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Friday, August 4, 2006
Democrats’ soul on line in two races
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republicans don’t have a dog in either fight, but two nationally significant races on Tuesday’s ballot will tell us a great deal about the mood of the country — and the future of two-party politics.
The one, of course, is Georgia’s 4th Congressional District, where incumbent Rep. Cynthia McKinney is in the final stages of her political career. But for an out-of-district white guy who sapped 5,253 votes, most of which otherwise would have gone to challenger Hank Johnson, she would be walking around in stunned defeat now. Johnson may not beat her Tuesday, but the end is near. Her political salvation — and it is only remotely possible that she is psychologically equipped to do it — is to move from the fringe.
In this contest, Republicans and conservatives have nothing to gain from her defeat and a fair amount to lose. On legislation, Johnson and McKinney will vote the same. They’re both liberal Democrats. The difference is that Johnson is less likely to do and say things that strike reasonable people as nutty. That’s not a good swap for Republicans.
The more significant race nationally is in the Democratic primary in Connecticut, where three-term U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, the party’s 2000 vice presidential nominee, is headed to defeat at the hands of anti-war activists who are waging their own jihad for the soul of the national Democratic Party. A July 20 poll by Quinnipiac University gave Lieberman’s challenger, cable TV mogul Ned Lamont, a 51-47 lead among likely primary voters. By Thursday that lead had grown to 54-41, according to Quinnipiac’s sampling.
Said poll director Douglas Schwartz, “Sen. Lieberman’s campaign bus seems to be stuck in reverse. Despite visits from former President Bill Clinton and other big-name Democrats, Lieberman has not been able to stem the tide to Lamont.”
The Lieberman-Lamont race, as Schwartz notes, is a testament to the growing power of the blogs, which emerged as a political force in Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign. “Three months ago,” said Schwartz, “Lamont was virtually unheard of, except perhaps on the blogs.”
Blogs, for the uninitiated, are Internet Web sites — Thinking Right is one — where people gather to debate or discuss issues of the day.
Lamont, like Johnson in DeKalb County, offers a prospective voting record that’s likely to be indistinguishable from the incumbent he’s trying to beat. In that sense, then, neither holds much interest for conservatives.
The only interest in both is what they will tell us about the direction of the party here and nationally. If McKinney loses this cycle as opposed to next, it’ll be because the black middle class finds her style slightly embarrassing.
She’s the black middle class’s Confederate battle flag. They may be drawn to her emotionally and see her confrontational style as a part of their valued heritage, but she’s become a symbol of a bygone era.
Maybe “bygone” was last week. Maybe before the war, Maybe before people came to think seriously about the divisions, which have grown more pronounced.
This runoff, then, says more about the perspective of the black middle class than it does about partisan or racial politics. The district is 59 percent black and just 33 percent white — and a fair portion of that 33 percent includes Republicans who have primary runoff interests of their own.
This is a pure play for black Democrats. They’ll be the ones to decide whether she stays or goes. This year. But if she remains the fringe Cynthia, the mainstream black middle class — somebody like DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones — will take her out.
Lieberman is a sad case. Except to speak moderately on the Iraqi phase of the war on terrorism, much as Southern Democrats once did with the nation at war, and precisely as Southern Democrat Jim Marshall, the Macon congressman who represents Georgia’s 3rd District, still does, Lieberman has committed no offense against the left.
As with the 4th District’s black middle class, a Lieberman defeat would tell us volumes — in Lieberman’s case, about the rise to dominance of the anti-war left within the national Democratic Party. His is the proxy contest. A Lamont win Tuesday fixes the party in Congress and probably for the 2008 election as well.
Republicans and conservatives have no dog in these fights. But on Wednesday morning the country will have a lot clearer idea of where the national Democratic Party’s soul has landed.
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