There are a lot of easy to explain reasons why Barack Obama probably won’t come to Georgia to campaign on behalf of his newest best friend, Jim Martin. (I say newest because former Senate opponent and DeKalb county CEO Vernon Jones is still taking great pains to point out that Jim Martin voted for John Edwards in the Georgia Presidential Preference Primary, even though Edwards had already dropped out of the race).
Obama is, as he should be, building his team to manage the country through a set of unprecedented crisis. In addition, he may not want to unnecessarily risk capital on a race that is probably a loser for his side. The contrarian in me tells me there is one possible other good reason: Obama doesn’t want Jim Martin in the Senate.
Despite Martin’s snub in the primary, I don’t believe it is anything personal. It’s just business. Obama is already taking heat from the Netroots, those left of the left, who created him. They aren’t happy with some of his early appointments, and believe they are too centrist. They are beginning to fear that Obama may actually try to govern from the center, instead of the lurch to the left that they believe they were promised in the primary.
The Dems picked up Senate seat 58 yesterday. There’s a very good chance that they’ll pick up seat 59 in Minnesota when the recount, or the recount of the recount, or the court interpretation of the recount, gives the Dems the numbers they want there.
If Saxby loses, and the Dems have their 60 seats, they have no excuses on why the far left can’t be placated. All the looney fringe stuff that the Dems use to fire up their base will either have to be voted on, or the Dems will have to explain to the base that they were just being used, and they’ll have to settle for far less “progress” than they were promised.
Fessing up to the base isn’t easy. Just ask the pro-lifers in the Georgia General Assembly who refuse to vote on the “Human Life Amendment”.
As long as the filibuster remains a technical possibility, Republicans can continue to be the official excuse why the democrats aren’t able to pass their “progressive” agenda.
I believe Barack Obama is an intelligent man, and can make political calculations with the best of them. I also believe he learned from the first two Clinton years that if you over-reach, your majority status can easily become a memory. And I believe that, while there will be some serious moves to the left under President Obama, he will want to carefully pick and choose those issues, and pepper them with some center or center right initiatives to give him proper cover.
As such, Jim Martin may have to be a sacrificial lamb. Saxby Chambliss may need to remain in the Senate to provide the Obama administration the excuse to not do all the things the netroots believe must be done to make the world an eco/vegan/carbon-free/peta-friendly paradise.
And I’m fine with that.
{ 36 comments }
Great point.
You may add that no matter who wins the seat, Pres. Obama will have a person he can work with.
Martin will work with his own party no matter what and Saxby will be a moderate Rep. who Pres. Obama can count on to cross party lines in the Senate. Oh, and he can point out that he did not campaign against him for extra credit.
This is a win win situation for the Pres. elect.
Obama wants to be the next Great Communicator – the Reagan of the Left. No question about it. What he does not need right now is to risk a defeat even before he takes office. He didn’t win in Georgia, and coming here to help Martin would probably rally the Republicans more than it would the Democrats. Now if Obama came here to support Martin in order to ensure his defeat for the greater good – well, then you’d really have something. But the runoff probably isn’t going to be close, so there is no point in doing something so diabolical.
You sure are a smart feller, Icarus. Excellent perspective.
Great post!
Icarus, you are correct. I just wish you were not telling what moderates knew. Keeping Saxby helps buffer against the far left demands. I don’t think President-elect Obama is crazy about party politics anyway; it’s just a necessary part of the process.
I’m calling BS on the Obama wanting to have less power than he can thing. Just like the “center-right” nation thing, it wasn’t Clinton’s overreaches that got him in trouble. One of his highest approval points was when he faced down Newt Gingrich and forced the Great One to go in the corner and hold his face until it turned blue (and the government shut its doors due to a refusal to pass a funding bill). His numbers didn’t go down until that whole fellatio affair (pun perhaps intended).
Now, Clinton did arguably get his health care plan shanked by Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell at a time when times were relatively good and health costs hadn’t gone on double-digit growth for more than a dozen years. That could have been some overreaching.
But, for the first term, I think President Obama will have more than enough on his big plate to keep both left and center happy. Lots of people want / need affordable health care, shifting to an alternatively powered economy is a strategic necessity, and it is time to close out Iraq. Getting those three things done is already going to be a lot of work.
Also, while I don’t see Obama going all over the state for Martin, I wouldn’t entirely rule out a visit to Atlanta for a big push. Clinton and Gore’s arrival weren’t announced in more than a week in advance.
Finally, we all are assuming Lieberman will vote like a Democrat on cloture. He’ll probably go McCain “maverick” on us so he can get his daily stroking by Fox News and David Broder.
the senate is already filibuster proof with the handful of liberal gopers like snowe, collins, lugar and specter always ready to jump ship.
add moderates like saxby, johnny, graham, mccain and others to the mix and you probably start getting close to a veto proof senate.
To some extent, and I can not believe I am writing this…I agree with Icarus.
I do disagree on some of the reasons why. Or that there is even a Democratic base. Netroots mean nothing. They are not the ones that are paying for the transition, inauguration and were not paying for most of the campaign (they did contribute significant amounts, I will give them that much.) The democratic base is a huge coalition of interests…which is something the GOP is going to have to work on now that the evangelical right is too far right and the American people forgot what the word federalism means…or even that it exists.
Coming to Georgia is a risk not worth making though. Chances are that Saxby will win. If President Elect Obama visits and Martin loses…he looks weak.
Oh yeah…
Three Jack…you are an idiot. Stop being bitter about your life’s failure and blame yourself for not being smart enough or working hard enough.
You are just like these thousands of bitter baby boomer’s and their kids that think the left and center are to blame for their lack of success.
Grow up.
gc, thanks for the advice. i’ll file it right next to the invitations to attend gop victory rallys for saxby you f’n moron.
This isn’t even a race. Why would Obama lower himself to campaign for a loser?
Now is not the best time for Obama to come to Georgia. Lots of racists with guns who are really mad that Obama just got elected. You do the math. “Somebody’s gotta say it.”
GC
FYI
Conservative columnist tells GOP to give up on God
It’s always dangerous for a conservative to mess with the Republican Party’s evangelical Christian base. During his 2000 presidential campaign, John McCain criticized Jerry Falwell and lost to George W. Bush in the Republican primary. Prior to his 2008 presidential run, McCain made peace with Falwell. Apparently, conservative columnist Kathleen Parker hasn’t learned McCain’s lesson, and she isn’t in a conciliatory mood.
Parker had first stirred up controversy on the right back in September, when she said that Sarah Palin wasn’t qualified to serve as vice president. That position earned her brickbats from her readers and even some colleagues. But Wednesday, in a column for the Washington Post, she went all in, arguing that the GOP needs to shake off its association with evangelicals to maintain it’s long-term electoral viability. While she was at it, she tossed in a few insults directed at the faithful within the party, writing:
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/11/19/kathleen_parker/index.html
Three Jack
I am curious since you supported and help elect lawmakers that brought us No Child, Farm. Energy, Drug Prescription, Highway…… what is your definition of being conservative via policy?
Also why did you support and think the out of control debt driven economy was good fiscal policy?
konop, wtf are you talking about? you have no idea what i support if you think i support nclb, drug prescription, farm, etc.
have you noticed my opposition to saxby because of his votes on these bills plus the failed bailout program?
Three Jack
Did you not vote for Bush?
There are some fallacies in Icarus logic…again. First, despite the GOP’s attempts to paint all things Democrat as “far-left or Marxist or socialist or my personal favorite from Bill O – secular progressives” Martin would represent Georgia and would be expected to vote like a blue dog democrat, not with the liberal wing. He won’t always vote with the majority. The GOP has a total lack of understanding of the netroots. There is no monolithic view among the netroots. Some will be patient with Obama and others will criticise him. Most will understand that the Blue Dogs don’t always see things the way the majority of the party does. Obama has proven with Lieberman that he is willing to have dissenting views within the Democratic party. He has also demonstrated with Lieberman that he is sufficiently independent to call it the way he sees it; regardless of those who were calling for Lieberman’s head on a post.
Finally, cotrairian implies a certain amount of counter conventional wisdom, illogic and guessing. There are a 100 reasons why it is logical for Obama to want Martin and they far outweigh the “what if’s” and suppositions launched by Icarus. The only part of the post I can agree with is, there is no reason for Obama to gamble any political capital for any campaign at this point.
“Martin would represent Georgia and would be expected to vote like a blue dog democrat, not with the liberal wing.”
Would you care to substantiate this with anything from Jim Martin’s campaign material?
“There is no monolithic view among the netroots.”
Absolutely correct. It’s a loose coalition of people who are bat-shit crazy for many varied reasons.
I agree with Progressive Dem.
Icarus has forgotten about the republican principle that guides electoral politics. If Martin were to win this time…he would have to be the blue dog dem that he is (not the liberal whack job that conservatives paint him) if he wants reelected. Plain and simple.
Three Jack…the point Konop is making is that you vote against your interests. If you do not support those programs listed above…why are you going to vote for a man that helped pass them?
Kathleen Parker is right. In the long term, the GOP needs to abandon the irrational evangelicals that have been determining the outcomes of republican primaries (like the 2000 GOP pres. primary). Their selections have lead to some of the worst congressmen in american history…Mark Foley and Paul Broun come to mind as examples that should be fresh in everyone’s minds.
Sarah Palin too. Who could forget that mistake?
GC
Please do not confuse Three Jack with facts it stops him from saying what he feels.
John,
You are not making sense. I disliked GW Bush from the day he announced for President, yet I voted for him twice because he was and still is better than the boobs he ran against. I too was against pretty much every big government program he supported. Who 3J voted for in 2000 and 2004 says very little about his support of such programs.
How would you like to have a proven and dangerous nutcase like Albert Gore as President today?
Doug,
I might like to take a shot at answering the question: “How would you like to have a proven and dangerous nutcase like Albert Gore as President today?”
It is hard to say. It never happened…and all of the b/s conservative & liberal conspiracies about what Gore would have done differently than Bush is irrelevant.
I mean no disrespect by posing a question to make a point…How do you like having a proven and dangerous nutcase like G. W. Bush as president?
I sincerely believe that the only be a few differences. Gore would not have twisted intel to start a war in Iraq and the Katrina fiasco is less likely to have happened. 9/11 would probably still have happened. Same with the dot com bubble bursting. I doubt the sub-prime mortgage would have been as deregulated as it was, but it could have. the Kyoto Protocol would have been signed onto and not lived up to.
Gore would have probably been a one-term president.
There are so many speculations it is futile to attempt to point out non-existent differences between the two. The biggest differences are intelligence. Gore is extraordinarily more intelligent than Bush and would have probably exercised greater discretion…meaning Gore can see further than 5 minutes in front of his face.
GC,
I have no knowledge of what Gore would have done as President. That is completely beside the point. I am referring to his crazy anticts since it was clear he was not going to be President, like his father promissed him when he tucked him into his bed in their Washington hotel.
Gore is completely off his rocker. Listen to his speaches, look at his global warming cult. He is clearly unstable. Perhaps it happened by being so close to his birthright, only to be beaten in such a close election by the worst Republican president since Grant, but I doubt it just suddenly developed.
Bush was a horrible President, but I blame the Democrats. I would like a choice on who to vote for, but they do nothing but engage in class warfare and attack me, who has done nothing but struggle to get where I am. They forced me to vote for someone I would have taken any reasonable opportunity to vote against.
Doug
I voted for Bush the first time because he ran on less government and not being the policemen of the world.
The second time I did not vote for the President. A vote for Bush was a vote for the destruction of the real conservative movement. I made this point years ago as you know. The real question is had the GOP practiced what they preached would the party be in the shape it is in today? As in business sometimes you have to go backwards to go forward.
I have no problem with people not voting. I wish more people did it, or I suppose it is more accurate to say didn’t do it.
Perhaps if the Dem’s didn’t just try to look for the anti-Bush and istead found a reasonable fiscally conservative Democrat, we would be better off.
Class warfare…come on Doug. Be brighter than that. Perhaps the campaign rhetoric does not come out the best way…but both parties have learned over the last 29 years that there presumptive methods of deficit reduction do not work. The dems have been more correct than the republicans…but that is not the GOP’s fault. It is not class warfare though…if you want to see class warfare go to Paris during a labor strike. In 20 or 30 years, if things do not change, then we might see class warfare in the US.
The American people rarely get people they can vote for…that is essentially how our system has evolved under the two parties. Everything is adversarial at, and within, every level of our government. Don’t blame democrats. Blame the people. The system would probably work much better if we repealed a few amendments…most importantly the 17th and 22nd and section 1 of the 14th amendment. It would also help if winning elective office was more a result of a candidate’s character, tact and intelligence rather than who raises more money.
Hold your breath on the fiscally conservative Democrat thing. Obama is the president elect now…not a candidate and not the junior Senator from Illinois. Give him a chance.
“I would like a choice on who to vote for, but they do nothing but engage in class warfare and attack me, who has done nothing but struggle to get where I am.”
And where exactly are you Doug? Did you found a Fortune 500 company? Are you a CEO whose performance has nothing to do with his pay? Are you shipping jobs overseas to China? Did you seduce a bunch of physicists away from their productive work in understanding the universe to cook up ridiculously hard-to-price derivatives when your last memories of calculus were obliterated by alcohol with your B-school buddies ten years ago?
Because, I’m having a hard time sourcing these “attacks.”
GC,
Why is it that you pretty much always have to argue straw men? I did not say word one about Obama, yet you accuse me of attacking him. I am one of the few on either side who is sitting back and waiting for him to actually do something before claiming he is the greatest man in history or the second coming of Stalin. Of course, anyone with your obviosuly liberal mindset who calls himself “Goldwater Conservative” is not one who thinks words have meaning.
odi,
I see you have bought into the stupid rhetoric. As I estimate my taxes for next year, I see that nearly every deduction that I can take starts to run out right at the salary that my wife and I currently make. I could not take the full college tuition deduction because when I was single, I made $200 more than the maximum for 0 phase-out. While married, we make $5,000 more than the maximum phase-out on PMI deduction, and we make more than a few other tax credits and deductions as well.
Forget the fact that I worked my way through college, and paid for every last dime. The Democrats still pretty much classify me and my wife as rich, while they give refundable “tax credits” to people who have no tax burden in the first place.
I grew up in the very Demographic that the Democrats claim to help, yet they have done nothing for me but make me pay for benefits for people who are unwilling to work and make their own way.
I bought a modest house because I knew that home prices were inflated. I got a fixed rate, put money down and made sure that the worst of conditions would not break me, yet the Democrats want to help those that make less than me who decided to live a lifestyle that I could not afford.
The government now wants to allow people who do not make enough to itemize to be able to take the standard deduction and also deduct their mortgage. Without the mortgage deduction (or PMI deduction that I am ineligible for) I do not have enough deductions to merit itemizing, if I could take my mortgage interest before any deductions are applied. So, the tax burden falls further on people of my demographic to pay for the tax breaks for others.
Don’t fool yourself. The truly Rich earn most of their money in non-wage jobs, so they do not pay taxes on earned income the way most of us do. The people that are hurt most by income tax increases are the middle to upper middle class. No wonder the very rich vote and donate to Democrats in such high numbers.
There’s a difference between pulling in maximum tax deductions and being “attacked.” You seem very concerned about how things are going for you relative to others who may be getting pulled from the fire but probably got a few licks from the flames on their way out.
I’ll be a professional, and know that I’ll probably be in the second-to-highest (maybe even the highest) bracket from here on out. However, this was possible due to government-subsidized loans keeping the rates low and affordable. I have spent my entire post-secondary career in excellent state schools with tuition levels that, combined with my working through school, kept my debt level very reasonable.
So, no, it is not simply a matter of rhetoric, just some humility and an understanding that my own position in life is due to a great deal of systemic aid and a system that was tuned to my own particular talents. Lots of hard work went in there as well, but I caught a lot of breaks along the way to put me in front of people to recognize said work.
Back to the discussion of Al Gore, I think one thing is very hard to argue: if he’d become president, he would have guided or forced the Detroit auto manufacturers into producing more fuel-efficient cars (one of his main campaign planks was CAFE standards) and they wouldn’t be in quite the dire straits they are today. I know that the slump in demand for trucks and SUV’s isn’t their only current problem, but it’s a biggie. In general, we’d be eight years closer to energy independence than we are now. Doug, I think you’d better wake up and recognize that global warming isn’t a cult, it’s the best available science and a real hazard.
You know Doug…it is that very mindset that makes you so predictable. The next Stalin…come one. The guy, Obama, has been a major proponent of every piece of non-proliferation legislation since ‘04.
He is smart and capable. That is the hope everybody sees in him.
blame yourself for your problems, by the way. You control two things in your life…everybody does: effort and attitude. I did not get to where I am today by blaming “liberals” or “conservatives” for all of my economic woes. Grow up and take responsibility for not being as successful as you think America should allow you to be…or learn to live with yourself.
Nixon Conservative,
You suffer from an extreme case of self delusion for you to call anyone predictable.
You would be suprised. The mere fact that nearly all discussions on this site get turned into partisan bickering is what makes anything I say predictable.
I suppose having principles makes me somewhat predictable in other regards…seeing as how you merely spit out the party line and care nothing for free thought or independence.
GC,
I criticize both sides, more so than nearly everyone except for Indy. I have said repeatedly, I would support Democrats if they would not make war on my demographic with every policy proposal and the accompanying rhetoric.
I just want to be left alone, allowed to earn what I need to support my family and pay for my health care and retirement.
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