I’ve not had time for blogging over the last few days, but I’ve been a little fascinated by this WaPo article, entitled Murkowski, Peltola cross party lines to endorse each other in tight Alaska races. The title doesn’t quite say it all, either:
[Richard Peterson, president of the Tlingit and Haida tribes], the tribal president, said another motivating factor for his tribe to endorse [Rep Peltola (D), who upset Sarah Palin (R) in the special election to fill Rep Don Young’s (R) seat] was that the other candidates “take hard lines.”
Culture wars have been the norm on the right for decades, but now they’re showing up on the left, principally in the area of transgenderism, although one might make the argument that gay marriage is another cultural war object. To me, it was thoroughly discussed and best served to be legalized by either SCOTUS, as it was, or Congress, as an even treatment of the marriage status of citizens is an important and fundamental aspect of American society, unlike, say, gas taxes.
Errr, back to the point, the Alaskan tribes are on point when they express disinterest or disgust with the cultural wars. They have hard problems to solve, and have little time or interest in stroking the egos of cultural warriors such as are found in the lower 48 states.
And I think a lot, even most, independent voters throughout the States share the value of getting important things done with the Alaskan Indigenous People. Politics as performance art a la McConnell, Jordan, Gaetz, Greene, Cruz, Rand Paul, and so many others on the Republican side of the aisle, but I fear increasingly on the Democrats’ side as well. So far, if the Democrats have echoed the far-right extremists’ cry of baby-killers! with their own child-killers!, I have missed it, but I won’t be surprised if I hear it soon.
So what’s so small, per the title of this post?
A beginning. The beginning of a moderate party. I’m aware of a Forward Party, backed by former Presidential candidate and entrepreneur Andy Yang and others, but if it’s making progress, it’s not clamoring for my attention. But in Murkowski and Peltola, you have members of Congress who are representing a State with strong needs and, frankly, facing a tough future, when we factor climate change into it. That tends to strip away dross and, frankly, minor issues such as transgenderism or the faux horrors warned of by religious zealotry.
So will Murkowski and Peltola found some sort of a moderate party, maybe the Alaska Moderates Party? I don’t know. But there’s surely some potential here, especially if they are successful in reelection campaigns and in the projects they take on and succeed in bringing to fruition.
The far-right extremists of the Republican Party should be looking on in fright, and the Democrats need to take warning. Members of both who pride themselves on their extremism may be seeing their diminishment in Murkowski and Peltola.
Who both still have to survive the ballot box in November.
