Charlie Crist, as we know, is an ideological chameleon who doesn’t quite fill out whatever suit he’s wearing at any given point in his political trajectory. He’s also a certifiable gubernatorial deserter who left the door open for a Rick Scott candidacy. It’s a familiar litany. Would that it weren’t true.
But this election is not about who Crist is; it’s about who he isn’t.
Democrats have it well within their wherewithal to deny Scott a second term: Basically, just turn out. Republicans may be the Party of No, but Democrats can’t afford to be the Party of No Show. Maybe this will be the non-presidential-election year when they see the implications of laziness and apathy for what it is.
And what it is could haunt all of us a long time if too many in the Democratic constituency sit it out–because, well, that’s what they do in off-year elections and, besides, Charlie is just not “one of us.”
If there were marching orders, they would be:
*Damn it, use the franchise and remember who it was that was pushing voter suppression not long ago. Remember the jobs lost by the “Jobs, jobs, jobs” governor: from turning down high-speed rail to turning down the opportunity to lobby for Medicaid expansion.
*Transcend that you’re actually checking a ballot for Crist. Get over it. You’re voting for the only viable alternative to four more years of Scott. Also at stake: many more years of Republican domination and conservative reach–especially when it comes to the judiciary.
And let’s keep context in mind when we see Scott tacking toward the center. You think a Scott who’s unencumbered by the expedience of re-election won’t revert to his Tea Partying ways? You think you’ve seen the last of Eustis and The Villages as symbolic announcement venues? Or dismissive, non sequitur answers to non-Fox media queries?
We deserve better than a re-elected Scott, but we also deserve better than an electorate that would unconscionably allow inertia to permit that to happen. Surely, this is not what American exceptionalism now means. Surely.