Many people will agree that Teddy Casiño and Risa Hontiveros stood for things they can identify with. So why did they not win? The same people will probably agree that the two were too identified with the left for comfort.
There is something about being with the left that turns off people, regardless of whether they are correct or not in their perception of what the left is and what it stands for. If that were not so, then this country would have long been consumed by the revolution from the left.
But that idea has already long been rejected, even in the very countries that used to aggressively espouse them. The world is moving away from the direction where the left wants to take it.
Besides, there is something about the tendency of the left to instigate disruptions that, to say the least, inconveniences a lot of people, especially the very ones who cannot afford to be inconvenienced -- the poor -- who ironically are the left's favorite choice of martyrs.
Without the leftist tag, the best way to describe Casiño and Hontiveros would have been as idealists. And that would have given then a real fighting chance against the traditional type of politics this country continues to be saddled with.
But the leftist tag prevailed. This, plus the insurmountable odds posed by traditional methods of playing politics, resulted in an unintended conspiracy of circumstances against which there was no escaping for Teddy and Risa from getting swallowed up whole.
It did not help that, aside from being too identified with the left, the communist New People's Army would launch a series of ill-timed attacks on both military and civilian targets just weeks or even days going to the elections.
A country that is struggling to attain normalcy and a period of relative calm and prosperity is hardly a country that is likely to ignore such disruptive social spasms. And when the smoke clears, who do you think it will see and blame?