The New Jersey gubernatorial election of 2013 will take place on November 5th.
"We watch this craziness in Washington D.C., where these people don't do anything anymore except yell and scream at each other, they don't work with each other, they don't talk to each other. You know, in New Jersey we just haven't let that happen."
-NJ Governor Chris "Chutzpah" Christie, obviously inbetween physically menacing and verbally assaulting whatever public servants were handy to abuse in the big local crowds.
If you are a Democrat in New Jersey, please stand up proudly and vote for Barabara Buono.
The pro-choice, pro-environment, pro-public education, pro-LGBT rights, anti-polluter, anti-predatory lender, anti-bullying, pro-middle class growth, pro-safety net choice.
The one candidate for New Jersey Governor who isn't planning on putting a big primary parachute on to dump the job this important election is over as soon as the race is in the bag.
Do it for every veteran, every teacher, every student, every struggling son or daughter of Jersey who ever dared to stand up and confront this outrageously enabled hypocritical phony. Do it for every woman who actually wants a champion for her rights and control over her own body instead of a panderer with an eye on being a viable Republican primary candidate in 2016 before the votes for New Jersey Governor are even cast and counted. Do it in defiance of the sickening hagiographic pre-written paeans and odes to the Great Jersey Ceasar from the diverse spectrum of opinion that runs from David Brooks to Ross Douthat that you don't have to even see to know they aren't even fit for wrapping a rotting fish to come.
But no matter what happens when the votes are counted.
Thank you, Barbara Buono. Sincerely. From the bottom of my heart. Thank you for standing up and running against the political and journalistic elites favorite callow, thoughtless, reactionary bully-in-chief in New Jersey. Thank you for your class and your consistency in standing up for Democratic values, policies, and beliefs in the face of the incredible political malpractice of hanging you out to dry instead of standing with you, beside you, and backing you up. Thank you for being a stand-up public servant and not a slick phony of a state politician in a political culture full of cynical BS artists, craven cowards, and empty suits whose guiding bedrock principles might as well be made of a mixture of dry manure and wet sand.
Thank you for being a Democrat to be proud of, a Democrat who fought predatory lending and didn't sit on her hands when it came to a woman's right to choose, protecting the environment from polluters and corporate predators, gay rights, bullying, bolstering our public schools, and thinking that the state and national economy is better off being focused on the middle class instead of the upper crust. It would have been easy to sit this one out. Let somebody else stand up. Instead, she rolled up her sleeves. She's been in it for years, fighting the good fight, and she's a Democrat who got the shaft for standing up against a regressive bully by her own party. Hopefully the lesson that others like her don't learn is to just sit the tough ones out.
Your reward for your efforts was to be treated as if Chris Christie should have just been allowed to run unopposed. Such a stand-up guy. Such a prince. What a crock. What a terrible mistake.
A myopic mistake that I am quite sure will be deeply regretted by many down the line.
I honor the candidate whose reward for fighting the good fight was to be given a big raw deal. A raw deal for the gobsmacking benefit of as preening a regressive bigoted goon as any knuckle dragging Tea Party putz in the nation. A "leader" who is proud to be ferried on the taxpayer's dime by helicopter to little league games, who is more likely to live lavishly on the state's dime when it comes to his comfort and style as the chief executive of his home state, a man who is famous, when he should be infamous, for 'plain tough talk' for his tireless verbal assaults on school teachers, veterans, and underpaid and overworked public servants who dare to speak up. That walk on the beach will be Benghazi boilerplate before you know it.
Do you even need to be told that, someday soon, a lot of the very Democrats who are so quick to give Chris Christie a pass because of a walk on the beach in 2012 will be some of those saying that it was a huge mistake not to take this opportunity to make him earn the job. To take the time to make him a pay some kind of price instead of just letting him raise lots of money and skate his way to a job he is sure to abandon as soon as he can do so via neglecting the good Democrat who answered the call. That sacred walk on the beach will be radioactive Benghazi boilerplate and bad faith water carrying for whatever reactionary nonsense has to be pounded out of the puke funnel to win a national GOP nod before you know it.
If only those, especially those Democrats, who are inevitably going to suffer a regressive and temper tantrum filled laundry list of regrets after election day were all cut from a Buono's cloth. The next time you read about how a generic Democrat is hypothetically very competitive, on paper, if only the Democratic Party could find a warrior willing to stand up and accept the challenge of actually sticking his or her neck out, I want you to think about Barbara Buono. Like there was no value, no long term gains to be garnered down the line, in spending some serious time backing up the nominee of the party in direct proportion to her standing up instead of sitting out. In torching and excoriating as phony a Republican as they come.
America will not be better off if America's Big Bully wins his temporary slumming slot on the path to the great GOP primary pit road by 20+ points. New Jersey's women, working class, and poor certainly won't. His future is going to be chock full of pandering to the Hard Right. His lasting 'thank you' to those Democrats who did him a serious and seriously undeserved solid will be the back of his hand and his snide and cynical lasting contempt. No walk on the beach should be rewarded so lavishly, because the reward for the reward will be measured in pain, misery, and abuse to those who should be provided with the most protection from bringers of bad tidings in the service of those who have the most of everything in America.
If you are a Democrat in New Jersey, please stand up proudly and vote for Barabara Buono.
But no matter what, a toast to Barbara Buono. I will not forget what you have done here. Ever.
I hope that someday, when the inevitable bad things come and people realize that giving Christie such a pass was a big mistake, that you get another shot at the job you stood up for.
And the systemic and sustained support a warrior like you and yours so richly deserve.
