CT Blue

One of the many positive effects of the Trump backlash is that it is cleansing the Democratic Party of some of its DINO elements, though I must pause to admit that the DCCC is still recruiting them. But stuff like thisis sort of satisfying.

In New Hampshire, of all places, a 27 year old refugee, Safiya Wazir, from Afghanistan has won a primary against an entrenched Democrat.

Wazir’s unlikely path to New Hampshire politics began when she was 6, and her family fled the Taliban in Afghanistan and moved to Uzbekistan, where she was taunted by classmates who called her “terrorist” and “Taliban kid.”

She lived in Uzbekistan until 2007, when she was 16 and moved with her parents to Concord. She graduated from Concord High School and became an American citizen in 2013. Three years later, after juggling jobs at Walmart and the campus library, she received a degree in business from NHTI, the local community college.

Married with two daughters, ages 5 and 2, and pregnant with a third child due in January, she said she never considered running for office until earlier this year, when a friend who works for the New Hampshire Children’s Trust suggested she consider challenging Patten

Her opponent, Dick Patten, represented a district which had a substantial refugee population. Naturally, you might think, he would do what he could to support those constituents and would express admiration, if nothing else, for Wazir’s ascent from those horrific beginnings. But you’d be wrong. He ran a hateful campaign against immigrants, with a giant heaping scoop of misogyny added.

“It used to be the Heights would support a Heights person,” said Patten, her opponent, a former police dispatcher first elected to the New Hampshire House in 2010. “But the Heights has changed, basically, from what it used to be. We have many immigrants in there now, and she’s from Afghanistan so she was treated like the princess.”

…

Patten accused immigrants of taking welfare benefits from longtime residents and questioned how Wazir can be a legislator and a mother.

“She’s got two kids with a third on the way,” Patten said. “How are you going to be in the State House with two kids and one on the way?”

Patten said he is now planning to support Wazir’s Republican opponent, Dennis Soucy, in the November election because Soucy and his wife “have been on the Heights for over 50 years.”

She crushed him, 329 to 143. Those couldn’t have been all immigrant votes, so maybe the people of the Heights are more human than Patten.

I’ll give the New Hampshire establishment Democrats credit. They don’t seem terribly upset that their long time compatriot has been shown the door:

Ray Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said Wazir represented an important generational, gender, and ethnic shift in the district, and her voice would be particularly significant for the state’s growing refugee community, who can now turn to someone with “experiences and challenges like them.”

He called her win “very exciting news” and said she ran a “real campaign” while Patten “misunderstood the mood of the electorate this year and believed he could win without making a significant effort.”

If Trump manages to cleanse this sort of filth out of the Democratic Party, he will have accomplished some good in his lifetime.