It has been a little more than 16 years since I loaded up my first post on Room Eight, a group blog, after being asked to do so by Ben Smith, then of the New York Observer, later of the Daily News, Politico, Buzzfeed, the New York Times, and now something else. At the time Tom Suozzi was running for Governor, but every special interest in the state had gotten together and decided to make Eliot Spitzer Governor, and they demanded that Suozzi drop out so an actual election could be avoided. But that would have meant that those who agreed with Suozzi would not have had a chance to express themselves by voting. Suozzi did the right thing, stayed in, and lost. Spitzer resigned in a prostitution scandal sometime later.
Suozzi has won and lost a variety of elections for a variety of offices in the years since, until once again running for Governor this year. And once again all the special interests got together and decided whom to appoint as Governor and as state legislators, and once again demanded that Suozzi drop out to avoid an election, even monkeying with the dates to ensure as few people voted in the primary as possible. Once again Suozzi defied them, stayed, in and lost. Once again this was the right thing to do. You take your shot, speak your piece, and when you lose, you lose.
That could the theme for this blog too. Because after 16 years of rowing into a social tsunami, and shouting into a social hurricane, I find I know longer have the heart and energy to keep grinding out what are, in effect, research reports in my spare time, while also working full time doing something very similar. This will be my last post for the foreseeable future, and quite possibly ever. It explains why I have done this, and why I will now stop.
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