At one minute past midnight tonight, Bill de Blasio will be sworn in as the mayor of New York (and will be sworn in again by Bill Clinton at noon on Wednesday, at the public ceremony). Featured now on the website is a piece from Paul Moses on what a de Blasio mayoralty means not just for New York but for the nation, and on why voters -- after selecting pro-business candidates running on the Republican line for the past twenty years -- "this time chose a mayor who finds his inspiration in liberation theology—and by a 3-to-1 margin, at that." 

It’s a dramatic change in direction, and “Bloomberg fatigue” is sometimes a coded way of minimizing its significance. It implies that the public’s desire for change sprang from attention deficit rather than any shortcomings on the part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. ... Please, let’s give New Yorkers some credit for recognizing what their own interests are. De Blasio won because he appealed to the many people who had come to feel alienated in their own city. Voters were given very clear choices on issues at the core of local governance—how to run the police department and schools, and whom to tax—and roundly rejected the Bloomberg approach.

The result is likely to resonate across the country. Any mayor of New York quickly becomes a national figure, and the Big Apple’s experience has been influential nationally on matters such as policing, housing, health policy, and education.

You can read the whole thing here.