While listening to the coverage of the 2013 Elections, something struck me. Among a litany of local races, judges, municipal leaders, school board council members and the like, a few races stood out and captured national attention.
The biggest story of them all probably was the Virginia gubernatorial race which was exemplary of politics in this era - for all the wrong reasons. On one hand, you had a Republican candidate whose social views were slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun and whose recent qualification for the job was an involvement in an administration rife with corruption. His Democratic opponent’s main virtue was that he wasn’t the Republican. A third party candidate should have been viable, but in a race awash with out-of-state money, the unqualified Libertarian candidate was shut out and only got a spoiler’s percentage of the vote. It made me glad I don’t live in Virginia.
The Virginia race was stink on ice, politics as usual in a state that boarders the nation’s capital which has also embodied all that is wrong with politics in this country today.
However, the other big stories in this off-year election were not close races, but unlikely blow out victories.
New Jersey is a reliable Blue State that the Republican incumbent won by over 22 points. How did Chris Christie manage to be so popular in the Garden State? He is not the typical Republican, at least on the national stage. He is a self-avowed moderate in a party that seems to be racing to out-purity one another (literally in many cases since “primaried” is no longer dealing with birds and RINO is not a misspelling of an odd-toed ungulate).
Christie is a Republican with ideas that the right embraces, of course, because he still has an R- by his name. But unlike the modern crop of Republicans, he doesn’t kowtow to the extremist wings of his party. He seems equally combative dealing with those who feel he should as the teacher he undressed while campaigning.
In rather high-profile moves, he put state before party, literally embracing the pariah President while dealing with the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, and slamming those who questioned him about it. He also finally stopped fighting marriage equality in his state at a time when his continued staunch defense would have looked good come 2016 caucus time.
Even if you forget the high profile stuff, Christie has managed to lead his state and work with a state legislature that is overwhelmingly Democratic. A willingness to work with the other side is not a hallmark of the modern day Republican though one could argue that Christie had no choice in a state like Jersey, it’s a fact that it is the unwillingness of Republicans to compromise in national politics that has caused much of the gridlock in DC.
And if Christie is not a typical Republican, New York City’s mayor elect Bill de Blasio is also the diametric opposite of a Democratic party which has fled to the center to fill the void left when the Republicans fled to the right, leaving their far left representatives marginalized in the political process.
He won by nearly 50 points which wouldn’t be nearly as remarkable had he not been the first Democrat to win the office since David Dinkins left Gracie Mansion two decades ago. More remarkably he is the first mayor to really embrace the term Liberal since John Lindsay, whose tenure goes so far back he was a Republican! (Ed Koch was a Democrat but nobody who lived through New York City during his tenure would call him Liberal; one could say he was ahead of the pack with regard to his shift towards the center-right).
He won by a margin unheard of in modern politics for a major office and did so on a populist message that addressed income inequality at a time when nobody outside of the odd Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, dared broach the subject. Tea Partiers got elected; Occupy Wall Street got rejected, even by Democrats who were scared shitless to be associated with that movement. Yet while de Blasio might not have actually pitched a tent there, his rhetoric has shown empathy towards those who shared the anger and frustrations of those who did.
The far left has decried a lack of representation in a country where a firm centrist such as Obama is deemed a radical Liberal Socialist. In mayor of the biggest city in the country - a city reacting to three terms of oligarchy rule from a billionaire who wanted the city to be a playground for the uber-rich rather than a metropolis with a teeming working class - they finally have that voice as a part of the national discourse.
These two politicians actually share some of their constituents since so many New Jersey residents commute to Manhattan for work. That is how close they are geographically. Yet they couldn’t be more different with regard to how they stand out when compared to Gene Eric ® or (D) on the national stage. And make no mistake - these two are on the national stage even if they were elected to rule over one of 50 states, one of countless cities.
When you add in the mandate-like numbers that heralded their elections, is it possible that these two men will herald in a shift to the left for both parties at a time when they are both farther to the right than they ever have been?
Could these two politicians usher in a Republican party that wants government to work and a Democratic party that wants it to work for everyone?
I think it’s possible. Of course, I am a hopeless optimist, someone who votes diligently and strives to make a difference in my community and among my friends and peers. I have seen where the dysfunctional Republican party and the lack of a true Left have left us, and I cannot stand it.
Of course, this could all be an aberration, a Northeastern bias of mine. And it can all blow away. What if New York crumbles under the new Liberal regime? What if Christie cannot make it out of primaries and caucuses in states where Rick Santorum is more likely to win than a fat centrist from New Jersey?
It all could be nothing. But, imagine the possibilities…