This morning, I got an e-mail from my old friend, Tom Turnipseed, a veteran political activist and former Democratic State Senator from South Carolina. Tom wonders why The State Newspaper of Columbia (a Knight-Ridder property) has not covered the story about Graham and McCain’s transparent photo-op in Iraq, which put hundreds of American Troops and Iraqi civilians in a very dangerous situation in order to carry off a complete media hoax and has now, apparently, become a complete human disaster. Damn good question. For that matter, where are the others— The (Greenville) News, The (Charleston) Post and Courier, The (Sumter) Item and The (Florence) Morning News? And where the hell is Robert Ariail, The State’s award-winning editorial cartoonist, who usually skewers everything and everybody? Are you guys ever going to challenge Lindsay Graham on anything? Or will “Huck” get a free ride, like his predecessor, Strom Thurmond, who never met a newspaper publisher in South Carolina that he couldn’t charm or intimidate.
On a related topic, I have heard through the grapevine that Tom Turnipseed is thinking about challenging “Huckleberry” in 2008. I sure hope he does, not only because he is the kind of bur-under-the-saddle populist that will drive Lindsay crazy, but also because he is the kind of Democrat who can win this seat. Turnipseed has been fighting in the trenches for decades on social and consumer issues in South Carolina. He is a thoughtful peace advocate. “Seed” has been a champion of working folks and civil rights and environmental causes for many years. He is a media celebrity in South Carolina and his writings on politics have been featured on the op-ed pages of the New York Times and The Washington Post.
Now, I realize that South Carolina seems, to the outside world, to be hopelessly RED. This is an unfortunate preconception, which should be put to rest. Senator Fritz Hollings was a Democrat. He consistently won easy victories over his Republican opponents until he retired in 2004. The last South Carolina Governor, Jim Hodges, was a Democrat. There are two very powerful Democratic Congressmen from South Carolina, Jim Clyburn and John Spratt, both of whom are part of the Democratic leadership in the House. South Carolina has a solid Democratic base of Blacks, Labor and Courthouse Democrats and huge number of Independents. While it is true that many of these folks have tended to vote Republican in Presidential elections since Reagan, they remain fiercely independent and often, decline to identify with either party when polled. I wish I had a silver dollar for every time I have heard the boast; “I vote the man, not the party.” South Carolina is ripe for the plucking for any well-funded Democrat.
Thomas F. Schaller argues in his book, Whistling Past Dixie: How the Democrats can Win without the South, that the Democratic party should just write off the South and concentrate on the rest of the country. I could not disagree more strongly. There is a paradigm shift going on all over the country right now. Nobody gave Jim Webb a prayer in Virginia until George Allen’s Macaca gaffe, but Webb had a good chance all along. Sure, Virginia is home to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (as South Carolina is home to Bob Jones.) So what? Virginia had a Black Governor (Douglas Wilder) and the last two Governors have also been Democrats (Warner and Kaine.) Webb proved all of the punditocracy dead wrong. I’m with Dr. Dean on this: Fight ‘em on every front.
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I hope Turnipseed runs too!
Just so I get to cite a “Sen. Turnipseed.” Perfectly honorable name, which is more than you can say for some poor sap who shares a surname with oh say Saxby Chambliss for instance.
Oh, and as to the post itself: HELL yeah [insert dean scream here] and I have been saying this for as long as I’ve been posting here, or anywhere for that matter.
I would like to formally whap Shaller upside the head, or whatever body part presents itself. The notion that “The South” (or anywhere for that matter) is solid red is horseshit, as can be proved with any decent map of election returns from 04 or 06 that breaks down to the county level. Better yet if it shades fully from red to blue.
Big cities are all solid blue; the collars around them are purple to mildly red; out in the sticks tends more heavily red but you gotta count population. And even there you have exceptions, i.e. the Black Belt across the rural MS-AL-GA strip.
Point being that even in numerical form Southern races break circa 55%R-45%D. We don’t have to convert the whole fucking population; we just have to turn that middle 6 per cent. Or do a better job on turnout.
PS: onealbear, do you use another name on other blogs? because there’s a post remarkably similar to this one now up as a diary at Kos, but the person signing it is not “onealbear.”
Nuttin’ saying you can’t use different names at different places mind you, just wondering if you were being ripped off.
If this question is of an overly personal nature kindly pretend not to see it, and we will all look aimlessly off in random directions, as when someone farts in the elevator. :)
Bocotton
Yeah, when I signed up at the big Orange Place in the sky last year, I was posting anonymously on my own little blog as bocotton (I now post under my real name, ONeal Compton) and so I signed up there and at several other places as bocotton (my initals + cotton) and now their system won’t allow change my screen name for some reason, so I guess I am stuck with it. But you are right, It’s damn confusing. Thanks for your comments on the post, xan. I need to do more of it. Tom Schaller be damned.