Barack Obama, Copy Cat?

The biggest story in American electoral politics over the past four years is the tale of the Democratic incumbent, often derided as being ideologically to the left of his constituency, facing a Tea Party uprising, a stinging rebuke at the polls in 2010, and then bouncing back to win re-election. But it isn’t about Barack Obama.

As I recently reported for Capital New York, Bishop, a fifth-term liberal whose district includes most of Suffolk County, a mix of resort towns and working class communities at the eastern end of Long Island, trailed on election night two years ago. But he clawed his way back into the lead over his Republican challenger, businessman Randy Altschuler, as absentee ballots were added to the totals over the subsequent weeks (the race wasn’t settled until mid December). Despite the scare, Bishop seemed to relish doing battle with the Tea Party:

Bishop set himself apart from most of the Democratic candidates in New York’s other swing districts by identifying himself closely with the President virtually from the beginning, and never wavering. Most conspicuously, he was a loud, steady advocate for the Affordable Care Act from the beginning, famously going head-to-head with Tea Party activists at a series of raucous demonstrations against the legislation in 2009. (For a time, he stopped going to town hall meetings in the face of what he called “basically an unruly mob.”)

Bishop calculated early on that his best bet for survival in the era of the Tea Party uprising was to tie himself to President Obama’s hip and then count on the national ticket carrying the day in a district that had supported Obama in 2008 but had backed George W. Bush in 2004.

It was a good bet. The latest returns from NY-1 show Bishop having won by a margin of 52 to 48 percent – not far off from Obama’s numbers in Suffolk County. The district does not track the county’s borders perfectly, but it’s clear that the demographic trends Bishop (and Obama) were counting on, including a surge in Hispanic and black turnout overwhelming the dwindling proportion of votes coming from blue-collar whites, made the GOP challenger’s Tea Party appeals fruitless.

National Democrats are giddy after Tuesday’s results showed Obama winning a healthy majority thanks to this “coalition of the ascendant,” which also includes single white women and social liberals. These changes were mirrored in Bishop’s turf, where the electorate became more diverse (to his political benefit) this fall.