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The View from Jackson
By bob
I could analyze Senator Barack Obama's Mississippi win all day--and wouldn't that be a kick? But I wouldn't be able to do nearly as provocative a job as Donna Ladd, editor of the hell-raising Jackson Free Press, and her election-night blogmates.
The post-primary story from the pundisphere was all about the stark racial disparity in the vote, and it was stark indeed, with exit polls showing 91 percent of African Americans going for Obama and 72 percent of whites for Senator Hillary Clinton. But there were other ways to read the Mississippi results, as the Free Press blog points out. For one thing, the strong white vote for Clinton was skewed, as Ladd points out, by Republicans turning out to vote for the New York Senator; 13 percent of the primary voters identified as GOPers, and nearly 80 percent of them went for Clinton. And while older people voted for Clinton, the future looks interesting for Mississippi Democrats; 72 percent of voters under 30 went for Obama, considerably more than the 60 percent overall.
Choice observations from the Magnolia State's progressive universe:
(23) CommentsMarch 12, 2008
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The Unstoppable Harold Ford
By bob
It was tough for any self-respecting progressive to root wholeheartedly for Harold Ford Jr. In his longshot bid to replace retiring Senate Majority Stiff Bill Frist, Tennesee's wunderkind Democratic congressman took the tired old "Republican Lite" strategy and amped it up into something more akin to "Republican Squared." War? Absolutely. Immigration? Inexcusable. Guns? Blast away! Gays? Keep your distance--from each other. Jesus? To Him be all glory.
My introduction to Ford's unorthodox campaign strategy came last summer, when I landed in Nashville International Airport, climbed into my rental Dodge, clicked on the radio, and heard this blast: "Every day over 5,700 miles of border stands unsecured.... Every day almost 2,000 people enter America illegally. Every day hundreds of employers look the other way, handing out jobs that keep illegals coming.... And every day the rest of us pay the price.... I'm Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. For too many years Democrat and Republican presidents alike have looked the other way. Now 11 million people live here illegally...and while most come for jobs, the odds are any terrorist with a map can also get in undetected."
Ford couldn't talk enough about "illegals." Or quote enough from the Holy Bible. Or adjust his accent often enough as he raced across the state, seemingly trying to personally wrestle every voter's doubt into submission. Like Bill Clinton, you hate to like Ford--but you can't help it. With his twinkish good looks and winningly oily charm, he easily out-campaigned and out-charmed his opponent, the supremely bland, moderately conservative Bob Corker.
(4) CommentsNovember 8, 2006
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Real Democrats
By bob
Just one year ago--hell, even a few months ago--the unanimous view among the Democrats' strategic sages was that the only drama in the South this fall would be whether the region's few remaining statewide Democratic office-holders could hold on to their jobs. Could Senator Bill Nelson hold off Katherine Harris, America's tackiest theocrat, in Florida? Could Gov. Phil Bredesen show his conservative cojones by cutting enough folks off state health care to hold on in ultra-red Tennessee?
After the 2004 wipeout of five Democratic Senate seats in the South, many national Democrats were pleased to think that their long-running debate--can we win in the Dixie, and should we even try?--had been settled. Settled in the negative, that is. Thomas Schaller's recent book, Whistling Past Dixie, brought together years' worth of poll-tested memoranda in calling for the Democratic Party to kiss off the nation's largest region. It was just a more polite version of one of the most popular post-election blogs from the bitterness of late 2004: "Fuck the South."
Tonight, the South--aka "Jesusland"--has a message for those national Democratic wizards: No, fuck you. If the Senate lands in Democratic hands, it'll be thanks to Claire McCaskill's triumph in Missouri and Jim Webb's stunning win in Virginia over the man who was once conservative Republicans' great hope for the White House in 2008. It will not be thanks to the candidate who ran the sort of Southern campaign the sages called "perfect"--Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee, who went far beyond triangulation and out-Republicaned his opponent with hard lines on gay marriage, immigration, national defense, guns, and an array of Bible quotes that could whip John Ashcroft in a holiness contest any day.
(21) CommentsNovember 8, 2006
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