You have a point about it being less true. But I think it was still mostly true back then. Senator Pothole might not be the best example for two reasons: one, his being part of the downstate political apparatus And two, his ethnicity in a city with a large Italian ethnicity. An ethnicity that is shrinking within the city, that has less people born in Italy than before and where many of those Italian-Americans have left the city for greener pastures.

If the city didn’t want Senator d’Amato, the city wouldn’t get him and neither would the state.

A lot of them do seem to be real life examples of the attitude parodied by Mac Davis in his song “Oh Lord, Its Hard to Be Humble”:

“Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble
when you’re perfect in every way…”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/10/01/donald-trump-beer-joke/1488351002/

“…
“I’m not a drinker, I can honestly say I’ve never had a beer in my life,” Trump said in the Rose Garden press briefing. “It’s one of my only good traits.”

Trump joked that if he had been a drinker: “Can you imagine if I had, what a mess I’d be? I’d be the world’s worst.”
…”

One thing a lot of people have commented on about Democrats, and leftists in general, is that they have no sense of humor, especially one of self-deprecation.
Obama tried to tell jokes sometimes; emphasis on “tried.”

And D’Amato had been a senator from NY for nearly 20 years.

That is true now but was not as true then. Schumer’s predecessor was D’Amato, a Republican.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez

But she does look bizarre when she goes all bug-eyed, which is her usual look in conservative media. I wonder how frequent that expression is for her.

No. Chuck and any other candidate only has to appeal to the population of NY state south of Poughkeepsie.

The rest of us don’t matter because the city completely outnumbers us all. I am a native of a shockingly conservative region of a state known to be as liberal as California. And my region is not unique. Far from it. But our population is probably less than the population of a city block in NYC.

Genetics aside, anyone who’s ever attended a meeting of Mormons of varied ages can testify to the extraordinary youthfulness of the attendees. Its their abstention from all forms of bodily ‘poisons’… i.e. smoking, drinking, coffee etc.

Which prompts to mind Winston Churchill’s aphorism; “Never trust a man without vices.”