning to mark the already forgotten occasion.

How’s Jamaal holding up after his crushing 17-point defeat to well-liked Westchester County executive George Latimer? Not well, it seems. In fact, he would like to report his own murder to the authorities:

As a party, you should have never let a right-wing Democrat who’s a bit older challenge Jamaal Bowman in his primary, because that became a public execution for the country to see. Democrats, you’re going to allow this Black man to be attacked in this way, without any pushback, without any recourse?

Even a cynic like me must confess how impressed I am by this. I didn’t think the ol’ chunkhead had it in him — I failed to properly respect his game. What marvelously oafish, pompous self-regard! In defeat, Jamaal Bowman has finally evolved into his self-pitying Final Form, the phase where he refers to himself in the megalomaniacal third person, as a symbolic Black Man, as if he was once an important historical figure. (The operative word here is “was.”)

Set aside the cheap martyrdom act for a moment. (My standards for Bowman are already so low that I’m actually giving him partial credit for not saying “public lynching” like we all expected him to.) Take note instead of the odious substantive claim he is making: How dare Democrats allow someone more to the liking of the 16th congressional district’s Democratic Party voters to run against him? How dare he not be insulated by the party from the will of the people! Are you really going to allow this to happen to a black man? The sense of entitlement and petulance on display is so staggering that I half expected him to end by quoting Manic Street Preachers lyrics at me.

Bowman’s basic framing of the question insults the intelligence. It wasn’t the Democratic Party that Bowman should have properly addressed his whiny plea to, it was the voters of his own district, whom he ignored and treated as an accessory to his national activist brand until his toxicity and stupidity became intolerable. Only then did a better option present itself. Bowman could have held his seat for as long as he pleased, but instead he gave it away to flog his unpopular “principles” to a national audience; if he is unhappy with the outcome of that choice, perhaps he should have better understood the trade he was making.

I end with good news for the residents of New York, whether it be city or state: Jamaal Bowman says he learned neither patience nor how to control his passions while in Congress, but he did discover that “I’m probably more built for an executive role than a legislative role.” Move over, Ritchie Torres: It’s time to imagine what a fine job Jamaal Bowman could do as governor.