Commentary & Opinion

We are now almost three weeks past the November 6th elections, and there's still no resolution in sight to the leadership crisis in the state Senate.

All eyes today are on Ulster County - the fifth and final county in the new 46th Senatorial District to count its paper ballots. After Montgomery County completed its count this weekend, Democrat Cecilia Tkaczyk trailed Republican Assemblyman George Amedore by 920 votes. The outcome of this race could very well decide who controls the upper chamber.

By all rights, President Barack Obama should have been beaten handily by Mitt Romney.  Usually, an incumbent President wins if the economy is doing well --- think of 1996 when Bill Clinton was re-elected, think of 1972 when Richard Nixon was re-elected.   If the economy is not doing well, an incumbent President loses:  Think of Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H, W. Bush in 1992.  There are “close calls” in this analysis – the two that come to mind are the successful re-election campaigns of Ronald Reagan in 1984 (which resulted in a landslide victory) and George W.

Where is my America?  The nation of rugged individualists has ceded its position to those who embrace the command economy. Moreover, a failed record doesn’t mean very much when media panjandrums use barrels of print to boost the fortune of their desired candidates.

      Maybe it is the proximity of Thanksgiving that has gotten to me - but here is a really positive take on the year in politics:

The good guys won. And I don't just mean the President got re-elected.

There was more to it - so let's take a closer look at two specific aspects of the political landscape.

First - democracy was elevated.

Yes -- that may sound crazy after all the bile and nasty TV ads that buffeted us this year. At the fringe the ugliness was there, as it will always be unfortunately.

I have often thought back to a conversation I had many years ago with one of my students. She had come from a rural background with a strong, and in many ways admirable, streak of self-reliance. She was dumbfounded when I quoted the saying “There but for the grace of God go I,” often attributed to a sixteenth century evangelical preacher and martyr, John Bradford. How could I, her professor, imagine myself in the position of people who were down and out, people without jobs who needed help?