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DEL.ICIO.USObama volunteers headed to Georgia for Martin and Senate runoff
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Associated Press is reporting that aides who worked in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign are heading to Georgia to help Democrat Jim Martin in a hotly contested Senate runoff.
Quoting two Democrats close to Martin’s campaign, the Associated Press said:
The sources, speaking only on condition of anonymity on a matter of campaign strategy, said the Obama field operatives will help with Martin’s grass roots turnout in the three weeks left before a Dec. 2 runoff against incumbent Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss. They stressed that the campaign is still staffed primarily with Georgia volunteers.
My AJC colleague Jim Tharpe had something in the same vein this morning:
Obama’s former campaign workers are now assisting Martin in his 25 offices across the state, Martin said. Those ground troops, he said, are more important than big-name politicians for getting voters back to the polls. Some prominent Democrats have volunteered to come down for his campaign, Martin said, without offering specifics.
Also this morning, Blog for Democracy posted a want-ad, seeking local housing for the new Martin volunteers:
We’re getting a large influx of staff from other states to help out with the Jim Martin campaign. If you can house a staffer for a couple of days, or a couple of weeks, please email Dwayne. I’m told the need is urgent. Please spread the word.
Republicans haven’t been idle. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has issued a web-only fund-raising ad, which declares that incumbent Saxby Chambliss’ re-election is required, if we are to escape the “radical social agenda” of Barack Obama and other Democrats.
Former presidential candidate John McCain, scheduled to be here on Thursday, has sent out a relatively non-ideological fund-raising letter to Georgia voters, inviting them to “go on one more mission with me.”
U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), in another fund-raising letter, was less temperate: “We need every resource we can muster to ensure liberals don’t steal the election in Minnesota, and to stop the MoveOn.org’s candidate in Georgia.”
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Comments
By Orlando
November 11, 2008 2:08 PM | Link to this
That is great news! We need the spark that ignited the Obama campaign to do the same for Jim Martin.
By Aunt Pitty Needs An iPhone
November 11, 2008 2:22 PM | Link to this
Yawn. Read it all ages ago (last Friday) on Palmetto Scoop. (Don’t you read your email, Jim-Bo?)
By Luv2Talk
November 11, 2008 2:36 PM | Link to this
It is wonderful to hear that President-Elect Obama’s team is coming to help Jim Martin. The December 2nd date and the importance of this election needs to be highly publicized or many will not go to the polls. I will do my part and volunteer.
By Gwenola
November 11, 2008 3:41 PM | Link to this
I need a sign. GO MARTIN!
By Vinec Neil
November 11, 2008 3:49 PM | Link to this
The stupid have spoken…….and they will speak again!
By National Rifle Association for MARTIN
November 11, 2008 3:50 PM | Link to this
Saxby will say anything,but do nothing
By lost in space. GOP
November 11, 2008 3:50 PM | Link to this
The GOP is on fire and these clown still volting for them. there base is full of fear for nothing. The sky is falling. Most say they belive in God. And you prayed for God to give you the Best man and he did and you still turn your head!
By GO DEMS
November 11, 2008 4:27 PM | Link to this
We really need the Democrats support once again…If we did it in numbers and drove OBAMA straight to the White House we can do it again for Martin. Stay focused on the bigger picture. Where and What has Chambliss(GOP) done for you lately?????
By OboFan
November 11, 2008 4:52 PM | Link to this
The stupid have been speaking (and having their way) for eight long years. Why do you keep voting against your own interests and the interests of your country?
By Obamalosers
November 11, 2008 4:55 PM | Link to this
Georgia didn’t contribute ANYTHING to Obama…it was all the other LOSER states that did that. Martin is from the same bolt of loser cloth. Georgia said No to B.O. and will say no thanks AGAIN to Jim “Spanky” Martin.
By Boortz4Prez
November 11, 2008 5:04 PM | Link to this
So this means registering people numerous times and voter fraud? Great, just what our state needs! I’m sure this includes finding the scum of society and bussing them to vote. Hey, at least Woodruff Park should be clear of the homeless on the first Tuesday of November!
By melvinowens
November 11, 2008 5:06 PM | Link to this
most conservatives are not stupid people, it’s just that most stupid people are conservatives”-jon stuart mill
By Obaman
November 11, 2008 5:38 PM | Link to this
By Vinec Neil
November 11, 2008 3:49 PM | Link to this
The stupid have spoken…….and they will speak again!
That’s only because the stupider spoke for the past 2 elections. And the stupider screwed up this fine country for the past 8 years.
By Donna P.
November 11, 2008 5:38 PM | Link to this
Saxby beat Martin on Nov. 4 and he will win on Dec. 2 despite the Obama volunteers. Thanks “melvinowens” for your comment on conservatives being stupid. I guess loving our country and troops, caring about unborn children, wanting less Government intrusion into our lives, and believing in the Constitution makes people “stupid”.
By Aaron Burr V. Mexico
November 11, 2008 5:48 PM | Link to this
1) If you love your country, you don’t automatically consider anyone who opposes you as traitors/communists/orcs/less than human.
Most Republicans do that.
(Note: I say republicans, not Conservatives. Republicans Aren’t conservatives and until they admit that Bush was a horrific president, they never will be.)
2) Republicans don’t love our troops. You don’t mangle the VA beyond repair (and that includes Saxby) and then say you love our troops.
Republicans spit on any Democrat veteran. Republicans do not love our troops.
3) Republicans pretend to care about unborn children but don’t care about living ones. Hence they voted against SCHIP because it MIGHT lead to ‘socialized medicine.’
4) Republicans have increased the debt in this country and the size of the government more than all the democrats combined.
5) Republicans say that they are against intrusion in our lives but then want to do things like determine what you do in your bedroom, what you see on your computer, what you put into your body etc etc.
Social Conservatives don’t want less government, they just want less Liberal government. They love laws and law enforcement agencies that enforce their agenda.
Republicans are the same way.
Republicans do not want less government.
6) Believing in The Constitution means defending and embracing the parts you like along with the parts you don’t like.
Republicans only pay attention to the parts they like, when they like.
Anyone who believes the Republicans believe those things IS Stupid.
The Party is mother. The Party is Father. The Party is All.
By Donna P.
November 11, 2008 5:58 PM | Link to this
To: By Aaron Burr V. Mexico, you must be so happy that Obama and the Dems will be running America! Enjoy the next four years. Maybe us Republicans will just fade away and you Dems can run America.
By Aaron Burr V. Mexico
November 11, 2008 6:19 PM | Link to this
Happy? Mmmm…no.
More like relieved. For now.
And I am eternally vigilant thank you very much. The talk about the Republicans becoming ‘a regional party’ is both true and not true.
Republicans are losing demographically speaking. If they do not appeal to Latin voters or the younger generation, they will remain entirely irrelevant. Historically speaking, that is not likely to happen.
Many Republican think tanks actually wanted Obama to win to ‘refresh’ the party and have another 1992-1994 cycle with a ‘contract for America’.
Of course, we’re wise to Rovian tactics so THIS time we’ll be waiting for your tactics.
Unfortunately, Obama is naively going to try to work with Republicans for a while in an attempt to be ‘bi partisian.’ He does not understand that you cannot work with people who only go for the throat.
No, the true solution to making Republicans go away is to open up the process for Third Parties to have a realistic chance of winning. We live in a democracy, so there will always be opposition.
The key is having opposition that acknowledges reality rather than living in fantasy land like Fox News, Michelle Malkin or, on the other side Cindy Sheehan or Cynthia McKinney.
By joejoe
November 11, 2008 6:59 PM | Link to this
Shame on Saxby for not asking President Bush to come save him from defeat.
By cecil nix
November 11, 2008 7:00 PM | Link to this
Us stupid Southerners, need those smart folks from outside the state to help us get dangerous one sided government. With not a check or balance against liberal unfettered government we are at the mercy of professional do gooders who never had to work for a living. Saxby may not be perfect but he is the only one in the way of government that may have to compromise.
By Opie South
November 11, 2008 7:01 PM | Link to this
I agree 100% with Donna P. She is right.
By Chad Harris
November 11, 2008 7:02 PM | Link to this
There is an obvious open door for the Moron Snowbilly Palin—it’s to step out of that chopper that victimizes unarmed wolves when it’s at 350 feet.
By Chad Harris
November 11, 2008 7:17 PM | Link to this
Saxby is a moron in the way of anything rationale. The “people who never had to work for a living” metaphor is delusional.
Chambliss is a draft dodging liar who is in the pocket of a sugar company that murdered about 20 people,
He takes free rides on Fed Ex jets for favors to be fulfilled later.
He lied incessantly as to the implications of the egregious FISA bill.
He voted with the moron Bush 100% of the time. We’re riding his Cracker Bigoted butt out of DC.
Bush’s executive orders are going to fall oone by one in the next few weeks, including the ones he tries to set up as the door hits his butt.
Stem cell policy from Bush DOA
Driling in Utah DOA
The 5 sentence tax bailout for investment banks tripping all over themselves to give multimillion buck Chrismas bonues without consulting or notifying Congress—DDOA
Chambliss has been in the way since the day he brought his draft dodging red neck racial bias to the Senate. Time for him to go—long overdue.
By Chad Harris
November 11, 2008 7:41 PM | Link to this
@ Donna P.
Obama will be in the oval for 8 years. And as long as you continue to embrace Right Wingnut policy that allowed Bush to run the Constitution into the ground for 8 years you can kiss control of Congress or the WH goodbye.
As long as you insult people with a moron like Palin who is less knowledgable about foreign or domestic affairs than the 25 year old in a mall who says “Welcome to Chick Filet” you can kiss winning elections bye.
Keep the moron Palin talkin’ goshdarnit. 3/5 voters know she’s a moron. Put her and Right Wingnut Jindal up and make it easy for us in 2012.
By Sissy Saxby
November 11, 2008 7:52 PM | Link to this
Even if Sissy Saxby is re-elected, I worry that he won’t be able to help his lobbyist cronies as much as he has in the past. And of course he won’t be able to do anything for the regular people of Georgia either.
By Chad Harris
November 11, 2008 7:55 PM | Link to this
BTW the White House effort to block recouping the hidden emails and servers was dealt a blow in D.C. District Court yesterday. Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. of the United States District Court, said two private groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics and the National Security Archive, may pursue their case as they press the administration to recover millions of possibly missing electronic messages.
And in a quintissential example of her failed attempt at striking 50,000 voters off the Georgia rolls Handel flagged an American African American vet as a non-citizen. Handel did not serve in the military.
Karen Branch of Roswell, in North Fulton County, told TPMmuckraker that just a few days before the election, she received a letter from the office of Secretary of State Karen Handel, a Republican, informing Branch that there were questions about her citizenship.
When Branch went to vote on election day, poll workers told her she had to cast a provisional ballot. Eventually, voting-rights lawyers got on the phone with county election officers, and Branch was allowed to cast a conventional ballot.
But why was Branch flagged in the first place? Handel’s office alledged it compared new voter registrations with a state drivers registry, which asks applicants for a drivers license to check a box if they aren’t a citizen. It flagged any new voter who had checked that box as a possible non-citizen. After voting-rights groups sued, Handel was required by a judge to send letters to those voters — around 4700 in all — telling them that their citizenship was in question and that they would be forced to cast a provisional ballot.
Branch, an African-American who served in the U.S. military during the 90s and now works for a hospital corporation, said she has voted in Georgia in every presidential election since 2000, including this year’s primary. She moved from one part of the state to another after the primary — she re-registered at her new address — making her, technically, a newly registered voter. But her citizenship has never been in question — she was born in the U.S. and does not even own a passport. And she applied for her drivers license years ago — since which time she has been voting without incident — making it unlikely that she mistakenly checked the “non-citizen” box on her license application.
By Kiss My Grits
November 11, 2008 7:59 PM | Link to this
Keep on voting for these fools, and you’re going to get what you voted for. And Obama isn’t in the White House yet. Many are contesting his eligibility, and When the Supreme Court DEMANDS to see his birth certificate, that’ll prove to be interesting.
By Chad Harris
November 11, 2008 8:14 PM | Link to this
Kiss My Grits—it’s delusional thinkers like you that insure we will be in power for a long time to come and we will need generations to fix the broken government that Bush, Cheney and Addington f*cked up worse than any admin in history.
You won’t mind of course, since I’m educationally and legally challenged, citing the particular case in the federal appellate system you believe is challenging Barack’s citizenship.
“Many are contesting his eligibility”
LOL in your dreams. Many delusional Wihgnuts are contesting it in the mirror or when they’ve had a few Long Island Teas. You invoked the S. Ct. No doubt you’ll help someone like me who has minimal knowledge of federal appellate law locate the case your imagination is citing. LOL upon LOL to the 64th.
By blessed
November 11, 2008 8:55 PM | Link to this
Chad, you are right on!!! This comment by “Kiss my Grits” was laughable!!! Hilarious!!!!!
By Bruce becker
November 11, 2008 9:00 PM | Link to this
40% of the public did not vote in the general election.
While many people care a lot, some dont care at all.
An election like this one will be a test of wills of the base.
My bet is that few young people will comprehend how important it is to vote, and Chambliss will win by default with 51% of the vote of 25% of the people.
My opinion is that Chambliss’s defeat could make it possible to get bills passed which would otherwise be filibustered until the GOP is able to use extortion, like they did when they voted against the President’s first bailout and then they got a pork barrel full of $150 billion.
If you want effective, sleek government, vote MARTIN and end the threat of Chambliss to stop all bills by talking. Its likely that Palin will be the Senator from Alaska and join Chambliss and entertain us by reading the entire New Testament into the record, to prevent passage of needed bills to PUT AMERICANS BACK TO WORK.
We need roads, rail systems, bridges, and telecommunications. In the nation as a whole there is not enough delivery system for electricity, since the power companies got the Senate to make delivery of power the duty of states. We get the bills locally. The power companies, just get the profits. VOTE MARTIN. Put Americans back to work. End the threat of filibusters Chambliss is promising.
By Chad Harris
November 11, 2008 9:49 PM | Link to this
One figure I’d like to have is the number of people who stayed away from polls in Georgia on Election Day because they were discouraged by long lines in the final weeks of advanced (early voting) because of too few polling places (about 5 in Fulton and Cobb for a large number of people).
There is some very interesting analysis on the prospects for Frankin in the Minnesota Recount based on an analysis of mistakes in the Florida 2000 recount. Nate Silver was a star in baseball statistical analysis like Bill James and a math whiz and he applied his baseball models to election analysis.
www.fivethirtyeight.com
By Aquinas
November 11, 2008 9:59 PM | Link to this
When November 4’s BIG loser John McCain visits on Thursday to take one more campaign journey with Saxby Chambliss in his Senate runoff election bid, may I recommend the most appropriate theme music to be played will be “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.”
By daryl
November 12, 2008 10:54 AM | Link to this
All of you dimorats will be sorry when he tells you it’s time to do your hitch in haiti or the congo for your ncsc service. that’s obama’s national civilian service corps for those of you who don’t know.
By chief of smoke
November 12, 2008 2:23 PM | Link to this
Saxby is a fine man. Please support him.
We need someone to stand up to the New Socialist Regime
By Ronaldus Magnus
November 12, 2008 8:51 PM | Link to this
Martin should be ashamed. When one testifies in court, he is sworn to tell the truth, the Whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God….and he has done nothing but lie about what Senator Chambless wants regarding the Fair Tax. If this were a case before a court, Lawyer Martin would be found GUILTY of perjury and disbarred……wow, kinda like Clinton…..before you know it, Mr. Da-Rock Obama may actually tell the truth about his tax plan as well. Nah, I doubt he ever comes clean. Not God Bless America, God @&%$ America. My bad, Da-Rock never heard his pastor say anything inflamatory. Holla.
By Ddo
November 12, 2008 11:34 PM | Link to this
The way the Dems work they will be recruiting Mickey Mouse to come up from Florida and vote for Martin.
By Rastus
November 13, 2008 1:45 AM | Link to this
Shiiii,meeb and my fellow porch monkeys ain’t dat stupid.isa had toob put down my crack pipe and not sell any p*** an entire day to get on dat stinky ACORN bus.dey had uns vote ten times at ten different polls fo lordy baraaak da messiah.dey told us dat da dems passed a law dat da brudas git ten votes each as reparatins fo slabery.Shiii,but isa aint puttin my pipe down an notha day fo some old liberal whitey man.shiii,go on chambliss.
By Rastus
November 13, 2008 1:50 AM | Link to this
Shiiii,meeb and my fellow porch monkeys ain’t dat stupid.isa had toob put down my crack pipe and not sell any p*** an entire day to get on dat stinky ACORN bus.dey had uns vote ten times at ten different polls fo lordy baraaak da messiah.dey told us dat da dems passed a law dat da brudas git ten votes each as reparatins fo slabery.Shiii,but isa aint puttin my pipe down an notha day fo some old liberal whitey man.shiii,go on chambliss.
By REAGANOMICS
November 13, 2008 1:56 AM | Link to this
saxby sissy boy
By Rastus lives in a Foreclosed Double-Wide.............
November 13, 2008 2:10 AM | Link to this
Bail Out
By Rastus lives in a Foreclosed Double-Wide.............
November 13, 2008 2:11 AM | Link to this
Bail Out
By Larry
November 13, 2008 2:12 AM | Link to this
I love it when people talk about the US Constitution, and how Bush the Evil has ripped it up. You so conveniently forget FDR and the countless others who so merrily illuminated the path long before. Democrats, Republicans, there’s no difference. Neither really respects the US Constitution, they just pick and choose the parts they rally ‘round. Our wise dead white founders crafted a constitution to erect a limited government of defined powers to protect us from ourselves. I don’t know about yours, but the Constitution hanging on my wall has Article I, Section 8, not to mention a 9th and 10th amendment, among other salient sections. You should read it someday. If either side did, and really believed in it, it wouldn’t matter so crucially who was in power. Instead you all find loopholes, “interpretations,” or “precedents” to twist the document to justify whatever expansion of federal authority you like, to give you the goodies you want. You wink and say that the “general welfare” clause or the “commerce clause” or the “presumption of legislative correctness” are outs that let you do anything whatsoever you want, but you know that that is just ridiculous — why even bother having enumerated powers or any other concept of a check on federal authority? Why doesn’t Section 8 save some ink and just say “Congress can do whatever it damn well pleases.”
Moreover, you say you want a nation of laws, but you don’t. What you want requires government of “good” men, battles over the selection of “good” judges, where good merely equates to your ideological peer. You want to vastly empower government to give you what you want, yet prevent the opposition from using that same empowered government to do things that, well, you oppose. This makes it so critical that the “good” guys win every time. Ever hear the quip “government large enough to give me everything I want is large enough to take it all away.” Jefferson stated that we should bind men of good intent with the chains of the constitution. A man smarter than I or any of you wrote “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.” Look it up.
Oh, another nit. Rights. A right is not something that somebody has to give you. A right is something you have that cannot be taken away. You have rights by nature of being a free and sovereign man or woman. Ponder that. Is there a right to health care? Shelter? A new car? No. Stop calling them rights. Privileges, benefits, lard of the public weal funded by taxation, but not rights. No one has a “right” to force somebody else give them something.
By GEORGIA BULLDOG
November 13, 2008 2:17 AM | Link to this
Students against Saxby!
By FDR-- New Deal In U.S. SENATE
November 13, 2008 2:22 AM | Link to this
** The only thing to fear is another six years of Saxby in the Senate.
By geek
November 13, 2008 6:22 PM | Link to this
Max Clleland was a vet, head of VA and then a serving Senator.
Chambliss called him un-patriotic.
Clelland lost 2 legs and an arm in the war. He lost his Senate seat to Chambliss in an election.
Chambliss lost respect and his dignity and the people of Georgia lost leave of there senses when they voted for that disgusting man Chambliss. Chambliss is a bigot and disgusting excuse for a man and if that is who Georgia wants to represent them in the Senate, they get what they deserve.