As the dust settles from Super Tuesday, leaving the Democratic race in an unsettled state - who's the frontrunner today? - it's worthwhile to take a look at what's happening sub rosa in our own state.
The biggest political question for New Yorkers, if not necessarily top of mind, is not whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama secure the Democratic nomination, or how either of them will take on John McCain or, haha, Mittens Romney. It is, rather, the scandalizing condition of our own state government, run by a bi-partisan legislative incumbency whose last interest is in the wishes of New Yorkers themselves. The dividing line between reactionary rot and the will of the people in New York is not a partisan one. It runs, rather, between meticulously protected incumbents and everyone else, including you.
And on that front as well, we finally see change, with a welcome convergence between the national and the state narrative of change. As Barack Obama said, "the world as it is is not the world as it has to be."
Consider this: Sheldon Silver, iron-fisted Albany patriarch of things as they are, elected to his seat in 1976, finally has a challenger in the Democratic primary. That challenger is Paul Newell [1], who made what can and should be considered a first major foray into the electoral arena yesterday, reaching out to core Democratic primary voters at polling places; Shelly, meanwhile, was presumably as always absent in Albany, polishing the levers of the machine that keeps him in power and the State Assembly a joke that ceased being funny a generation ago.
Also new on the horizon is one Dan Squadron [2], running to unseat Marty Connor. Now, the State Senate is characterized by a special kind of rot, remarkable even in the gangrenous universe of New York State politics. Ruled by republicans, it has a fair number of decent Democrats, and a larger amount of what can charitably be called time-serving, check-collecting deadwood. Among the Democrats, Connor is neither the best nor the worst, and like all of them, he is essentially powerless. This should be a real point of debate - how does one evaluate a Senator who, even with the best of intentions, or the worst, has to count the acquisition of office supplies as a major victory, wrung with cost from a republican majority?
Whether Connor is sufficiently in touch with a rapidly changing and developing district is another question up for debate. Judging by Ken Diamondstone's showing last time around, the answer to that may be no. And, if it's posited that what elected Democrats in this state really need is a healthy fear of being ousted from their larded perches, that may well be a rather good thing.
The fear of the gallows has a remarkable way of sharpening the mind. The fear of defeat may prove similarly productive; and New York Democrats need a wake-up call.
As Atrios says: more and better Democrats, please.
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