There were some big doings in Georgia last night. Saxby Chambliss whipped his Democratic opponent Jim Martin to retain his Senate seat in a runoff election. On Election Day, Martin came within 3 percent of Chambliss, necessitating the runoff. Yesterday, the result wasn’t even close.
The big question in Punditland is going to be: what does it all mean? I’m not going to be a lot of help, I’m afraid. Chambliss’ huge margin of victory last night could be attributed to not having Barack Obama on his opponent’s ticket, which says that the Democrat down-ticket victories weren’t so much due to Democratic doings as they were to the magic of the Obamessiah. There’s the ever-present spectre of race as well as African Americans didn’t turn out much at all for the white Democrat Senate candidate as they did for the not-so-white Presidential one. We could also attribute Chambliss’ big win to Sarah Palin, who paid George some extra-special attention this time around. Saxby seems to think that she had quite a bit to do with the win, so that reason seems more important than the others at this point.
You could also attribute the win to a large number of voters who didn’t want to see a Democratic empire, complete with a supermajority Senate (that would be veto- and filibuster-proof). Stacy McCain, a Georgia native who is still very plugged in to the state, notes that Chambliss’ strength was widespread – in urban and rural areas. He won everywhere but the bluest of the blue enclaves, which could lead you in the “no supermajority” direction. There’s also the factors of how Chambliss campaigned since Election Day. He painted himself as a rock-ribbed conservative against a true liberal, which wasn’t how it played out before Election Day. Martin then got away with hiding himself more as a moderate and Chambliss couldn’t change the narrative. Thanks to a plethora of very narrow ads on Martin’s history, he managed to change things this time around.
Which goes to a statement I believe is true about national or regional elections: Conservatives win only when they run as conservatives; progressives win when they run as moderates.
I don’t know that any one reason exerted more pull on the results than any other and I’m certain that no one else knows either. You could take any number of lessons from yesterday’s results and run in any direction you wanted, pretty much. I happen to think that Chambliss pinned Martin to the wall with his left-wing record, brought in a conservative favorite to help him, and demonstrated that he was the better option for Georgia voters. In other words, Chambliss ran as a conservative, painted his opponent as the leftist he is, and ran a strong and aggressive campaign. That’s not a profound lesson or anything. There’s no deep political or tactical wisdom there, except to say that winning elections as a conservative is not exactly rocket science. The basics still work.
Oh, and the HuffPuff crowd has lost their minds over Chambliss’ win, too, which is a bonus. Anything that makes the demented left more demented makes me that much happier.
Tags: Barack Obama, Conservatives, Georgia, Progressives, Sarah Palin, Saxby Chambliss, Stacy McCain
