Election 2013: The Takeaways

Among my observations of the election results of 2013:

Chris Christie is the biggest winner and the biggest loser of this year's elections.  He won nearly 61 percent of the vote and he probably got more Democrats to vote for him than to endorse him, and he got a lot of Democratic endorsements.  But he alienated Tea Partiers for being too pragmatic and too accommodating to traditional Democratic constituencies, even though he has a staunchly conservative record.  It won't be clear sailing for his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. 

Occupy Wall Street activists in New York City finally realized that the best way to advance their causes is to get out and vote, as well as get out the vote.  And so Bill de Blasio won a huge victory  in the New York City mayoral election on a program of income equality and a city that works for everyone.  This progressive energy will help push Hillary Clinton and other prospective Democratic candidates for President in 2016 as far to the left as Republican prospects for the White House are pushed to the right.  And then we'll have a real race.   

Virginia is in many ways a Republican state, but even when faced with the prospect of having a hack political Democratic operative like Terry McAuliffe as their governor, they'll happily pick him over someone like the horrible Ken Cuccinelli.  The fact that the Hoochie Coochie Nellie Man came within three percentage points of winning the governorship, though, has convinced Tea Party Republicans that he could have won if only the Republican Party had given the misogynistic bastard more support.  This, in turn, gives them an excuse not to back Chris Christie.  Nevertheless, the rejection of Cuccinelli in Virginia  and the successes of de Blasio and labor leader Martin Walsh in the mayoral races of New York and Boston, along with Christie's pragmatism in New Jersey, suggests that America has gone as far to the right as it's going to go.

Except in Washington State, where voters rejected - yes, rejected - an initiative to require genetic modification labeling on foodstuff products . . . which can't quite be called "food."  But, given that major corporations will spend millions of dollars fighting such initiatives so that enough voters are taken in by their propaganda and do their bidding, this vote result can't quite be called "democracy."