Clayton County. (To the right, former school board chair Norreese Haynes.)
While the problem of white governance is one of money and political organization, the problem of black governance is one of apathy and political opportunism. You decide which is worse for the prospect of real reform.
That white America retains its racist edge is a fact.
As Dr. Charles Franklin noted recently, even the 2008 Exit Polls show white support for Democrat Barack Obama falling off a cliff once the black population of a state hit 25%.
This defines the Deep South. Blacks vote Democratic, whites Republican. Both sides suffer as a result. Real elections are in the primaries, and all reformers are at a disadvantage as incumbent machines hint (subtly or not) that their efforts at bipartisanship are a form of racial sell-out.
Little has changed since the 1960s, except instead of all-white Democratic machines holding all power we now have two sets of machines, one white and one black. The move was gradual, down the ballot, but once the tipping point was reached in each state the move was both total and irreversible.
In 2002 the tipping point was reached in Georgia. The state's first Republican Governor since Reconstruction, Sonny Perdue, was elected. This caused the state's money power to flip entirely to the Republicans, who took over both houses of the state legislature in 2004.
And instituted their machine.
The leader of that machine, on the House side, is Glenn Richardson. Like the other leaders of the state's Republicans he lives in the Atlanta exurbs. Specifically he lives in Hiram, Georgia, which is in Paulding County, about 25 miles north-by-northwest from Atlanta proper.
Richardson, 52, lives just a few miles north of his birthplace in Douglas County. He is a highly incurious man who operates from self-interest, his own and that of people like him. He got his law degree from Georgia State in Atlanta in 1984 and almost immediately joined a politically-connected law firm for which he is now a name partner. He rose steadily along with his party, winning his legislative seat in 1996. His district is northeast of that held by the late Democratic Speaker Tom Murphy, and while his leadership style is based on the same ruthlessness and bombast, his method for gaining power is quite different.
This victory seems different somehow. More "once and for all" than anything I've experienced before.
I anticipated this, of course, but the moment itself is incredibly delicious.
It's the reaction on both sides which has me feeling this way.
Start with the Democrats. Liberals want revenge on Joe Lieberman, but President-elect Obama refuses to give them the satisfaction. He wants Lieberman in his caucus as a bridge to the "moderate" Republicans left in the Senate who can help him beat routine filibusters -- Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Richard Lugar, Arlen Spector -- people who watch to see which way the wind blows and don't go knee-jerk into their own party's column.
Barack Obama really is trying to make the Internet Thesis of Consensus happen. He's dead serious about this. Liberals, like those at DailyKos and Firedoglake, may see Lieberman as a snake, but Obama thinks he can grab him by the head and bring him on-board, most of the time.
It's risky business. The President-elect has a pre-approval rating of 70, much higher than any Democrat since LBJ, and he wants to use that to get consensus on a coherent program involving the economy, foreign policy, health care, and the War Against Oil. It's a deep game, for historical stakes, and no one has played such a game since Nixon. (Reagan just played the hand Nixon fed him.)
If you're interested in a good book for the Christmas of 2009, drop me a note. If you can't wait just follow along here over the next several months
In the wake of Barack Obama's historic victory there are many proclaiming the end of race-based politics, or who at least see it on the horizon.
I don't.
I have spent the last three years as editor at Voic.Us, a political blog site. My method was simple. I wrote stories about southern politics, based on links to newspaper stories and blog posts. My job was to collect all the political blogs I could in each state, and then try to describe to readers what they were obsessing about in terms of local and state politics.
The Voic.Us beat eventually covered 10 southern states. I eventually put them into two camps:
A near-south group (Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky) where the parties mirrored those of the nation as a whole, and
A deep south group (Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana) where the parties divided by race. Those who chose to be Democrats had to put up with their neighbors considering them "n-lovers."
A brief comment on last night's results, from a purely analytical perspective.
It was interesting to me how the 1992 results re-capitulated the 1860 election, only in reverse. Clinton won where Lincoln had, while Bush won where Douglas or Breckenridge had.
This year's results are a reverse of 1896. Obama has won where McKinley did, while McCain has won where Bryan did. What's most startling about that is it shows Republicans to be a Populist Party, one led (no joke) by Sarah Palin.
The result of these switches was almost a wash. Despite the higher turnout Obama's popular vote win did nothing more than reverse the 2004 result. But it's really significant, and shows the makings of a longer-lasting coalition than Clinton's win did.
This is addressed to all my liberal friends who say Bush is "going to get away with it," that the abuses of this era will be swept under the rug while W and his buddies go off to Dallas and plot a counter-attack on the Constitution.
The point is, again, that there is no statute of limitations on war crimes. There is no statute of limitations on torture. And there is no way on Earth that a war criminal can immunize him against this reality.
You can't write a "signing statement" that absolves you. You can't just pardon everyone around you and avoid the International Criminal Court forever, especially as we enter an era where international law is becoming increasingly important.
Saddam tried that. Milosevic tried that. Fat lot of good it did either one of them.
The most remarkable point about Friday's debate, about the whole week, has not been remarked upon enough.
That is the difference between strategy and tactics.
Barack Obama has gone after everything strategically. He has a long-range vision, of Democrats and Republicans getting along even when they disagree, of consensus that starts with agreement and moves outward, a vision driven by Internet values that has been as controversial among Democrats as among Republicans.
Obama won that argument narrowly in his own party and this week he hit John McCain over the head with it.
Obama deliberately treated McCain with respect, even some deference, beginning many responses by saying he agreed with McCain on some point. Then he hammered home a strategic vision which, whether or not you agreed with it, was at least coherent, different from the way we have been going, and fairly easy to understand.
The talking heads exploded. No knockout blows, they said. No sound bites, they complained.
Well, exactly right.
McCain, meanwhile, was all about tactics. Everything was tactical, obviously tactical, from picking Palin to "suspending" the campaign to coming back to Mississippi. And the way he debated was tactical. He treated each question like a separate event, rather than as part of some larger whole.
The key point came when discussion turned to "the surge." McCain kept hammering away that this "strategy" proved "we will win" in Iraq, that Obama was unfairly disparaging "our troops" and "General Petraeus." Obama refused to be drawn in, stating repeatedly that the surge was "a tactic," that the strategy of focusing entirely on Iraq was the mistake, and that McCain was confusing strategy and tactics.
This went right over the heads of the TeeVee Talking Heads, just as it went over McCain's head. But it was clear that the American people got it. Just as it was clear they understood why he was being deferential, why he was starting his sentences with "I agree with John" or "Senator McCain is right" about something. He was using those phrases as a digression to discuss his disagreement, laying out common ground before moving to the basic choice. Most people understood that.
One of the worst things about this time in the birth of a new generational thesis is the way some advocates come to fear the people.
I will admit up-front that I am very much in favor of the Democratic ticket. All of it. I believe Republicans have gone completely ga-ga, not only in how they are governing but in how they are campaigning.
With that out of the way let's go dump on some liberals.
I will take as my example Tristero over at Hullaballoo (although the criticism can apply to anyone there, even Digby, as well as way too many HuffPo and Daily Kos posters).
By any reality-based standard, this election should be a rout [UPDATE; and it
isn't, on any level]. The Republicans fielded a buffoon and a sociopath
while Democrats chose genuine leaders. Racism explains a lot of it. Media bias
explains a lot of it. But it is also the case that Democrats are hellbent on
avoiding mentioning anything that could possibly be thought "unclean" when the
Republicans have demonstrated that no sewer is so foul they won't stoop to
disgorge its stinking mess into the public discourse.
Notice what is at work here. Not only does he dehumanize all Republican leaders, but claims they're going to get away with it. And the only reason for that must be that most people are sheep, that they're stupid, that they are easily led by their fears, that they won't stand up for themselves.
The appeal of Sarah Palin is that she is, in fact, George W. Bush in a skirt.
She is just as much a fantasist as our current President. She is just as corrupt, and lies just as shamelessly, because she believes every lie she tells.
That's what makes her loved.
I have said here many times that, if the Republican Party could re-nominate George W. Bush for President, it would. He remains far more popular within the party than their actual candidate, John McCain, who in nominating Palin has come close to creating a literal McCain-Bush ticket.
Those who are now gleefully condemning the pick, and wondering how it has raised McCain's poll numbers, don't get it.
For conservatives, as for liberals a generation ago, fantasy has become reality. It is a hallmark of a generational election that this happens inside the incumbent party. Everything argues against what you believe, so you believe in it all the more. You create your own fantasy world in which what you believe is always true, and anyone who questions always false, and you may even be willing to die for that belief.
Isn't that what Confederates did for their fantasy? Isn't that what Populists did for their fantasy? Isn't that why Republicans went down to with Hoover even after he sent Douglas McArthur out to crush the Bonus Army?
More important, isn't that ultimately what was inside the anti-war movement of a generation ago, its secret sauce? Abandon reality. Embrace fantasy. The world will conform to what you pretend it to be.
Now is the time for all good men (and women) to come to the aid of the party.
The 2008 election will be decided over the next month, but perhaps not where you think.
Republicans can always win an air war. They have been doing this for a generation. It is what they do. We are inclined to buy their crap so they spit it out, the knees jerk, and that's that.
But there is another way. I have been exploring it, both from my standpoint as a tech reporter and as a Barack Obama supporter, over the last few days.
I call it the ground war. It's a fascinating story. It's partly a computer story. It's also, partly, a human story. It's a story you can be part of, if you choose. But your choice, whatever it is, will decide this election.
When reformers condemn Georgia's pay to play government under House Speaker Glenn Richardson, they may ask how white voters tolerate it.
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